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codename-mom · 7 days

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Is Hotch autistic?

Well, if you take into account the official material, the answer is: no. Or, at least, he’s never shown like that, and it’s never mentioned that he could be.

Now, if the question is: do I think Hotch is autistic? The answer is: yes.

Why do I think that?

First of all, I want to precise that my knowledges in that domain are limited, so there will be inconsistencies and imprecisions in the text below. I’m sorry if I hurt some of you doing so, it wasn’t the purpose of it (feel free to correct me, with manners please). And, on the other hand, it’s a very personal point of view. As so, this post is in no way canon.

TW: mention of child/domestic abuse, anxiety, CM violence

The first two aspects of his personality which might fit with the autistic Hotch hypothesis, and which are pretty obvious are:

His lack of expressiveness

Hotch is able to smile, we saw it in a few episodes, to laugh, to cry and even to be very angry (do I need to specify which episode I’m referring to?); so he feels emotions like anyone else, but his ability to express them is far below how JJ, Derek, Dave or Emily does. Most of the time, the character appears stoic, eyebrows furrowed, straight mouth, no matter what’s going on around or other protagonist reaction.

Yet, we know that he has empathy (he’s moved when Foyet killed seven innocents people in the bus, he’s about to fall in tears with that burnt woman (S02E19) and he cried when he accompany that man who has to watch his son’s death (S07E10)), we know that he’s careful about his men (he reassured Penelope after he was harsh with her, he took Spencer in his arms after they freed him from Tobias Hankel, he worried (a lot) about Emily when she was with Cyrus, etc.) and we know that he’s sensitive to what people say or don’t say to him (he returned Derek’s words about his defaults (S03E02) and he’s hurt when he realizes that JJ hide her pregnancy to him) BUT he doesn’t show it.

We can argue that he was trained for that purpose, but it’s supposed to apply when he is with witnesses, victims, or suspects; not when he’s with his men or his relatives. And he’s not especially expressive with Jack, for example.

(Look how happy he is! /o/)

He is, however, more with Haley and Beth, but not that much.

What are the reasons for this difficulty in expressing emotions?

If, like we can suspect it by listening to his dialogue with Vincent (S01E08), his father was violent (to him, to his mother or both), he could have learnt to hide his emotions to survive. Now a grown-up, he doesn’t know how to express them the right way.

Or he is shy/introvert. I already talked about that in a previous post, but Aaron is a shy guy, who pull himself away, who avoid spotlights and who don’t want to disturb people around with his problems. Laughing out loud, ranting loudly or shouting out of rage, it’s not his temper (for the last point, we can flatten it because we know that he’s able to yell to be the bad cop (S04E13), because something touched him personally (the husband who beat his wife in Alaska) or because we’re stepping on his toes (he’s mad at Jordan because she defied his authority in front of everyone and she lied to witnesses to obtain information, two things he doesn’t like at all)).

Or he doesn’t simply know how to express them. He’s not able to identify them clearly, so he adopts a neutral expression, which cracks when he’s feeling the strongest emotions (joy, sadness, or anger). And that is closed to autistic’s features.

He stares at people

It’s impossible to not note that point. Spencer himself said at the beginning of season 5 that he had never seen Hotch blink since his arrival at the BAU.

Neurotypical people don’t do that. During a conversation, gaze moves all the time: it could stay put for a moment, but it’ll move when the person will try to remember something, think to what they’re going to say, watch at something around or be attracted by a movement somewhere near. It’s not what Hotch do: he stares continuously at the person who he’s talking to or who’s talking to him. He looks away when he estimates that the conversation is over. And no matter the status of the one in front of him.

And autists are known for having trouble with how they’re supposed to place their gaze during a conversation: they can stare at everything else but the people in front of them (that’s what Spencer do), or they do like Hotch. In an episode of L&O: CI, Goren and Eames faced an autistic suspect who has learnt to not stare at people after a certain amount of time. Well, it’s not a reliable source (far from it), but we find again the fact that autists can stare intensely at people.

And, as a shy person, I can assure you that we don’t do such thing (on a contrary, we’d rather look away to not be perceived as intrusive or aggressive).

Now, let’s talk about his less obvious features that can attest his neuro-divergency.

