More About Hateya

I have just finished reading a book called “Blink” by Malcolm Gladwell, a writer for The New Yorker. It’s a very simple, easily read study about our extraordinary mental faculty of “thin slicing” or “–filtering the very few factors that matter from an overwhelming number of variables.”

Before I get complicated here, what I am planning on doing is making an observation about Hateya. This observation refers to the psychological detriment inherent in autism

Gladwell describes the phenomenon of human autism as, in part, a

“difficulty interpreting nonverbal cues, such as gestures and facial expressions, or putting themselves inside someone else’s head or drawing understanding from anything but the literal meaning of words.”

A person with autism, for example, cannot tell which one of three paintings another person is pointing at, because to do so, they would have to understand the intention behind the gesture; in other words, the simple mind- reading faculty is not there.

This detriment has to do with an area of the brain that is non- functional in autistic people. One that can distinguish between thousands of faces over a lifetime and recognize one out of a crowd or over a space of a generation as belonging to an individual. Instead, autistic people must rely on a much less sophisticated area of the brain that identifies objects such as chairs or suitcases, to do work that cannot match the accuracy and sensitivity of the more sophisticated part.

My guess is that Hateya is somehow similarly affected. I remember attending Fieldston Summer Camp with a boy named George, who was autistic. He would push your head under water or hit you, showing no emotion at all. He wasn’t expressing anger or meanness. One never knew if it was going to happen or not. But apparently, our heads were simply objects to him, to be dunked under water, our bodies objects to be punched or palpated in his rude way. Hateya behaves in the same manner.

The only direction his ears move is forward or back. They never offer any other expression besides “what’s that in front of me?” “what’s that behind me?” or “I don’t like this!” He views a crowd of horses with apparent curiosity, but if they come close he explodes with claustrophobic terror. He does not mind running with them, but only when that type of motion is fast and forward, as it is during a race. When you come to his stall, his ears flick forward with alarm, then down and back in a defensive display. Rather than seeming curious at any point in the interaction, he seems at once anxious that he doesn’t understand if you threaten or greet him. He can’t make sense of the socially grounded gestures humans offer, as other horses seem to.

He will take a mint, however. Not like a gentleman, but with a vacuous stare in his eyes.

When he drops me, it’s not as if he’s being mean, in fact, it almost seems as if he has no idea of his intention before it happens. I think when he gets suddenly frightened, he simply tries to unload the dead weight and get the heck out of wherever he is.

For what it’s worth, I conclude that Hateya is autistic, or at least something like the equine equivalent thereof. Not the first (nor, probably, the last) that I have ever had the dubious pleasure of working with.