Uta Frith

Presenter0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young. Thank you for downloading this podcast of Desert Island Discs from BBC Radio 4. For rights reasons the music choices are shorter than in the radio broadcast.

Presenter0:10

For more information about the programme, please visit bbc.co.uk/slash radio four.

Presenter0:33

My castaway this week is the scientist Ute Frith. A developmental psychologist, her groundbreaking work on autism has revolutionized our understanding of the condition, overturning the traditional long-held belief that the root of the problems are social and emotional, discovering instead that autism is the result of physical differences in the brain.

Presenter0:54

She arrived in Britain from Germany in the early sixties for a two week course in English. Half a century later, and groaning under the weight of myriad fellowships and awards, with an honorary DBE to her name, she is one of the Grand Dames of British Science.

Presenter1:10

In retirement she continues to mentor and encourage fellow women scientists, not least in her networking group Science and Shopping, an aim being to yes, think, but also to have some fun.

Presenter1:22

She says her metaphor for the brain is that of a garden that's full of the most interesting different things that have to be cultivated and constantly checked. So, Uttafrith, at the heart of your work then, is this central issue of the difference in how each of us sees the world. Is that right? That's a very nice way of putting it. We learn by taking different perspectives something about ourselves which we otherwise would never have known. So, this is the really amazing thing about studying autism: that you do find that there is a different mind with different strengths, different weaknesses. And that is why your analogy of the garden is so brilliant. It gets right to the heart of it, because, of course, we all have the ability somehow to marshal the land's resources and make something of the world, but that can differ enormously. You said this absolutely beautifully. Take what's given to you and make the best of it. But, of course, the cultivation is key to all of these things. So, culture in our life, learning, learning from other people. These are the really, really important things. You have learned and taught us so much about the brain and how it works over the years. Of course, we're going to touch on that throughout the programme. But I'm wondering at this point, what have you learned about yourself through all of this research and work? I'm still a very great puzzle to myself. And it is often said that people who take on the study of psychology really do it because they want to learn about themselves. And I don't deny that this wasn't a motivation for me as well, but still, to be able to discover something about yourself is made very difficult by all sorts of biases that we have. For example, we really create illusions about ourselves all the time, but it's something that we all do jointly. So, I am learning about myself by talking to other people and finding out perhaps indirectly what they think about me, what they think I said. It's complex.

Presenter3:26

Maybe we'll just scratch the surface of it as I'm talking to you today. And for now, of course, we're going to hear some music. Tell me about the first piece you've chosen out and tell me why, Utofrith, you have chosen this first piece.

Presenter3:38

I would definitely consider this happy music. It is, of course, by Handel, who is another German who lived in this country and loved living in London, as I do. So in some sense, I think he's a sort of hero of mine. But this is music that we really played, my husband and I, forever driving through the lovely landscape north of Vaarhus in Denmark. When we first went there as visiting professors, we got to know and really like this very, very soft and pleasant rural landscape. And this music

Presenter4:18

just was a an accompaniment which and it will always remind me of this.

Speaker 35:02

Uh

Speaker 35:15

Uh

Presenter5:23

The Buray Allegro from Handel's Organ Concerto Opus Seven, No. One in B flat major, performed there by the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra, conducted by Ton Koopman. So, Uttar Frith, how did you come to understand then that autism has its roots in a genetic pattern? It has proved incredibly difficult to find genetic causes, genetic risk factors. And we are, I think, still at the point where we have to look behind all the different kinds of possible genetic risk factors and look behind all the different kinds of behaviours that we can see in autism to see what is there underneath, what's really at the core of it. If it is then genetic or there are significant genetic factors, why is it that parents who are not autistic have children who are? There are two ways of explaining that. There are out of the blue mutations. But we are also working on the assumptions that some of these risk factors are very widely distributed. And we may all have some of this in ourselves. As parents, we have for the last probably about half century been entirely obsessed with the idea that how we parent our children

Uta Frith6:14

Good.

