The real “rain man”: the incredible story of Kim Peek – the prototype of the main character of the movie

In this strange, clumsy man, who could hardly button his shirt and looked around helplessly in the street, obviously frightened by the crowds of people, lurked, perhaps, all the unsolved mysteries of our universe. He emerged from its bowels to surprise us, to stun mere mortals with unknown knowledge and incredible abilities.

At the Oscar ceremony for his brilliant performance in the lead role of Raymond Babbitt in the movie “Rain Man” directed by Barry Levinson, Dustin Hoffman made a moving speech about this man.

He said the following words, “Maybe I’m the star and you, Kim, are the sky.” The legendary movie, the prototype of which was a man with savant syndrome – Kim Peek, revealed to the world an extraordinary person who shook our imagination with his multifaceted talent.

Mark Johnson (left), Dustin Hoffman (center) and Barry Levinson (right), 1989

Who is Kim Peek

Renowned American writer Barry Morrow first met him in 1984 as part of a project for the Association for the Mentally Retarded. The very first acquaintance with Kim threw Barry into a real shock. He was confronted with a phenomenon of human nature that did not fit within the confines of the ordinary mind.

Barry Morrow even flashed the idea of writing a novel: so fascinating and mysterious character was Kim Peak. But he abandoned his idea, offering the director only the script for the movie. With the easy hand of the creators of the future famous picture prototype of the main character was called “Rain Man”.

Kim Peek was born November 11, 1951 in a small town of Salt Lake City. The birth of a baby with a very large head, which was found to have a craniocerebral hernia and the absence of the corpus callosum, connecting the right and left hemispheres of the brain, of course, upset parents. They were even advised to send their son to a special boarding school.

They flatly refused such a proposal. And the child’s father Fran Pick decided that it was necessary to make every effort to Kim did not feel his inferiority and grow up in normal conditions.

Looking into the future of Peek Jr., we note that in 1996 will be published a book by his father called “Rain Man”, which will describe the life of our hero from early years to the moment when he became an adult.

Kim Peek, 2007

Amazing abilities beyond his years

At the age of one and a half Kim learned to read, at the age of three he could read serious books with amazing ease and used a dictionary perfectly, putting every page in the vault of his phenomenal memory. At the age of 14, he mastered the entire school program, but did not receive a certificate of education.

Teachers cited mental retardation, confirmed by doctors, and scientists were left in complete bewilderment and confusion. They had never met such a bright and gifted individual.

Kim Peek could count a page of a book in 10 seconds and memorize it completely. He had over 9,000 works he knew by heart. Wake Kim at night – he immediately remembered any of them and told everything to the smallest detail. There was no limit to what he could do.

Who are the Rain People?

For the first time, the syndrome of giftedness was researched in 1887 by John Langdon Down. The scientist described a case in which a person was able to quote any choice passage from Edward Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Destruction of the Roman Empire. The phenomenon of “rain people”, which in the world, according to some reports, there are just over a hundred, still remains unsolved.

Existing scientific hypotheses, versions as if knocked into a chaotic pile. Alas, this is the fate of every research undertaken! The truth is hiding somewhere in a secluded place beyond the reach of scientists. Although there are many examples of individuals with giftedness syndrome appearing in society.

John Langdon Down

For example, the Scottish artist Richard Vouro – almost the same age as Kim Peake – spoke only at the age of 11, which greatly pleased his parents. However, the boy’s happiness did not last long: after cataract surgery, he became blind. However, Richard retained the genius gift of an artist, when as a child he drew on a chalk board. His works, based on images he had once seen, delighted renowned art historians.

Daniel Tammet, a renowned scientist and writer, suffered from epilepsy and autism as a child. He was able to recite the number pi to 22,000 digits. “They seem alive to me, and like a little kid I think of them as my friends. And I think that’s why my memory is so deep, because the information in it is not static,” Daniel Tammet once admitted.

Bob Petrella, a simple technician at a cable TV studio, has been called “the man who forgets nothing.” In 2006, he lost his cell phone, but managed to reconstruct from memory more than a hundred numbers once entered into it.