Proprioception issues

What proprioception is first? To make the thing simple, it’s all the nervous messages continuously sent by every part of our body to our brain and which it uses then to manage our moves and actions. To give you an example: thanks to our proprioception we are able to know that we’re falling and then our brain can order us to rise our arms or to move our foot so we won’t be hurt much, or we will stay standing up. It’s also thanks to our proprioception that we know that we’re hungry, thirsty, cold, hot, sleepy, or hurt.

Autistic people have trouble with their proprioception because they don’t recognize their internal sensations: they can be hurt and don’t notice or suffer from sunstroke without being conscious of it.

And we can see many times Hotch being hurt and still continues to act like everything is fine. In New York, despite is ripped eardrum and his many wounds, he runs everywhere like a young puppy (adrenaline can do the trick however). When he stops that unsub provoking a car crash, he’s stunned but still ready to chase him (S04E23). When his ear bleeds again, still in New York, he doesn’t pay attention (but, again, adrenaline can have anesthetic effects).

We can counterargue underlying that he may pretends to not worry his men (because he’s shy, remember), but in Route 66 episode, he suffers from internal bleeding without him to notice anything. He realizes that he’s not okay a few seconds before he passes out (so hours after the beginning of the problem). And that, it can’t be allocate to his will to not disturb people around (the “excuse me” can be, cf. my previous post).

We can also add that, very often, we see all the other characters drinking coffee and eating, when he doesn’t. He does when everyone is around a table at the end of a mission (Las Vegas, in that Mexican restaurant, etc.), but it could be led by a group effect: he’s not specifically hungry, he just follows his subordinates.

And we can’t count the number of time where he’s awake late at night. In fact, the simple fact that he’s at Quantico very early in the morning and very late at night induces that he doesn’t sleep much. JJ and Emily both have remarks about it: first one saying that he stays as much as she does (S03E09) and the second one asking when he slept.

All that can be signs of his autism.

Hyper-fixation

Hyper-fixation is not only to be interested by a subject to the point to collect everything about it and to do deep research about it. Any music band, movie or TV shows fan could fit in that box. No, hyper-fixation designates the fact that the person who suffers from it deep dives so much into their task that they forget to answer their most basic needs of their body, like eating, drinking, going to restrooms, cleaning themselves, or sleeping. It’s not harmless, far from it.

And Hotch is a master to stay late at night without sleeping (I won’t do the list of every episode where he’s the only one left on the sixth floor or where he’s working in his bedroom when all the other sleep). And to think that he also forgets to eat and to drink, there’s only one step to do.

We can put that on the fact that he’s not especially motivated to go back to his place after his divorce, but he was already doing it when he was married (to Haley’s dismay) and he’s still doing it when his son is waiting for him (and it’s very kind of his ex-sister-in-law to take care of him in his place).

And for his hotel insomnia, we can suggest that his (extreme) professional conscience pushes him to continue to work far after the usual schedule. But the others are not less conscientious, and they sleep.

So, it’s possible that in addition to the fact that he doesn’t feel his body calls, he can also lose notion of time and space regularly. And that fits with the autistic Hotch hypothesis.

Change issues

Autists can have difficulties to apprehend and handle changes in their daily routine. We can see it with Spencer who is very disturbed by Gideon and Blake’s departure, who are two people with who he had a strong connection.

And we can see it also with Hotch who shows difficulties to adapt to changes. First, he’s always wearing the same outfit, even when it’s not necessary (we see it with the others: suit and tie are not mandatory), which means that he’s following a daily routine.

Then, when JJ has to leave the first time, he expresses his discomfort multiple times: he doesn’t appreciate the news of her pregnancy first (S03E20), he underlines that they’re going to be lost without her (S04E06?) and, most of all, he struggles a lot to accept Jordan Todd’s presence in his team. Some will say that it’s because he’s sexist and racist, but it’s forgotten that JJ is a woman, that Derek is a POC and that, later, he’ll hire Tara willingly.

We don’t have many elements on the way he adapts to Jack’s presence in his daily life after Haley’s death (we only know that Jessica takes care of him most of the time, but he taught him to read and he and JJ clearly help themselves to drive their children to school), so it’s difficult to dig more in this feature. Moreover, that this aspect is reduced, then muted in the following seasons.