Presenter6:34

has an enormous bearing on the adults they become.

Presenter6:38

It would seem to me that you are saying something that is almost entirely the opposite. I have been trying to debunk this hugely strongly held myth. I know it's very, very unpopular because we love the idea that we could explain everything following from something right early in our lives. I think this is this is not right. It has been so very harmful in making mothers feel guilty. And it's quite an illusion as well to think that just by doing the right thing, which you might get from books or whatever, you could then be responsible for a a wonderful child, which otherwise if you hadn't done these things, it would have all turned into something bad. You are a mother to two now grown up sons, but when you were a young mother, how much did your work and your knowledge through your work play its part in how you brought up your sons?

Presenter7:33

I really regret that I was so worried all the time. I would have liked to do some kind of scientific observations, but it's quite impossible to do that with your own children. But I should say that as my children grew up, they were very willing guinea pigs for any little tests that I wanted to try out, just in the sense of do you like doing this task? Do you get the idea of what I want you to do? And it did help me maybe to think about presenting certain tests in a way that might be right for children. Let's have some more music then, Utafrith. What are we going to hear now? It's your second track of the morning. Tell me about this.

Presenter8:14

This is a song.

Presenter8:16

Incredibly familiar, I'm sure, to everyone who grew up in Germany. It comes from the opera Hensel and Greetel, which was the first opera that my mother took me to, and she was opera mad, I should say, always sang songs from it and telling me and my sister uh stories, not just fairy tales, but actually the kind of plots of operas which I still remember.

Uta Frith8:43

Ein men leinsteed him for the gunsteel hole.

Uta Frith8:49

Beep

Uta Frith8:51

His hut for nauter poor poor eye meant lie.

Uta Frith8:58

Zach twir machtas menlein sein, thas dashtid im dall.

Uta Frith9:08

Meet them poor for otter.

Uta Frith9:25

Thus mainland did he fire the fourth eye.

Uta Frith9:31

Weim undat dauf seinem kop firschwertske lein klein.

Presenter9:40

Ein men lein Stet im Walde from Humperding's opera Hansel and Gretel, performed there by Anneliese Rotenberg, and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Andrei Clitans. So, Uttofrith, you were born towards the end of may nineteen forty one. That's a month before Germany invaded the Soviet Union.

Presenter9:58

You were tiny as this great conflict gripped the world. What are your earliest memories of life? My memories are of a rather idyllic childhood, which sounds perverse in the circumstances. But I was incredibly fortunate to grow up in my grandparents' house in a very little town in a very, very remote area of Germany, where indeed very little was noticed of the war. And in addition, my mother was clearly determined to pretend all the time that everything was normal. And was your father away fighting? Oh, yes, he was. Yes, and did he come back? He did come back when I was, I think, about four years old. And I asked, you know, who is this strange man? Yes. And you said your mother's interest was opera. Your father was an expressionist painter. Yes, so was an artist.

Uta Frith10:50

Yes, so it's not

Presenter10:53

When he came back and life turned slowly to normal again, he became an art teacher and he was indeed a devoted art teacher. He was very, very interested in art education. Do you have pieces of his art still? I have lots. Do you? What do you make of them? What does it tell you, do you think, about him? I think that he was a very complex person. He was really very unconventional. What do they make me think? I'm I find it still quite difficult. And as you were eight, nine, ten and onwards, what did your parents tell you about the war? Did they talk to you about it? I know your father didn't tell you about his direct experience, but did they explain what had happened? Yes, we did talk about it.

Uta Frith11:33

Did they

Presenter11:37

And it was always sort of in a in a state of incomprehension and very often expressing a sense of relief that the nightmare was over. And has it affected your relationship with your country? Well, I certainly think it is a heavy burden to be born German in the twentieth century in many different ways. I've always said, you know, what what would I have done if I had been older? Would I have just been conforming with all these Nazi ideals? And I definitely believe that my mother did not follow it. Apparently I did go to a nursery school for one day, probably at the age of five, and the leader of this kindergarten said Heil Hitler. And apparently I said, what stupid thing is this woman saying?

