Since I found out about my autism in 2009, at age 40, I struggled to find older people who I could relate to that had mental disorders.

I also feel like late-diagnosed autism is not well understood by the medical community. I keep witnessing more and more adults who are diagnosed even at age 60 (who work in science news reporting, of all fields!).

With autism, age is so focused on children in the medical research funding. But schizophrenia learning is often focused on adults: “symptoms generally start in the mid- to late 20s, though it can start later, up to the mid-30s. Schizophrenia is considered early onset when it starts before the age of 18.”

It’s an interesting time period in autism right now. Since I became active on the topic in 2009, I keep hearing story after story on social media about people not getting diagnosed with autism until age 40, 50, etc. Again: diagnosed with autism even at age 60

Terry A Davis and I have a lot in common: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terry_A._Davis

  1. I was born in 1969 too. Just a couple months older.

  2. I learned programming on a Commodore 64 and published social media software.

  3. He worked at “Ticketmaster as a programmer for VAX machines” - I had a VAX/VMS system at my high school and got a job with a pentagon contractor based on them also having a VAX system at age 16.

  4. I became an expert in operating systems and wrote books about them in the early 1990’s.

  5. I have traveled and lived as a digital nomad since 1999, I’ve lived all over the USA states he was spending time in.

After 2017, he struggled with periods of homelessness and incarceration. In 2018, he was struck by a train and died at the age of 48.

I have never had hallucinations of any kind. And his interest in religion strikes me as someone who would have really benefited from a 1970 lecture by Joseph Campbell: Joseph Campbell - Inward Journey: Schizophrenia and Mythology

I’ve lived in the Middle East for years, lived in several Islamic nations, experienced different views of religion. Dr. John Weir Perry is a reference. As Joseph Campbell is pointing out in that lecture, religion itself is a form of Schizophrenia. I think Terry A Davis is exactly the kind of person who would have benefited from having that knowledge, and even translating it to Arizona (where he lived) areas of mythology - like Navajo teaching. I do not subscribe to any one religion as “correct” any more than films, songs, fiction. I think James Joyce combined with Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman are an excellent set of teachers about how to understand mythology (religion) stories and not get caught up in the specifics of Middle East interpretations. The Navajo Pollen Path I consider better than what I’ve seen in most Bible/Torah/Quran teaching.

Terry A Davis’s visions of inner voices also fits a lot with the fiction and meta writings of Phillip K. Dick. PKD was very good with metaphors and I think well understood what Joseph Campbell was saying about the psychology of religion. It would not surprise me at all if PKD knew of the 1970 lecture by Campbell in his lifetime.