Life after the movie Rain Man

The success of the movie “Rain Man” literally pulled Mr. Kim out of the underground – a closed life, full of empty fears and confusion before any changes in the usual way of life. Yes, he suffered from many serious disorders and was unable to adequately appreciate the world around him. Kim, as before, remained helpless in everyday life. He had a strange gait that he thought made an unfavorable impression on others.

One day in a restaurant, he spoke loudly. His father simply asked Kim to lower his voice. This remark so confused the savant genius that everyone witnessed an amusing scene. Kim slid down from his chair under the table to have a conversation with Pik Sr. as quietly but clearly as possible.

Kim was changing in front of his eyes: freed from the shackles of his former, not-so-happy existence. He willingly made contact with people, gave interviews to journalists. And it is noteworthy that Kim denied the statement about the lack of a sense of humor in the “rain people”.

In fact, Peek Jr. was able to subtly and cleverly joke, which brought his interlocutors in indescribable delight. Once he was asked about the “Gettysburg Address” Abraham Lincoln. The answer was lightning-fast and highly imaginative: “Wills’s house, 227 Northwest Street. But he spent only one night there, and made his speech the next day.”

Researching the phenomenon

Kim was very wary of scientists. Apparently, unpleasant episodes associated with the man in the white coat were stuck in his memory. But with a prominent American psychiatrist Derold Treffert from Wisconsin, who acted as a consultant to the movie “Rain Man”, Kim Peek had an almost friendly relationship. So did Treffert’s colleague, Daniel Christensen, a professor of psychiatry and neurology at the University of Utah Medical School.

The genius savant aroused the genuine interest of leading specialists. And with Kim’s consent, they began the relevant research. Later, Derold Treffert wrote the book “Unusual People: Toward Understanding the Giftedness Syndrome”.

We have already mentioned above that the case of Kim Peake is unique and can be referred to the category of special phenomena that have never been seen before in the history of psychiatry. The genius savant possesses a rare ability to quickly draw logical conclusions. And besides, Kim’s peculiar memorization of everything and anything turns into associative thinking.

John Down, who coined the term “verbal adhesion”, simply put, meaning “verbal gluing”, and did not realize that a hundred and more years later his idea will pick up Sarah Parker, a graduate student psychologist from the University of Pennsylvania.

True, she did it creatively, vividly and figuratively. Of course, applied to the subject of the scientific study – Kim Peake. She came to one important conclusion, noting that “having a mountain of bricks doesn’t make you a bricklayer.”

Kim over time, according to her, has become a “verbal mason” who is unrivaled in his search for original answers to all the questions that interest him.

Kim Peek’s hobbies and other unusual abilities

Both Treffert and Christensen were amazed that Kim’s phenomenal memorization is in the nature of improvisation, sometimes resembling creative play.

It is not surprising that with such a multifaceted talent, Peak Jr. passionately pursued classical music and achieved incredible success in this direction. By the way, heavy rock and rap, he simply did not tolerate.

In 2002, Kim met April Greenan, the director of the McKay Music Library and a professor at the University of Utah. Through this acquaintance, Kim Peek ignited a desire to learn to play the piano.

April Greenan later recounted her observations to the scholars and was impressed by Peek’s brilliance, saying, “Kim’s knowledge of music is considerable. It is amazing that he remembers every stroke of even those pieces that he has heard only once, and more than 40 years ago. His observations on the relationship between musical works, biographical facts about composers, historical events, movie tunes, and thousands of other details reveal the extent of his intellectual abilities.”

April Greenan thought Kim bore a striking resemblance to the great Mozart. Genius-savant as well as the famous composer, had a predilection for numbers and was famous for unusual communication with people. April also spoke of Mozart’s large, disproportionate head. In this, too, she saw a certain similarity to Kim.

Studies by Derold Treffert and Daniel Christensen have shown that Kim Peake’s brain and head are much larger than normal people. In the course of their scientific work, they came to a rather interesting discovery.

According to Derold Treffert, “the most surprising was the absence of exactly the corpus callosum – a powerful bundle of nerve fibers, which normally connects the left and right halves of the brain. We don’t know how this affects Kim’s abilities. Such a defect is very rare and is by no means always accompanied by functional disorders. We know of cases where the absence of this formation was detected in people who do not suffer from any noticeable disorder”.