Presenter12:30

And I have to say, my mother didn't send me back there again. Time for your third piece of music. What are we going to hear?

Presenter12:36

Now, Mozart is definitely one of my favorite composers, and I should say that in my father's family.

Presenter12:45

There was in the eighteenth century a Fraulein Aurenhammer who was a pupil of Mozart's, and he says that she played like an angel, but she looked very ugly, which is very funny to me. And she was also apparently a composer. Now that's a great rarity that a woman could be a composer. So I imagine that there are sonatas by Mozart and and perhaps concertos as well where he and she played together. So this is why I choose this particular sonata.

Presenter14:21

Mozart Sonata for Four Hands in B flat major, performed there by Christoph Eschenbach and Eustace, France. So, Utafrith, you were a clever girl. You were in the fast stream at school, but you felt it now I'm quoting directly here, and I love this quote. It wasn't enough, and I wanted something better. You wanted to get out of the girls' school and into the boys' school, is that right? That's right. And it was so nice that my parents completely supported me in this. I mean, it was a very strange thing to want to do. I just loved the idea that I would learn Latin and Greek. So you went to the boys' school? How did you get on?

Uta Frith14:53

How did you get off school?

Presenter14:55

I felt

Presenter14:56

I had to be the best. It was the only way to live in this school.

Presenter15:02

Not sure that I really succeeded, not in all subjects, but it was a great challenge because the boys didn't really like the competition and they really let me know that I was not a very popular kind of person, but an intelligent person. Right, so you were judged as being unfeminine and too intellectual because you were a girl and girls shouldn't care about that. Yes, and it did worry me. And I did think, you know, should should I really

Uta Frith15:22

Because you

Presenter15:29

Give this up, but I couldn't. I just decided, okay, so I'll be intellectual and a blue stocking, and that's it. You were studying then history of art at university, and you literally did sort of stumble into psychology. Yes, you ended up in lectures. Totally unexpected. I was determined that I would just chop around and go to as many lectures in as many subjects as I could possibly be. But actually, in psychology, there was a structured course, so I fell into this. And it turned out that I liked it because, you know, you really did classes, you did experiments, you learned about stats. And I really took to that because that seemed to me much more exciting, much more interesting than only looking at books, in a sense. And was it quite a pioneering time in that area of science? To me, it felt very exciting.

Speaker 315:41

Yes, you ended up in lectures.

Presenter16:21

Psychoanalysis had a very, very big hold, and it was the idea that you have very different psychiatric disorders and you could.

Presenter16:30

Cure them perhaps just by going, unraveling everything and by talking to people. But it seemed actually not to work. So it was the sort of overturning of the Freudian consensus. The start of the overturning and saying perhaps we should do something completely different. I was very excited about that. Just the idea that you don't have to just fall in with these big stories, but you could.

Uta Frith16:39

The Freudian consensus.

Uta Frith16:41

The only

Presenter16:53

Look at it in a different way. Time for music. Let's have some more. What are we going to hear? Ah, this has to do with moments in my life that I wish I could say keep forever. And I associate it very, very strongly with Schubert's Stenquartet because this was the LP that my husband bought for me when our first son, Martin, was born.

Presenter17:17

I came back from hospital. This particular music was playing in a wonderful way, and there was this little baby wrapped up and miraculously quiet for about twenty minutes or so.

Presenter18:25

That was an extract from Schubert's String Quartet No. thirteen in A minor, performed there by the Rosa Munde Quartet. So, Udafrith, you went to London. It was the swinging sixties, and you were in your swinging twenties. Did you did you enjoy everything that London had to offer?

