I find the idea that a mental "disorder" is responsible for modernism both short-sighted and offensive. Let's assume that the author is correct and that Le Corbusier did, in fact, see the world through the lens of autism, or that Gropius and van der Rohe were traumatized by the war. So what? Have no other architects in history been autistic? Have none other experienced war? Can we say that Imhotep or Bruneleschi saw the world in a neurotypical way? Or that Christopher Wren was untroubled by the trauma of the wars and assassinations that surrounded him? The authors devote some time to how those suffering trauma or seeing the world autistically see things differently, but very little to how modernism is materially and measurably different from earlier styles. We all know that it is stylistically different, but the basic rules of engineering and many artistic conventions still pertain. The loads must still be borne. Windows still admit light in comparable (or even greater) quantity to earlier styles. They seem to take the differences for granted, but why should we believe they go any deeper than a combination of fashion and materials science would take them? And they don't appear to study architects from eras previous to the Modern. Why should we assume that trauma and mental variation are special and unique to the modern era?
I'm not a particular expert in architecture, but assuming that architecture parallels other related studies, like music or mathematics, then I would very much guess that atypical thinking is not, among architects, unusual. I'd bet it's the norm. In all eras past, present, and likely future. It's not really a revelation that individuals dealing with autism are often drawn to studies that can be undertaken in some degree of solitude, like mathematics, architecture, and music. The author mentions simple repetitive patterns and fixations. Beethoven's late symphonies are driven by short repetitive patterns we call a motto or a motif. Berlioz wrote his own self-diagnosis into his music and called it an "ide fixe." The very art of counterpoint is replete with rules and conventions on how to treat repetition: sequence, inversion, retrograde, transposition, expansion, and diminution. Music theorists have attempted to make the study of such things more and more mathematical since the Middle Ages. (As long as there has been a theory of music, in fact. The earliest surviving music theory of which I'm aware, that of Ancient Greece, was concerned with measuring and describing the modes and determining why they created the sympathies that they did in the human soul.) Music . . . and architecture . . . are arguably driven by the treatment of the repetition that is endemic in their respective arts. Delving into the psychology of great composers, their eccentricity is legend. And it has been recorded in detail as far back as such records exist. Gesualdo's trial, in association with the paranoid murder of his wife is one of the more debated episodes of the Rennaisance. Late in his life Beethoven was so apoplectic about the peculiar (filthy) state of his apartment that his Viennese landlord couldn't keep a maid. Schuman was famously committed to the sanitarium by his wife and his protoge. Tchaikovsky wrote volumes on his own self doubt. Rachmaninov was an early patient of psychotherapy, which helped him overcome an episode of psychological paralysis following the disastrous premiere of his first symphony. And I won't even attempt to discuss the moderns. Suffice it to say that diagnosis of mental illness are nearly as common as those of physical illness. And twice as popular. Yes. We are quite often mentally ill. And I take ill at any who would attempt to either stigmatize this or deprive us of this small refuge, which has probably ALWAYS been a refuge.
I see nothing here but the justifications of someone that doesn't relate to modernism and wishes to find a logical reason for it. The whole thing reads like an enormous post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy. After this it was different, thus this must be the cause. I fail to see any reason to think this cause is even unique to Modernism; that it was, in fact, different. I'd really be quite surprised if that were the case. Humans have been traumatizing one another since our inception. And ever since there were two of us there has always been some degree of variation in how we relate to the world. The real answer is almost certainly both simpler, deeper, and less interesting. Style changes irregularly, but somewhat cyclically. Technology changes irregularly, but essentially teleologically. Modernism is almost certainly a product of the interaction of these two things. It is a node at a growing reaction to ornamentation and the expansion of new industrial materials and building techniques. And the fact that certain of its early adherents saw the world differently for one reason or another is entirely predictable. And likely true of every major style.
