Wake up people! There is no such thing as Aspergers.

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I completely agree with the OP that Aspergers and Autism are social constructs.

I completely agree that DSM categories are a subjective, non-scientific invention.

Disability Rights Theory uses exactly the same approach/analysis as the OP does, arguing that it is society which turns difference into disability, with biases/priorities inherent in the society which favour/benefit certain individuals at certain times, and disadvantage others.

Why isn't visual and audio hyper-acuity used as the main/sole criteria for diagnosing AS, if it is so strongly correlated with AS? ... ... ... Because it would take away power from the medical profession, remove the leverage it currently has to impose society's ideas of what is good and bad. The category has to remain relatively "loose"/mushy/vague in order to serve its social function, that of regulating/controlling people. ( also acuity is something "good", not "bad" ... ... so the "diagnosis" would be based on an ability ... )

This analysis is now 20-30 years old, used in the faculties of philosophy and sociology at universities, and appreciated among disability rights theorists. What is extraordinary is that this idea/thread is being treated as the work of a troll.

I am completely amazed by the predominant reaction, which is as if people think something precious is being taken away from them, rather than that someone is showing them a window to see more clearly.
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i for one do not think it is something "precious," nor does "seeing more clearly" equate to "improved quality of life."

i wish people would realise there is a deeper meaning to having difficulties and to stop being so obsessed with the labels. ounion, your post leads me to i believe you missed my posts. i hate to sound self-centred but no one seems to have addressed the issue (including the op, who has ignored most of it) - so i reluctantly quote myself:



Liresse said:
i am sorry.

but am not "suffering" any more than the next average person. i just have my specific difficulties some of which they share, some of which they may not share.

believe it or not, everyone has difficulties. and that is why i am not "mistaken" when i say i have problems - merely honest about it.

i would not be so quick to judge whether something exists or not. i think every person in the world (nt or not) would be a good deal wiser if they got an official diagnosis for their problems. at least then they'd face up to it. that is what we are doing on wrongplanet: facing up to the truth.

Liresse said:
please note that i, personally, do not care what you call it. if you think "aspergers" is a dumb name, you can battle it out with the taxonomists.

kindly look deeper than merely obsessing over the label. sounds like you think you are revealing "A DEEPER TRUTH", but actually i doubt you have any desire to actually improve anyone else's situation/quality of life at all.

if all you want to do is disturb other people into radical changes of mind, i suggest there are other people in far more delusional states about their own superiority than those here on wrongplanet.

you are not being kind by posting so aggressively.

Last edited by Liresse on 10 Mar 2009, 4:48 am, edited 4 times in total.

I was only diagnosed last year (and, even then, only unofficially), although I'm 100% certain I've got what I'll continue to call AS, to keep things simple. Since being 'diagnosed' I've thought a lot about what AS actually is, how it's affected me, etc (too much, really).

I do agree that it's a simplified diagnosis, covering a wide range, both in terms of the specifity, and severity, of symptoms. In fact, I actually wonder whether it's helpful to diagnose anyone as having AS. I'll explain what I mean by this in a second. In the meantime, though, I agree that SOME of the people on this forum may not have a psychological disorder, merely an unusual personality.

However, the big flaw in the OP's argument is that Autism definitely exists as a psychological disorder - whatever it's cause. I don't think ANYONE, anywhere, disputes that. Moreover, Autism isn't black and white. Some are affected more severely than others. Therefore, there must be an autistic spectrum, and some people must be on the milder end of it. These people will, generally, be able to 'get by' in life, but their career prospects, relationship possibilities, etc, may be hampered. This is what most people on this forum (including me) probably have: 'mild' autism, though compensated, to some degree, by high intelligence, and complicated, to some degree, by personality differences not related to autism, plus factors such as environment/experience, etc.

Coming back to what I said earlier, however, I do believe it's appropriate to question whether it's necessary to diagnose anyone as having AS. After all, doesn't it just confuse things, and make it more difficult to explain to the wider world what's 'wrong' with us? Wouldn't it be simpler, and more logical, to diagnose everyone with an ASD as having Severe, Moderate or Mild Autism (or you could even create a 1-10 scale, for example)?

Most "personalities" don't include increased comorbidity with genetic disorders, metabolic defects, physical anomalies and epilepsy. Autism and Aspergers aren't personality types. All you have to do is read a few conversations on this forum to realise that all us auties/aspies have distinctive personalities.



Autism shows up in scans, it's not cost effective to scan people to confirm a diagnosis however.



Schizophrenia and Aspergers have similar side-effects. Schizophrenia can be seen in scans as well, however this is not cost-effective. Schizophrenia will also improve with anti-pyscotics, autism doesn't.