Presenter18:40

I was so excited to be in London. It really was the big white world. Coming from the deepest province, as I did, this was going into a new world. Very adventurous when I'm looking back, because really I couldn't speak English and I really had to learn it. But I found everything wonderful. It was also the time when I met my husband, of course. And you came to London to learn English because all of the books that you were studying were in English. And if you wanted to get further with your subject, then you had to get better at your English. That's exactly right, because in psychology they used an American textbook, and it was absolutely the only way to follow it was to learn English.

Uta Frith19:04

Yeah.

Uta Frith19:08

We're in English.

Uta Frith19:11

And that

Presenter19:20

And how did you meet your husband? Where was he?

Presenter19:22

He was a student taking a course in what was called abnormal psychology then. It would now be called clinical psychology. I went there kind of as an intern, and this was during the summer holidays, and at the end of it, somebody dropped out of the newly started course.

Presenter19:42

And I ask, I had the cheek to ask whether I could possibly.

Presenter19:47

Take that place.

Presenter19:49

And so when you you met your husband, it wasn't just the beginning of the great uh love of your life, it was also the beginning of a great collaboration. We certainly found that we had

Presenter19:58

So many common interests, and this wasn't just work, it was also music and art and all sorts of events. It was really an incredibly nice meeting of minds. We didn't always collaborate. We talked about each other's work, and it's really only in the last twenty years or so that we really collaborated because we found we liked it very much. Has it ever been competitive professionally? Never.

Presenter20:28

We just don't don't have that. I think my husband now calls it the we mode. So any anything good that happens to one of us, it's it's actually us. It's the we mode. I want to ask you about your father and your husband's father, because they both fought in Italy in the Second World War. Yes, remarkably. I mean I found that opposite sides.

Uta Frith20:45

Yeah.

Uta Frith20:47

Obviously on opposite sides.

Presenter20:50

It really was an extraordinary experience, I think also for my parents. And when they met, when they met, how they got on incredibly well with each other. They both completely hated what happened in the war, and they were so grateful and so relieved that this was a different life and that their children could actually get married and their families could be friends.

Uta Frith20:55

When they met on in

Presenter21:12

Let's have some more music. Utafrith, what is next? Ah, next is a song from the Threpani Opera, something that I heard for the first time in London, in fact with my husband, and it was very nice because he was so interested in Brecht and Weil, and we both learned about this together.

Speaker 221:33

John Valerund, Jim Balabai, and Georges says and kept forthen. Doftier Mesi fra kine barasai. Untwashit, he loves nothing more than the mother.

Speaker 221:42

Soybat and Moland of Lincoln Monand.

Speaker 221:47

Hump up his drunken ha

Speaker 222:11

Johnny Varde Viski to Marm, Monchemi Hatenigeneken. Ah, but George in a bide of my marm.

Speaker 222:21

Why not enroll them?

Speaker 222:23

Oh, think and moment.

Speaker 222:25

Funker is couched in.

Presenter22:29

That was the Cannon song from the Thrapenny Opera by Bertolt Grecht and Kurt Weil, sung there by Max Raba and Hannes Hellmann. This sort of empiricism and the studies that your work has been based on is so crucial and so important. But what about the human side? You know, families who are distressed and ground down and worried and disappointed because everything that they hoped for in their child seems to be at best locked away or at worst not to exist at all. I must say I have learned so much from parents of children with autism and also from parents of children with dyslexia. To me they are the great heroes actually because they know how change might occur and they they can reappraise progress in completely different terms. In many cases I would say oh what a terrible fate it must have been for this particular family and I would hear back, no, it isn't so terrible. Do you accept the premise that people who are profoundly suffering as a result of their dyslexia that in the end they can through progressive teaching methods learn what we know, the people who read easily we can never really learn to see the world the way they see it, which can mostly be far more interesting. So true, that is so true. We should appreciate their different take.

Uta Frith23:43

Could be far more interesting.

Presenter23:49

What does the world look like to somebody who is colour blind? What does the world look like to somebody who has sort of supercolour sensitivity? What is it like when you really find speech very difficult? Well, there are so many other ways, of course, of communicating.

