I'm currently reading a book anbout what my dictionary translates into the English language as "intellectual giftedness", but which has a groader scope and tone in the original German-language word: "Hochbegabung". I'll translate this roughly as "high(est) ability", whereas "ability" refers not only to the IQ of a person, but also to social ability, artistic ability, mathematics ability, musical ability and so an. It's a bit difficult to bring that into the English language for me.
The far most interesting part of that book is the new theory of the author. She (her name is Andrea Brackmann) is a psychologist, and her book/books (because there are 2 of her) are the essence of her work with, as she says, about 800 persons of this type.
Her theory is - and she is actually able to hint at books which also write this, although only as a minor occurrence, which is mostly and largely ignored, usually - that people with what my disctionary translates as "intellectual giftedness" are ALSO very much sensitive, but not necessarily vice versa.
This ties nicely into the phenomenon of "high sensitivity" as of the definition by Elaine Aron.
This means in fact that - according to her theory, ALL people with this "intellectual giftedness" are in fact HSPs, but not necessarily vice versa (strange, isn't it ?).
But the best part still comes: She developes the theory that people with Autism are an even more EXTREME form of this ! Of both intellectual giftedness AND of high sensitivity !
The "locking up" of these people from the "outer world" is interpreted by her as a protection function. This is their only way to protect themselves from too much "sensorical input", as I call this. Highly sensitive people have this, but people with autism - according to her theory - even much more !
Which means that they are easily and too fast "overloaded" by their sensorical input.
The background of this theory is, that people with "intellectual giftedness" also seem to have much more "sensorical input" than normal people - and that their nerves system / nervous system ? is able to process much more things and much faster than normal people. Which enables them to reach highs in that areas of abilities I tried to describe above.
And Autists, she writes, are an even more extreme form of that.
This book is highly interesting, but in fact it is also a book about her work as a psychologist - and that means that there are people out there which have developed "distortions" and even illnesses because they couldn't cope with their "intellectual giftedness", often caused by the sheer feeling of being underchallenged. These people often develop to be "nderachievers".
The English-language Wikipedia article is a good source for this topic.
The book I'm reading isn't translated, by the way.