It's also possible that the word "Autism" describes an end result, that has many causes and that you are unaware of this fact. Idic 15 causes autism, fragile x causes autism. Is it your opinion that these are "personality" types?



Autism and Schizophrenia are prooven disorders with pysical causes. Even ADHD shows up in scans (Yet again, it's not cost effective to diagnose in this way). If you have a problem with "mainstream psychology" then why don't you attack the fact that it is easy to misdiagnose people? That diagnosing people based on a 10 minute conversation is inaccurate? That maybe it would be more appropriate to look for cost-effective tests for these disorders, and that money should be directed at diagnosing effectively. Claiming "Autism" or "Aspergers" don't exist to highlight the inadequacies of mainstream psychology is foolish at best. If you phrased your idea's differently you'd find that many people here can also see the problems with mainstream psychology.

Well, Junior is RIGHT! It is simply a construct. It WAS, after all, merely an illusion created by society! There can't be any real test for it. The same is true of time, place, etc... I mean THINK ABOUT IT! Is there REALLY anything to say it is tuesday? 3/10/2009? 6:58? AM? NOPE! People agreed on a common system, setup calibration sources, etc... STILL, TO THIS DAY, people can't truly AGREE what the time is! One state in the US recently changed its time a few years back. If everyone/everything lost track of what time it was, HOW would they set the time "correctly"? Don't say use the sundial, as that is only an approximation, it could be cloudy, etc... As for place, WHO is even to say nevada is nevada. I have been in cities that, a few years later, changed their names and even ZIPCODES. Even areacodes for phones.

WHO KNOWS, maybe the idea of death and physical limitations are psychosomatic! And if the US government REALLY exists, who governs it? THINK ABOUT IT! WHO pays, etc....? SUPPOSEDLY, the treasury pays based on the legislative passing a raise based on the agreement of the executive and judicial, but who keeps them from voting themselves a billion dollars a year? You can't even say the constitution, as they obviously don't care.

AW HECK! Maybe we should stick with illusion! reality is too hard!

BTW.... If someone doesn't get what I am saying, I am saying that AS, like time, is a MADE UP concept to describe a certain situation. The description of it may be different. The application may be wrong. Maybe we can't agree on it. It may be changed. STILL, it EXISTS!

Profile was written a long time ago.

As for whether I have it or not, I'd be happy to share.

I have it when I went to professionals who said I do and I don't have it when i went to professionals who said I didn't.

At this point, over the years, its been a fairly large sample both ways.

But once again, its not like I'm making these ideas up.

There is any expriment that can be made to prove that AS does not exist? If there is not, these mean that AS is a non-refutable concept, and then, non-scientific.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falsifiability

Aspergers is only a word, for a loose cluster of behaviours defined, ( by society ), as a disorder.

If reliable objective tests, like that for visual acuity, were used for diagnosing "AS" you would have the paradox of a disorder/disability being diagnosed on the basis of ability.

Just who is labelled disordered in society depends on social pressures, etc. And that is why the test for visual acuity is not included in the diagnostic criteria; it would expose the mechanism of social control at the root of such labels/classifications.

In the same way as people on WP often argue that NTs could be diagnosed as suffering from a disability to argue logically, a tendency to behave in a herd like fashion, ( which could be seen as behaviour more in line with sheep or cows, and therefore a disorder ), etc, the view that people with certain kinds of abilities/personalities are disordered is only a perspective, an attitude, and simply depends on who is in power in society.

PS. Most of the posts on this thread actually seem very "NT", showing herd/mob like tendencies and an "NT" lack of logical reasoning ability and impartiality.
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Last edited by ouinon on 10 Mar 2009, 6:39 am, edited 3 times in total.

There is a lot of blind faith in mainstream psychology here, even though mainstream psychology has only recognized "Aspergers" fairly recently (added to dsm in 1994 apparently). Replace Aspergers with God and the TPE2's sentence reads the same.

Aspergers is a clinical diagnosis, (I don't like the word label) so I'll use the word answer - as to why many people suffer real, and sometimes very distressing symptoms. A good example is this:

If you start feeling unwell but can't pinpoint why, you or your family want answers. Maybe you have flu like symptoms, or maybe you are feeling sick. So after a while of feeling unwell, you decide to take yourself to the doctors - and get it sorted once and for all. There they will assess you, ask you questions and get to the bottom of why you are feeling unwell. That in itself is a mini diagnosis. It helps you understand why you are feeling poorly.

The majority of people with aspergers (including myself) have been looking for similar answers all of their life. Answers as to why they have spent the majority of their precious life struggling and frustrated. The problem is of course, it's not one of these things that manifest itself physically. Often there are no physical symptoms at all.

