Abraham Schmitt's Brilliant Idiot

“Brilliant Idiot” is an oxymoron within itself, just as Dr. Abraham Schmitt is. According to the Oxford Dictionary, “brilliant” is defined as “exceptionally clever or talented”2. However, “idiot” is defined as “a person with low intelligence”2. How can Schmitt be both, brilliant and an idiot? Schmitt has received a B.A., B.S., and B.D. from Goshen (IN) College and Seminary, M.S.W., an advanced certificate in social work, certificate in Marriage Counseling, and D. S. W. from the University of Pennsylvania and according to the Wechsler exam he is within the top 1%, in regard to intelligence. “Brilliant Idiot” is a chronicle of Schmitt’s life of enduring and consequently, overcoming the obstacles of dyslexia in both his educational and personal

Ordinarily, most who hear this term believes it means seeing words wrong or reversing letters. Dyslexics ' are categorized as being unable to read, write, or spell (Schmitt & Clemens, 1994, Preface). The literal translation of dyslexia means “impaired words” (Schmitt & Clemens, 1994, p. 142), nevertheless dyslexia stretches far beyond reading and writing, although these are the most obvious handicaps, which Schmitt struggled with daily. Dyslexia causes a person to favor the right hemisphere of their brain than the left hemisphere, therefore “people with congenital or acquired dyslexia often have left-side handicaps that are so severe that most of their mental processes are delegated to the right hemispheres of their brains” (Schmitt & Clemens, 1994, p. 133). The left hemisphere of the brain is normally specialized in taking care of the analytical and verbal tasks, i.e. language skills, skilled movement, and analytical time sequence processing3. Consequently, “western cultures [favor] the characteristics of left-side functioning, our educational system reflects that bias and is heavily weighted against those individuals whose physiologic makeup has granted them attributes of creativity, imagination, and fantasy” (Schmitt & Clemens, 1994, p. 133). Schmitt shares his journey from being known as an idiot to proving to the world he is brilliant, highlighting on moments of success and

Schmitt embarked on a spiritual quest, starting with attending church and then was welcomed into the Canadian Mennonite Bible College with open arms. With help from the community and a new friend, Mrs. Schellenberg, Schmitt began to formulate his self-concept which was destroyed by dyslexia by defining himself in spiritual terms. However, his new faith, he pushed himself to try and simplify life into neat categories- black and white, believing that choosing the right category would be the answer to his problems. Unable formulate these categories neatly, he became distressed wanting to escape this tension and begged for release that never came. The only solution, he could envision was to die because heaven was the state of perfection (Schmitt & Clemens, 1994, p.