Note that Kim’s clumsiness, his poor coordination of movements and inability to navigate the world around him, scientists attributed to a small cerebellum. This apparent deviation from the norm played a negative role in the physical development of Kim Peake. Although the awkwardness of the genius savant sometimes evaporated somewhere. For example, it was his piano playing, where he improvised masterfully.

Dr. Treffert, continuing to observe the unusual patient, as well as using various methods of research, found anomalies on the left side of Kim’s brain. And put forward a curious version, which to date has not yet acquired scientific evidence.

The American psychiatrist believed that when the left hemisphere loses the ability to function in full force, the right hemisphere “enters the fray”. As a result, the defect almost disappears and the nerve tissue begins to work. In this case, the affected left hemisphere of the brain plays the role of a kind of catalyst.

Its “power” soon comes to naught. And that gives the right hemisphere’s abilities a perfect opportunity to burst forth. At least, that’s how Derold Treffert tried to explain the phenomenon of “rain man” – Kim Peake.

Kim Peake’s testing

In 1988, Kim underwent psychological testing. The results were unexpected and stumped scientists. In one case, the study showed a very high level of Peake’s intelligence, in another case – recognized his dementia. Eventually the experts reached a verdict that read: “The result of the evaluation of Kim’s intelligence quotient does not give a true picture of the level of his intellectual ability.”

Prof. Daniel Christensen gave his authoritative opinion on the matter. He said that “there has long been a debate in psychology as to whether a person has one general or multiple consciousness. We are convinced that Kim’s case confirms the correctness of the second point of view.”

Apparently, avoiding another attempt to get into the maze of research, experts gave Kim Peek a very vague diagnosis of “nonspecific disorder caused by developmental abnormalities”. The scientific men could not sign their own impotence.

Some of the scientific community Kim’s giftedness syndrome explained by the fact that nature, they say, let him a solid compensation for the inferiority of physical development. By the way, the epicrisis did not mention autism at all.

However, Kim Peek was noticeably different from the autistic and was an open person, disposable to himself. For example, for the last 20 years of his life, he visited almost every corner of the country, talked to many people. And everyone noted his strange but extraordinary charm.

“He should work at NASA!” – this phrase sounded in the movie “Rain Man” from the lips of Charlie, when he admiringly noticed how Raymond quickly and cleverly calculates square roots in his mind.

It was as if these words foreshadowed Kim Peek’s future collaboration with a powerful space exploration organization. Indeed, the extraordinary personality of the genius savant has long been on the mind of NASA. A man with unique abilities and great knowledge in any field was a real find for global research.

At first it was proposed to create a three-dimensional anatomical model of Kim’s brain with high resolution. According to Richard Boyle, director of the BioVIS Technology Center at NASA, the participation of the genius-savant in the project would pave the way for a large-scale program. Its ultimate goal is to collect and summarize the results of brain scans of as many gifted people as possible.

The anatomical and functional data would give researchers an excellent opportunity to identify the most important processes in the brain. Particularly those responsible for a person’s thinking and behavior. And a detailed model would go some way to helping monitor astronauts going into space.

Kim Peek’s subsequent life

Kim Peek continued to enjoy the life of an ordinary person: during the years of reclusiveness, as it turned out, he really missed socializing with people. Now the genius savant was in their environment almost his own. However, he was expected to make great discoveries, bearing in mind his enormous creative capabilities and vast, constantly replenishing knowledge.

Probably the impetus for this attitude towards Kim was a public statement of April Greenan. She claimed that there was no limit to Kim Peake’s musical talent. And he could, if he wished, become a composer equal in talent to Mozart himself. However, no one could look into the mind of the “rain man”, where, in all likelihood, there were myriads of ideas, which Kim did not have time to share.

Kim Peek (left), 2007

Fran Pick recalled with slight sadness his son’s strong friendship with Dustin Hoffman. He particularly remembered the star actor’s phrase when he approached him: “I beg you, give me your word that you won’t hide him from people. Show him to the world.”

Note that the genius-savant was very modest and, it seems, even embarrassed of his own superiority over others. Once at a regular seminar he said: “Don’t take your mental or physical shortcomings as an obstacle. Don’t think they make you so special. We are all special, every one of us.”

Kim Peek passed away on December 19, 2009 in his hometown of Salt Lake City from a heart attack. He was 58 years old.