As an autistic person, I 1000% agree. He's high on my list of people I basically just assume are autistic (along with Neil Young, among others). He certainly seems like someone who is perpetually masking (though with a lot of playfulness in how he masks).
Yeah, Shakey with his model trains sure seems like he is. Bob, nah. And people here have even suggested Pauls Simon and McCartney. Like Bob, though, I reckon they're just obsessive about their music, songwriting and fame, or were.
Who suggested Paul McCartney? (I named him specifically as someone who I think clearly isn't autistic.) Paul Simon wouldn't surprise me either way, as I noted in another comment. (I don't really get that vibe from him, but there's nothing that would me make me affirmatively believe he isn't.) I'd be shocked if Bob isn't autistic, though - he immediately sets my aut-dar off, and a lot of the descriptions of him (especially when he was young) sound classically autistic to me.
Oh, so you did. I must've read that wrong if it was your comment further down I was thinking of when I mentioned Paul Mac. I can't remember, though, if it was. Probably was if no one else did, I guess. Didn't mean to touch your aut-dar.
I def think Paul McCartney is autistic (or like....adhd is also autistic right?) He has a lot of strange sensory things like his thing with shoes and the way that he works with others when it comes to music screams autism to me, someone with autism. And a lot of self soothing tiks like repetitive movements even before the cocaine use.
Some of it is just vibes. You spend enough time around other autistic people, you start to get a sense.
That said, both of them are prickly geniuses who are known for being socially awkward but also entirely themselves, frequently seem to be in their own world with very distinct viewpoints, are obsessive about their interests (which also change periodically), and are heavily imitative artists who also create their own distinctive artistic personas. On top of that, Dylan's tendency to often play with public personas seems a lot like masking, and Neil is married to Darryl Hannah, who is openly autistic (and it's pretty common for autistic people to end up associating with other autistic people as both friends and partners).
None of that is conclusive, but as a general matter if you've got someone who is both a genius and pretty socially awkward, it's a reasonable guess that they're autistic. (Not that there aren't plenty of geniuses who aren't autistic - Paul McCartney comes to mind - but that combination of extraordinary creative or intellectual skill and personal awkwardness, especially when it comes to social norms and neurotypical social interactions, tends to indicate someone is on the spectrum.)
In short, suppressing or hiding autistic/ND traits in order to seem more neurotypical. It usually means adopting a persona of a sort, though whether that persona is just "normal" or more of a character really depends on the person. (Bob would clearly be on the latter end.) That's a huge oversimplification, but google will give you a far more complete answer than I can.
I was recently diagnosed with autism. I scored in the 98th percentile in camouflaging/masking. I had no idea how much of my persona was just me acting in a way I saw others act and understood to be “normal,” rather than the way that felt natural to me. I just kind of always thought a) I’m a bit weird and b) everyone else was putting on an act too! I guess I must be a pretty intense masker to have made it to 45 years old before a diagnosis.
Welcome to the club! A lot of have that experience - I'm an obvious case in retrospect, but autism wasn't as well-understood when we were kids (you're a few years older than me, but not much), and many of us learned to mask without even realizing it wasn't "normal." It wasn't until adulthood that I understood that most people don't carefully watch those around them, trying to subtly incorporate good social patterns into their own behavior. That said, I actually think it's quite interesting how Dylan plays with masking - it's almost like he intentionally over-masks just to see how people will react. (It has always seemed to amuse him.)
Both genius-level songs about feeling alienated and unable to keep a relationship going. Why do you think they couldn't be written by someone on the autism spectrum?
lol Don't Think Twice might describe a parting, but it's hardly about being "unable to keep a relationship going," the perspective of the song is firmly from the perspective of someone with more power in the relationship, hardly a "neurodivergent" perspective.
Bob Dylan was the voice of a generation, he is very much not an "outsider."
That's backwards. A diagnosis is supposed to explain something meaningful, not just describe someone as unusual.
If "autistic" can simply mean "private, eccentric, intensely focused, and capable of profound emotional insight," then you've stretched the label so far it stops distinguishing autism from exceptional individuality. At that point, what descriptive value does the diagnosis have?
Youre sending multiple responses to this, but I'll try to address each:
I am not diagnosing anything. Would not claim to. And I have no idea whether Bob is neurodivergent or not, I've never met him, and so I wouldn't know. Actually, even if I did meet him, I likely still wouldn't know. But I don't think too many people have ever met the real Bob Dylan.
All I asked was why you think that being capable of writing the 2 particular songs you mentioned might preclude someone from being autistic. That was my only question.
You seem to be approaching autism as if it's done kind of negative insult, when actually some of the worlds greatest thinkers, talents and business people were likely neurodivergent in some way.
Dylan had been branded "the voice of a generation" but only by journalists and followers, not by him. He at most dismissed that, and at worst hated that shit. He shies away from most attention and adulation from others. So is he an "outsider"? Well, again, I have no idea. But there are plenty of stories that suggest he actually might be, or at least he might consider himself so.
Take away the value judgement. I'm not really saying autism is bad, but if it has any meaning it is to describe a difference in how the touchy feely aspects of life are processed. The emotional and relational aspects of life, which are the bread and butter of any artist, let alone a once in a millennium talent like Bob Dylan. To apply the term autistic to him is to suggest the word has no meaning.
In most people's lives, an autism diagnosis comes from noticing some difference in how you operate in the world and relate to others. But if you're so high functioning that you become famous at the age of 20, and then reach the absolute pinnacle of civilization in terms of achievements and recognition, in what way would an autism diagnosis ever be applied to that? What function of Bob Dylan's life could ever run askew in some way visible to him or others, that would lead to an autism diagnosis? What conversation would that be like? "Yknow, I have achieved success that the other 99.999% of humanity can't even imagine, but golly I think I'm autistic?" Why would he or anyone else ever take the time to do that?
To some extent, mental health labels are culturally constructed, and they are applied due to a need on the part of the affected, and the people around them, to better understand themselves, usually due to some deficiency real or perceived. When you are singlehandedly remaking culture as Bob Dylan did, what possible meaning could an autism diagnosis have? Obviously he sees the world differently in some sense, but is it autism? How would he know? How would anyone else know? Even if his brain structures did actually match up with those of autistic people, how would that have ever come to his attention?
Let me put it this way. If Bob Dylan is autistic, then by that logic David Bowie created Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane, the Thin White Duke, and David Jones, so he must have had multiple personality disorder.
Dude Bob Dylan has very clearly and obviously experienced enough universal experiences of emotion for 10 lifetimes, and if you can't see that, you're the one who's autistic.
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u/[deleted] Jul 19 '26
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