Autistics as Researchers, Schizotypes as Theorists

It has been a while since I have last made a post. I apologize for that.

For the past week or so I have been pondering about the roles mental illness/diagnoses plays in terms of academia. It has been noted by quite a few people that there exists a significant minority of autistic people who are researchers and professionals. They tend to be in fields that are related to the hard sciences (although their presence in the liberal arts is not unheard of) and their roles tend to be those of fact-finding. This would make sense because some of the key symptoms of autism include a fixation to parts of a system as well as undisturbed focus in their interests. While their work is very important to the progression of the sciences, they nonetheless seem to lack the imagination and type of thought that is required to create new fields of science; their fixation on axiomatic systems limits their ability to "think outside of the box."

Enter the schizotype, who is in this respect probably the polar opposite of the autistic in terms of academia. Although quite a few schizotypes are highly intelligent, they often cannot finish what they start and as such they would be late in finishing projects and assignments, if they ever finished at all. Unfocused and easily distracted, most schizotypes would be mediocre researchers at best, and entirely dysfunctional at worst. However, their disability does not entirely make them unsuitable for academia, and in fact there may be some parts of it that would help them. Schizotypes generally have a great imagination, and they can come to very profound conclusions through their thinking patterns of loose association. These things would potentially make them very suitable as theorists, and indeed, many great discoveries have been found by those who seemed to have a schizotypal personality. The fact that they can't create facts for themselves would be irrelevant; they could simply cite the results of studies already accomplished by others to support their theories.

Perhaps this is all an over-simplification, but it is nonetheless something to think about.