No social life

Unlike all the other members of his team who interact with people who are not federal agents (JJ and Spencer with their mother, Derek with his mother, his sisters and his aunt, Emily and her childhood friends, Penelope and her brothers, and Dave with his ex-wives, his daughter, his grandson and a certain amount of acquaintances), Hotch has no interaction with someone else but his team and other federal agents (curiously, mostly women). Outside of them, he interacts only with Jack and Jessica. Even Spencer is seen with former classmates (S02E18, S07E11).

There are several explanations for this.

It may be a hole in the script because the writers didn’t want to dig into this aspect of the character (we already see him a lot on the screen, the others need some space too). So, he has friends, but we don’t know them.

Or he doesn’t have any. Because he never succeeded to make some or because he wasn’t able to keep contact with them through time. In any case, it can be relevant of the fact that, like many autists, social interactions are landmine field for him. He can’t analyze emotions of people around him, as he can’t analyze his, so he avoids interacting with strangers or, when he does, he doesn’t act the right way and people run away from him.

Knowing that he is a profiler, it makes this suggestion absurd, unless if you think that he’s only able to identify specific behavior from sociopaths and everything else is just nonsense for him. We see multiple times that his reactions or replies provoke astonishment for the people who are not part of his team.

But it can also fit with the shyness theory. When you are shy and/or introvert, talking to stranger is hard as hell. As so, shy people don’t have many friends and/or acquaintances.

[Well, yes, I forgot: he has his brother - and they don't appreciate each other - and his former father-in-law - who hates him deeply.]

Tactless

I don’t think any of you will contradict me on that point, but Hotch can be very direct. And he doesn’t hesitate, and he doesn’t seem to care about the consequences of his words on his target’s hubris or self-esteem.

And, for someone who studies to become a lawyer/prosecutor, it’s quite peculiar: he’s supposed to be eloquent, to know how to handle the verb, and to be able to reel people; instead, he humiliates a lawyer in front of the Court underlying his too short pants, his low-cost clothes, and his habits of (bad) gambler. He could have used statistics to make his point but preferred this brutal method.

And he acts like that many times during the show: he says to Strauss that she’s a bad mother, he scolds Prentiss at the beginning of their cohabitation, he is harsh multiple times with Derek, Penelope, Jordan, and with police officers and others… well, many examples. The guy is upfront, and he doesn’t care about good manners. He says what he thinks.

By the way, we can remark that politics and him don’t match. Every time he has to play a political game, he refuses, or he fails in the end (S02E11, S02E16, S04E16). To lie, to be a hypocrite, bowing, it’s not his thing. Which means that he’s more the frank type.

If we add to this that it’s more than obvious that he was doing well with Kate Joyner who was also the frank type, we can suppose that he appreciates honest and direct people, like him. Why? Maybe because he doesn’t get innuendo, unspoken, pretense… that are, I think, difficult to catch for autists.

However, we can’t totally discard the fact that he is also the provocative type. We know that he has a juvenile record and that he can be very sarcastic, which means that behind his good manners and his controlled speech, he has a rebellious temper and a real issue with authority. The fact that he wasn’t much expressive can’t help us determine when he voluntarily speaks frankly to have a reaction or when he hurts people by mistake.

Rigidity

Hotch is stiff. And I don’t say that because is as straight as a chopstick. No, he’s mentally stiff. Derek says that he is a drill-sergeant and JJ, a bully, which means that their boss is quite uncompromising. About what? We don’t really know, but as he read/write all the reports of his team members, that he asks Emily for a missing piece in her report and that he tramples on Derek when he did the correction of his draft (when Derek noticed that they don’t have enough for a profile), we can suggest that he’s uber fussy about that.

Seeing how he’s mad at Jordan when he catches her lying to the family of a victim, we understand that he hates that. As much as he hates when his men play solo (Spencer, Seaver, Derek) putting themselves in danger and/or putting all the team in danger – notice that HE can. He also hates when people give nicknames to serial killers.

Maybe this is going to be a headcanon, but I think that Hotch is typically the kind of person who is incapable of breaking rules; rules made by society/the institution he works for (ex: driving above the speed limits/having an intimate relationship with one of his subordinates) or rules made by himself (ex: not lying to witnesses during an investigation). To break these rules asks him a real effort and he’s immediately uncomfortable with it. And when he sees people around breaking them, he’s as much uncomfortable (he’s tolerating Kevin around Penelope in the limits he has made).

This struggle can come from his autism.

Anxiety

First of all, it’s important to say that if autists suffer of anxiety (because of everything above), it doesn’t mean that every anxious people are autistic nor that every autist is anxious. But it’s part of the many symptoms of autism.

