Extraordinary People: Understanding ""Idiot Savants""

A psychiatrist and director of a mental health center in Wisconsin, Treffert, in this compelling report, analyzes the ``Savant Syndrome.'' Now considered pejorative, the scientific term ``idiot savant'' has been changed to ``savant,'' and describes a mentally or otherwise handicapped person whose genius in a particular field is inexplicable. The Savant syndrome is so rare that only 200 cases have been documented in this country. Readers will share the author's feelings of bewildered awe as they meet the ``extraordinary people'' and the families who help the phenomenally gifted, but otherwise cruelly deprived, savants in music, art, math and feats of memory impossible for the rest of the population. (Mar.)