Peter O’Neil’s So-Called Disorder

If you’re following this Chuck Berry blog, you will certainly also know Peter O’Neil’s blog “GoHeadOn“ (https://goheadon.blogspot.com). While here we concentrate on the music of Chuck Berry, Peter has written lots of posts about his personal experiences seeing Chuck, about Chuck’s life, about other Berry fans and more.

For some years Peter has promised to publish his long and well-written articles on Chuck Berry as chapters in form of a book. And now Peter indeed published a book, though not the one we expected.

Peter is not only one of the greatest Chuck Berry fans, he also is a successful product liability attorney. And, as he recently found out, Peter is autistic. According to him, his diagnosis at the age of 65 years came as a surprise but concurrently explained a lot in his life.

So Peter decided to look back at his life and tell his readers about where his so-called “disorder” affected him, as seen from today’s perspective. Peter’s book “My So-Called Disorder” (available at amazon) is a kind of memoir, though from a very specific point-of-view. It’s an insider’s view at autism and thus an extremely interesting read for both other people on the autistic spectrum and for people who haven’t been diagnosed as such (yet) – and for those who simply are interested in this topic.

Peter explains how autism hindered him to take part in “normal” social life, even though he managed to get married (twice) and to have children. But on the other hand he explains how his autistic ability to focus on details, to think out-of-the-box, and to notice oddities which others overlook helped him to become a successful lawyer.

Due to partners and co-workers who might not have understood neurodiversity, but who understood that Peter needed a special environment to produce good work, he was able to fight huge companies on their defective products. A large part of this book explains the various trials, e.g. about exploding pick-up trucks and non-breakable scooters. For non-Americans this legalese is sometimes hard to understand – as the US legal system is as a whole.

But forty years of demonstrating complex relations to juries and courts – as well as an autistic ability to explain topics clearly without getting lost in too much context – help the reader to fully understand Peter’s points.

There isn’t much Chuck Berry in this book except for some reports of concerts Peter visited. But besides bird watching and astronomy, the topic of Chuck Berry is clearly shown as one of the “special interests” which people on the autistic spectrum are said to have. However, if trying to know everything about Chuck Berry is a sign of autism, then I know of other “disordered” collectors.

If you are interested to learn more about autism, this book is a very good item to start with. Highly recommended!