This said, let’s go back to Hotch who is with no doubt an anxious guy. We see him regularly expressing nervous tics when he’s in an uneasy situation for him: he presses his fingers into his fists, he digs his nails into his skin, he bites his lips, etc.

The fact that he’s always wearing the same outfit and that he sticks to a daily routine is typical of anxious people, because it’s a way for them to soothe their anguish. The shyness is also a factor of anxiety and, we see it, that outside of a professional context, Aaron is not the coolest person ever: he’s clumsy with Jack, he’s clumsy with Beth, he’s clumsy with this woman Dave pushes into his arms, etc. Actually, he’s uneasy every time he’s not protected anymore by his suit and his FBI badge. He’s uneasy when he has to go out of his comfort zone and when he’s facing random events he can’t control.

Besides, Hotch says to Derek that he’s writing his subordinates’ reports for them. He adds that it’s to give his agents more free time – it’s probably the official reason he gives to himself – but, for real, it’s because, as an anxious guy, it reassures him.

Peculiar sense of humor

When Hotch tried to motivate his men to throw at him his worst defaults, he started saying he has no sense of humor.

But, for real, he has one. His humor is really dry: he says his humorous lines with the same monochord tone as usual and his face shows no sign that could help people around to guess that it’s supposed to be fun. So, you really need to know him well to catch that.

Hotch: "I'm wearing it [his cape]"

But he clearly has a sense of humor: we can see it with JJ, with Beth, with Spencer, with Dave, etc. Haley asked him, as her last words, to show their son how funny he can be, how he was able to make her laugh. He can also be very sarcastic, which is another form of humor.

He’s able to understand puns too because we can see him smile and laugh multiple times, but we can also notice that sometimes he takes the lines right to the letter (S04E07).

And autistic people don’t necessarily have the same sense of humor than neurotypical people: they can laugh on something that won’t be funny for neurotypicals or not laugh on something that will make other people laugh (ex: the remark about the flowers in the middle of a crime scene).

Huge knowledges

It’s a point I put very low on the list because as he always avoids the light, Hotch doesn’t expose his real knowledge (on the reverse, Spencer talks a lot about what he knows, not necessarily at the best time). But we can guess, paying very attention, that the guy is quite clever.

First of all, we hear him quoting books or recognizing quotes, exactly like Spencer. Which means that he memorized precisely what he has read. Which is not easy at all (try to quote me a book you love you’ve read ten years ago. Difficult, isn’t it?).

Then, we catch from one spare line here and there that he has many knowledges: he collected pennies when he was a kid, he knows the meaning of tarot card, he recognizes the scale model of a James Bond car, he knows theatre (even if he was a poor actor), etc.; it’s quite an heterogenous knowledge but he can spill it anytime it’s needed.

And we can’t forget that he was in law school to become a federal prosecutor, which induce that he studied for years and that he has to remember a ton of laws for all the country.

Ability to understand autistic people

Hotch is, at multiple times, the only one able to follow Spencer complicate reasonings. Now, Spencer is undoubtedly autistic (and if you think he’s not, I invite you to rewatch the show). What can make us think that he can understand him because he has the same way of thinking.

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With all this, we can add his singular way of speaking (monochord tone, polished language), the fact that he doesn’t talk about his feelings to his relatives (there was clearly a communication issue between him and Haley), and his huge empathy for his subordinates (about whom he worries a lot all the time).

Actually, you have to keep in mind that a good part of this troubles can be explained by his rough childhood he seems to have had (“seems” because the only real thing we know is that his father was unfaithful, period), his anxiety, and his natural shyness too.

But, for me, he’s autistic and he doesn’t know it. It’s not the reason why I felt for him (this point of view hit me way after I started to write about him) and it doesn’t make him any sexy-er or something, it’s just a part of his character I add to the pile of the many aspects of his personality. It’ll be briefly treated in my main CM fanfic: “Code Name: Mom”, but deeply treated in my two Hotchniss fanfics. So, don’t be surprised if you read from time-to-time innuendos about his neuro-divergency, it’s on purpose.

And happy autism acceptance month everyone! 😊

(And remember, this is a personal point of view, you perfectly have the right to think differently. ;) )

#criminal minds #aaron hotchner #hotch #agent hotchner #autism

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