Presenter24:08

Have you had and and this may be an unfair question to ask a scientist but have you had an end game in mind throughout your studies? It has been one of the big surprises that fifty years after I've started to do research in autism almost fifty years I'm still as mystified as I was then, but also still as captivated. This topic has been so rich and so difficult and so deeply interesting that I have the same fascination even now. And I do not think we know the answers and I do not think we will get the answers very soon either. I think it will take a very, very long time until probably we have an idea actually how the mind works, how the brain works. Time for some more music then. We are on your sixth choice of the morning. Tell me about this choice, Rotiphoris. What is this? I have always been very moved, I think, by the sound of bells. And this particular piece by Jonathan Harvey is called Mortus Plango Vivus Vocus. So I mourn the dead and I call the living. So it does put me in mind of the dead and of death. And it has something about it that reminds you just a little bit that here you are, tiny speck against what's sometimes been called the the backdrop of eternity.

Speaker 326:07

So

Speaker 326:10

I just know.

Presenter26:32

That was Jonathan Harvey's Mortuus Plango Vivus Voco. So, Zufrith, you're a mother of two, as we know, now grown up, sons. There is a very high rate of drop out in medicine among women who have done all that training, put in all that hard labour, if you like, at the front line, and then find it very, very difficult to continue a demanding career in medicine with bringing up children. How did you manage to keep that top-flight work going while you were also being a mother? I was determined that I would have a full-time nanny, straight from the word go. And I said just like I used to be the intellectual blue stocking, which was not very popular, so I think I was the kind of very unpopular career mother. It is possible to juggle these very different demands. Are you impervious to the judgment of others? Do you not care if people think that what you're doing is wrong? I do, of course. Just like everybody else, it does matter to me a great deal. But you can't just always forget about your own views if you think

Uta Frith27:22

We'll think that

Uta Frith27:23

Yeah.

Presenter27:35

That they are right. Let's have some more music. Utte Frith, what are we going to hear now? We're on your penultimate choice of the morning. What is this? This is Fred Frith, my brother-in-law. He is an avant-garde guitarist and a composer. He started in the 60s. The album I choose is actually from a later period, but there is a piece there which to me

Uta Frith27:40

Oh, and I

Presenter28:00

Really is very reminiscent of the sixties.

Speaker 328:11

The weather is changing before our eyes.

Speaker 328:15

Why, why?

Speaker 328:18

Beware of the wise, beware of the wise. Lies, lies, lies.

Speaker 328:26

They've got shoes that will fit any size. Why, why, why?

Presenter28:33

That was Fred Frith, your brother-in-law, Uta. He was saying there, Sunclouds Don't Have a Silver Lining. So you are, as I understand it, officially retired now, Uta, from six decades of studying. Is it hard to put down? It's not a question of putting down the work. It's actually continuing without a lot of obligations and duties. So it's a great freedom. And of course I'm still reading everything that I can that appears as new research. And I'm continuing to write. Are you constantly contacted by people in your field of research saying I really need to talk to you about this?

Presenter29:10

Mm-hmm.

Presenter29:11

No, not really. So often I am asked to give lectures and talks and seminars, and I resist this because I think you shouldn't always listen to the old people. You should have new young people having new ideas, or even try the old ideas again with a fresh way and a fresh mind. I want to say.

Uta Frith29:12

Really?

Speaker 329:12

Uh

Uta Frith29:12

Oh.

Presenter29:31

Have your own ideas. Tell me more about this science and shopping network, a group for women. It's my completely personal way of trying to say what would be actually helpful to those women who have scientific careers, who have families, who are under such stress, who are under such pressure all the time, constantly question. And I thought the thing is to have fun and to have something completely informal that acts as an old girls' network. So we can gossip, we can talk about anything we like. And I just like the idea that we should also talk about shopping and things that are just great fun for us. I said in the introduction much earlier that you've you've received so many awards and doctorates, a huge amount of recognition for your work. For you personally, what has been the thing that has mattered?

