Entering flow states – or attention tunnels – is a necessary coping strategy for many of us.
Fergus Murray
I just watched the Frank Zappa documentary by Alex Winter. Zappa strikes me as intensely, relentlessly, and relatably monotropic. For me, the film shouts “monotropism” and “flow state” throughout.
What is monotropism?
Monotropism is a neurodiversity affirming theory of autism (Murray et al 2005).
Autistic / ADHD / AuDHD people are more likely to be monotropic (Garau et al., 2023).
Monotropic people have an interest based nervous system. This means they focus more of their attention resources on fewer things at any one time compared to other people who may be polytropic.
Things outside an attention tunnel may get missed and moving between attention tunnels can be difficult and take a lot of energy.
Monotropism can have a positive and negative impact on sensory, social and communication needs depending on the environment, support provided and how a person manages their mind and body.
Community input from various social media platforms to help define monotropism
Collected by Autistic Realms, January 2024
Monotropism is a theory of autism developed by autistic people…
Monotropism is a theory of autism developed by autistic people, initially by Dinah Murray and Wenn Lawson.
Welcome – Monotropism
Monotropic minds tend to have their attention pulled more strongly towards a smaller number of interests at any given time, leaving fewer resources for other processes. We argue that this can explain nearly all of the features commonly associated with autism, directly or indirectly. However, you do not need to accept it as a general theory of autism in order for it to be a useful description of common autistic experiences and how to work with them.
If we are right, then monotropism is one of the key ideas required for making sense of autism, along with the double empathy problem and neurodiversity. Monotropism makes sense of many autistic experiences at the individual level. The double empathy problem explains the misunderstandings that occur between people who process the world differently, often mistaken for a lack of empathy on the autistic side. Neurodiversity describes the place of autistic people and other ‘neurominorities’ in society.
Monotropism – Welcome
I believe that the best way to understand autistic minds is in terms of a thinking style which tends to concentrate resources in a few interests and concerns at any time, rather than distributing them widely. This style of processing, monotropism, explains many features of autistic experience that may initially seem puzzling, and shows how they are connected.
Starting Points for Understanding Autism | by Ferrous, aka Oolong | Medium
Monotropism provides a far more comprehensive explanation for autistic cognition than any of its competitors, so it has been good to see it finally starting to get more recognition among psychologists (as in Sue Fletcher-Watson’s keynote talk at the 2018 Autistica conference). In a nutshell, monotropism is the tendency for our interests to pull us in more strongly than most people. It rests on a model of the mind as an ‘interest system’: we are all interested in many things, and our interests help direct our attention. Different interests are salient at different times. In a monotropic mind, fewer interests tend to be aroused at any time, and they attract more of our processing resources, making it harder to deal with things outside of our current attention tunnel.
Me and Monotropism: A unified theory of autism | The Psychologist
This interest model of mind is ecological, embodied, and exploratory. Instead of applying emotionally charged values to categorize humans, it offers a more objective way of thinking about autistic and other human variations: it does not pathologize them. This is not just semantics, current diagnostic practice stamps “Rejected!” on the core nature of a large part of the human race, with profound repercussions, as history relates if we attend to it.
Monotropism: An Interest-Based Account of Autism
Think you might be monotropic? Try this “Monotropism Questionnaire”.
Monotropism seeks to explain autism in terms of attention distribution and interests. Despite having strong subjective validity to autistic people, and potential to explain the overlap between autism and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), it has been little investigated formally. This is in large part due to lack of reliable and valid measures to capture the construct. In this study, we aimed to develop and validate a novel self-report measure, the Monotropism Questionnaire (MQ), in autistic and non-autistic people. The MQ consists of 47 items, which were generated by a group of autistic adults based on their lived experience and academic expertise.
OSF Preprints | Development and Validation of a Novel Self-Report Measure of Monotropism in Autistic and Non-Autistic People: The Monotropism Questionnaire
When focused like this an Autistic person can enter a ‘flow state‘ which can bring great joy and satisfaction to the person experiencing it.
However it can make switching between tasks and other transitions difficult.
Flow states are the pinnacle of intrinsic motivation, where somebody wants to do something for themselves, for the sake of doing it and doing it well.
Flow allows us to recharge, to feel a sense of achievement and satisfaction, and a kind of respite from the often-baffling demands of the school social environment.
The film also shouts “justice sensitivity” and “very grand emotions”, especially as Frank takes on the censors.
…people who experience high justice sensitivity have a stronger tendency to notice and identify wrongdoing and have more intense cognitive, emotional, and behavioural reactions to perceived injustice.
Neurodivergents: Justice Warriors! by Jillian Enright | Invisible Illness
Justice, equality, fairness, mercy, longsuffering, Work, Passion, knowledge, and above all else, Truth. Those are my primary emotions.
Very Grand Emotions: How Autistics and Neurotypicals Experience Emotions Differently » NeuroClastic
Also apparent in the documentary is a familiar kind of neglect. A highly monotropic person can be so inside their attention tunnel and so devoted to their interests that they forget their loved ones and the people around them. They forget to include people who aren’t in their tunnel.
I am certainly like that, and Frank Zappa was very like that. His daughter Moon Unit, at age 13, wrote him a letter reminding him that she existed and lived with him.
Her father, a brilliant musical polymath and beloved guitar hero, was a workaholic and thus a fleeting presence.
Moon Unit Zappa on the ’emotional trauma’ of her childhood: ‘Is genius worth the collateral damage?’
“Something I have often grappled with, which became the impetus for the book, was this idea of, is genius worth the collateral damage it can do to a family?” says Zappa. “It’s the Pharaoh Syndrome. You are working for the top of the pyramid and it will eventually come back to you.”
Moon Unit Zappa book details childhood as Frank Zappa’s daughter – Los Angeles Times
Sacrifices were made by everyone so that the genius could be out in the world.
Moon Unit Zappa
An attention tunneled monotrope like Frank Zappa can create and accomplish much, often at the expense of their own needs and the needs of those who support them.
lethobenthos = (n.) the habit of forgetting how important someone is to you until you see them again in person.
Monotropic people like myself and Frank need to be part of an ecology of care. We also need to know better than to take that care network for granted.
I’m imagining what Frank would do musically and politically with the tools of today, and I’m crying at the loss of his lens. I’m also crying for his family, who he seems to have taken for granted as he devoted himself to his interests.
Care work makes all other work possible. We monotropic creators fortunate enough to have support systems must remember that.
Selected Quotes from the Documentary
Try sitting in a wheelchair for nine months. You’ll find out who your friends are.
Frank Zappa, Zappa – YouTube
Frank was a slave to his inner ear.
Steve Vai, Zappa – YouTube
There was a part of him, that even though he had a lot of people’s attention, of feeling cynical about the fact that, yeah, all these people are looking, but they don’t know what they’re seeing.
Mike Keneally Zappa – YouTube
He not only thinks, he discerns.
Ray White, Zappa – YouTube
I always appreciated the fact that he taught himself.
He went to the library as a kid, and he just checked out books and stayed there and learned.
David Harrington, Zappa – YouTube
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