As harsh as it seems, the biggest problem of all is that when you read about aspergers, your never seeing it from their eyes unless you actually have it. Even worse, the majority of people who claim they know everything about it haven't got it either. Sorry, but it's true. However, it's very important to understand that even those diagnosed with aspergers are individuals in their own right. It would be wrong and inaccurate to throw everyone into the same boat. Because, everyone is different and everyone has their own identity, diagnosis or not.

On the otherside of the coin, it doesn't have to be all negative. You get diagnosed and there is your answer. You can now either sit there and worry about it, or you can bury it and try and make the best of your life and move on. Some people are lucky enough to do that, and they lead a fairly hassle free life with the right support and backing. Granted, sometimes having a diagnosis makes things feel worse, though.

Saying that I'm now going to contradict all of what I just said. Sometimes I wish people would just mind their own business and focus on their own life instead of questioning other peoples. Would you stand there and question a man in a wheelchair about his diagnosis? I'd like to hope not.

Both sides of the coins, every story & angle, a bit of give and take I think

All personalities have a physical basis, in genes and resultant metabolism. All personalities are the result of environment interacting with genes. .


Different kinds of brain structures show up in scans, but that does not mean that they are disorders. It is society which decides if a certain kind of brain structure is a problem. At the moment it is our kind which is being labelled and discriminated against in this way.


Yes.

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What is making you feel unwell?

Women and gays and blacks have felt very unwell, finding it difficult to function in society, but the reason for their dysphoria was not/is not their sex, sexuality, or skin colour in itself, though this does correlate with certain biological differences in metabolism/behaviour/needs/abilities, but is the result of social pressures demanding that they behave like the majority, or those in power, or that they submit to the different priorities of those in power.

The malaise is socially created. At many points in history groups of people have been labelled as lesser/dysfunctional, more prone to anti-social behaviour. Aspergers is simply another one.

AS may be correlated with certain metabolic differences, even fragilities/vulnerabilities, but "femaleness" is too; premenstrual hormone imbalances, pregnancy, need for time and space to breastfeed their babies, etc, and it is true that until recently women's differences were often treated as inferiority, even innate disorder, ( hysteria, all in the womb etc ), but I hope people on WP do not think that women are suffering from a disorder simply because of those differences!
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Last edited by ouinon on 10 Mar 2009, 7:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

No no, 'the feeling unwell part' - that was just an example of what I was trying to explain. The average 'undiagnosed' person probably often visits the doctor for answers. That is what I'm trying to say. I now see my diagnosis more of an 'answer' as to why I have struggled so much, so I can understand it and move on.

Unfortunately there are too many judgemental people in the world who worry about questioning others rather than focusing on their own life. They question them and make them feel horrid, yet are not prepared to work with them. Thats why I said a bit of give and take is needed. More support and backing. There are people out there crying out just for a bit of understanding and insight. They don't want to be treated differently. Why should they?

Certainly I know that people with aspergers with the right understanding and support can do really well as they are very capable people.

Really? Delayed audio processing is an ability?

It is actually grossly over simplifying to describe a heightened sense as necessarily an ability, and it is not necessarily paradoxical to use proxy markers that are themselves either neutral or negative to diagnose a condition deemed pathological in some respect. In fact looking for anti-bodies (a positive thing in and of themselves) as a way of assessing for and diagnosing a pathological condition is a rather common means of reaching a diagnosis in medicine.

Whether exceptional acuity of vision correlated with autism in the research concerned is simply a marker, or an effect of pathology or itself pathological is unclear, and any which way it remains a compelling evidence that what is being described when we use the phrase "autistic spectrum" has biological coherency.

Of course it is more difficult to stretch delays in audio processing into an "ability".

For me too, finding out about the concept AS was a revelation, huge aid to understanding myself and my life; the missing piece in a puzzle.

But imagine that you lived in a society which accepted even admired AS abilities, and not only made allowances for our vulnerabilities, but considered them perfectly normal requirements in view of our hyper-sensitivy/acuity etc.

Imagine living in a society which knew that a significant minority of the population were hyper-sensitive to certain diets, chemicals, and other environmental pressures, for example, and which routinely took this into account when bringing up children, because it wanted to see those individuals flourish.

In such a society our metabolic differences would not end up being an apparently almost automatic cause of depression, anxiety, overload, fatigue, impairment of cognitive function. Imagine a society in which our needs and our abilities were understood, ... would you have been looking for an answer, an explanation of why you felt this or that?

Imagine a society in which people understood that it might take time to answer a question, in which noise and smells were not spilled out in all directions as if it made no difference. Imagine a society which did not routinely oblige all children to sit with 30 others in one room for 12 years.

It is society, social priorities/pressures, assumptions, power-dynamics, which create the struggle and exclusion, the "not fitting in", the "problem", not your biology.

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Visual acuity. Not an ability?
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Last edited by ouinon on 10 Mar 2009, 7:29 am, edited 1 time in total.