Is Asperger's often confused with a personality disorder?

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Can Asperger's be confused with a particular personality disorder? If so, which one(s) might it be? I asked in another thread if anyone else had personally been misdiagnosed before or after getting their Asperger's diagnosis.. Now, I'm wondering in general if it's a common misdiagnosis?

I had extensive neuropsych testing at a well-known clinic in Boston to finally get the right diagnosis after all of these years, but in north carolina they want to ignore the report from the clinic and tell me it's some kindof personality disorder because of this 45 minute personality test I took.. I caught myself once when I bubbled in the wrong letters because I accidentally skipped one of the questions, wonder if that happened again?

I'm wondering if there is a definitive test to determine for sure if it's one of the other?? or maybe I should just trust that the people in Boston got the right diagnosis and the people in the little town in north carolina are just wrongly labeling me for their own purposes... I don't want to be mislabeled and sent to some shrink that insists I take the wrong medication though, you know? It's like I thought I'd finally gotten the right diagnosis, but my therapist in NC didn't believe in NLD and had never even heard of Asperger's... they don't believe it's a real diagnosis in NC... this is kindof scary.

Asperger's syndrome may be confused with:
Schizoid personality disorder, a condition in which a person feels no conscious desire to be with others. Both Schizoids and Aspergians are logical thinkers who sometimes feel superior to the rest of the population and tend to isolate themselves. However, Schizoids do not usually experience strong, intense special interests and impairments in nonverbal communication. There is no proven correlation between Schizoid personality disorder and autism.
Avoidant personality disorder, a disorder characterized by pervasive and extreme social phobia. Schizoids isolate themselves due to a superiority complex, while avoidants do so because they feel utterly inferior to everyone else. Unlike Aspergians, avoidants shut themselves off because they are afraid of other people, not because they cannot relate to them.
It takes a trained eye to tell the difference between these three disorders, because they look quite similar on the outside.
Also presenting misdiagnosis potential are bipolar disorder (for some reason, its a common problem), Obsessive-compulsive disorder (a disease of being anal and hating it), Obsessive-Compulsive personality disorder (a disease of being anal and loving it), ADHD, and "giftedness" (this was my diagnosis for far too long).

I'm not sure schizoids always isolate themselves due to feelings of superiority. I think they just possess a genuine indifference regarding relationships and see no reward in being involved with others due to not possessing the emotional machinery needed to produce a desire for relationships.

Not sure - does sociopathy fit in somewhere? I've heard of at least one person labeled as a 'sociopath' whom I'm sure, after the description, was really an aspie. Is schizoid p.d. another name for this?

Sociopathy is a commonly used non-medical term for antisocial personality disorder. It's a psychiatric condition characterized by an individual's common disregard for social rules, norms, and cultural codes, as well as impulsive behavior, and indifference to the rights and feelings of others. I can certainly see how an aspie might look like that too.

I believe Social Anxiety Disorder is a common misdiagnosis also? Though that's an anxiety disorder rather than a personality disorder, I suppose.

All diagnoses are hit or miss - it's like shrinks play Psycho Roulet with every turn of a DSM page. *Hmm.. will it be Aviodant Personality Disorder today or shall we pick Asperger's Syndrome..?* *Disorder or Syndrome?* *Oh choices, choice!*

Well, officially, (in Holland) a personality disorder has to be ruled out before you can actually diagnose Asperger’s Syndrome. So I guess it has some similarities (except you are born with Asperger’s and you ‘catch’ a personality disorder in the adolescent-hood.).

If someone is female and if a psychologist just sums up the obvious symptoms (and not the reasons for them!) the diagnosis can be borderline personality disorder. One of my friends who has it shows many symptoms that I also know from my autism.

Behavior that seems similar: seemingly shy, having trouble to verbalise emotions, seeming very unemotional, autistic meltdowns and stress reactions can appear as tantrums and emotional instability to non-autistic people, reacting differently to emotional praise, sticking to social ideas that seem nonsensical to non-autistic people, not knowing how to get along and befriend people, a feeling of disconnection and so on... that are all things that can be found in a person with borderline too - for very different reasons though! Like, the most different reasons ever!

A psychologist must be really uninterested in the patient and must have no idea of autism spectrum disorders to consider borderline when it is really autism.
Mine was like that by the way, that's why I feel like mentioning this.

The personality disorders are not usually diagnosed until late adolescence or adulthood. However, the autisms (including AS) are often diagnosed in childhood - though AS frequently later than Kanner's autism.

With the interchangeable variants (excluding hearing voices, losing time and severe phobias) aren't all disorders just varying degrees of the same condition and what separates one from the other is its trigger - i.e. the environment/relationship in which it manifests? Look at the basis of virtually all disorders depression and anxiety are guaranteed to be listed and at the basis of all syndromes it's inertia and cognitive inhibition.

There is currently a rapprochement between neurology and psychiatry - so much so that some people have suggested the possibility of an eventual merger. The argument is that psychiatry developed on the foundation of a (now largely abandoned) philosophy (Freudian psychoanalysis), while neurology developed based on hard scientific research. However, given that psychiatry is increasingly moving toward neuropsychiatry, the reasons for two distinct disciplines seem, to some people, less desirable.

Eventually, the DSM may be entirely restructured according to a combination of neurological research and responses to treatment over the life course.

It can probably resemble almost any of them, and some aspies might have traits of some of them (or even the full personality disorder as a comorbi). I would expect these are the most common overlappers for us:

Schizoid
Obsessive-compulsive
Avoidant
Schizotypal
Antisocial
Paranoid

I was misdiagnosed with antisocial personality disorder in the mid 90's and only recently was I re-diagnosed to AS.

While not technically a personality disorder, Borderline Personality Disorder in some ways fits some Aspie traits. Certainly it covers many social interaction issues and I could see how an Aspie could be misdiagnosed this way. SEveral years ago I actually was diagnosed with aspects of BPD (I am NT by the way) in addition to clinical depression. I'm doing fine these days, but still notice certain traits that I have that fit BPD. You can read about BPD here: http://www.borderlinepersonality.ca/bpddefined.htm (or look it up online - there's lots of info out there). Here are the basic traits of BPD:
1. Frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.
2. A pattern of unstable and intense interpersonal relationships characterized by alternating between extremes of idealization and devaluation.
3. Identity disturbance: markedly and persistently unstable self-image or sense of self; or sense of long-term goals; or career choices, types of friends desired or values preferred.
4. Impulsivity in at least two areas that are potentially self-damaging: for example; spending, sex, substance abuse, and binge eating.
5. Recurrent suicidal behavior, gestures, or threats, or self-mutilating behavior.
6. Affective instability: marked shifts from baseline mood to depression, irritability, or anxiety, usually lasting a few hours and only rarely more than a few days.
7. Chronic feelings of emptiness.
8. Inappropriate, intense anger or difficulty controlling anger; frequent displays of temper.
9. Transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or severe dissociative symptoms.

Given the above, many of those of us who are 'self-diagnosed aspies' are probably actually experiencing one form or another of a personality disorder.

If anything, it reinforces my feeling that psychology is such a wishy-washy vocation that it does not deserve the descriptor of 'science,' and is too ruled by the subjective and experiential views of its practitioners to be of much value to many of those treated.