Presenter30:23

Becoming a dame, quite nice. Well, becoming a dame, an honorary dame was something completely, utterly, totally beyond my horizon, so I have still not got my mind round that. I think it is just the most wonderful thing that the country that I adopted so long ago has now adopted me.

Uta Frith30:29

Because you're German, yes.

Presenter30:46

I can't ever imagine you being that happy on a desert island. I can't imagine that you would really settle down to doing nothing. I'd like to use that iPhone, wouldn't I, to talk to you?

Uta Frith30:54

I will try out your house.

Uta Frith30:56

Yeah.

Speaker 330:56

Yeah.

Uta Frith30:56

You'll be

Speaker 330:57

Uh

Uta Frith30:57

Yeah.

Presenter30:58

We'll come to your luxury in a moment, but for now let's make do with your final piece of music. Tell me what we're going to hear.

Presenter31:05

Now we are going to hear a waltz from the Stauss's marvellous opera, Rosenkavalier, and this waltz in particular is the the introduction and the background to a scene which reminds me very much of the work that I am particularly interested in.

Presenter31:24

So here

Presenter31:26

you have the character of a very sort of comic, lecturous kind of count who is trying to seduce an innocent young girl. Except it's not an innocent young girl, it's actually a young man.

Presenter31:41

And actually, this young man is portrayed by a woman, and we as the listeners find incredibly amusing. But it turns out that it's the kind of thing that's like a super stimulus for our social brain, because we can see that there are different desires, different wishes, different beliefs in people, and they can play against each other even in these complex layers, and we can still understand it. And we would never have known about this ability if it weren't for autism, because this is the very thing, this ease of attributing mental states that autistic people can't do.

Presenter33:03

That was the waltz from the third act of Strauss' der Rosen Cavalier performed there by the Bavarian State Orchestra conducted by Josef Kahlberg.

Presenter33:11

So it comes to the moment then, Utto, where I have to give you the things. I'm going to start by giving you the books. You get the complete works of Shakespeare and the Bible, and you can take a book of your own. What would you like to take? Well, I would like to take a book of ours, and in fact from the John Zone Museum.

Presenter33:28

Why, I've been able to handle these books, so they are lovely devotional calendars.

Presenter33:35

Handwritten, medieval manuscripts, illuminated in the most wonderful way. And I would love to have such a book to contemplate what the pictures mean, why there are so many wonderful naturalistic ornaments round in the margins, what the texts mean, how people who weren't actually literate read these books. Right. That priceless treasure then will be yours to take to the island and a luxury too. What's your luxury going to be? Not an iPhone? I'm extremely torn.

Uta Frith34:02

Not an iPhone.

Presenter34:05

Because I do want to take aspirin.

Presenter34:09

I think this is a really important and useful thing. And it's also symbolic of science and its huge benefits to mankind. I think it might be too useful. It might be too. It's almost too useful. So the thing that I would really be very happy with is my doll's house.

Uta Frith34:19

It might be too practical.

Presenter34:27

And I could imagine playing with this quite for a long time. I could imagine that it would also enable me to trace a long line in a history, because some of the objects in my dolls' house are from my great-grandmother, for my grandmother, for my mother, for myself in childhood. And the doll's house was actually made for me in secret by my husband and my sons when they were about nine and six years old. It is yours to take to the island. And one track to save. Which one, if they were? It would have to be a Schubert's Rosamunde.

Uta Frith34:58

I see threatened to

Uta Frith35:00

I think

Presenter35:03

Quartet. It's yours, Udafrid. Thank you very much for letting us hear your desert island discs. Thank you, Kasti. It was so interesting and I really loved your questions.

Presenter35:20

You've been listening to a download from the BBC.

Presenter35:23

You'll find more information on the Radio 4 website: bbc.co.uk/slash radio4.