What makes someone AS rather than having an INTJ personality

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I am a little lost and confused. From several online Jung/Myers-Briggs online personality tests, confirmed by more than one professional work related test, I fall very strongly into the INTJ personality type. For the general population I am informed that this personality type is very rare, about 3%. I also note that there have been several questionnaires on WP that seem to point to a rather larger proportion of WP members, about 30%, claiming to belong to this personality type.

This link INTJ personality type is just one of many that describe the INTJ personality type. The type does describe me fairly accurately, as does many texts that describe AS. I am lucky not to suffer from any of the co morbid conditions that many people with AS have, such as hyper sensitivity. and I am high functioning and very successful at what I do, with the exception of relationships. What makes one AS rather than just having a rare personality type?

OK! I realise that there is not an exact measure and that people with AS do have a range of personality types. I know I am INTJ and I am pretty sure that I am AS. I am curious though at where the tipping point is between an INTJ personality type and AS? Any thoughts/opinions welcome.

A personality type doesn't mean that you are impaired, Aspergers does.

Why?

The descriptions of INTJ include, lack of empathy, blindness to non verbal communication, etc. When are these normal and when do they become an impairment?

Myers Briggs personality test should not be used seriously. The Ennegramm test is more accurate than Myers Briggs test. I mean if you just want to take it for fun go for it. I could fit any of the IxTx personalities

Last edited by Delphiki on 13 Jul 2012, 10:54 am, edited 1 time in total.

That's a question not easily answered. When does green become blue in the color spectrum?

Thanks Delphiki.

I'm no expert and I have no interest in the subject really. If one disregards Myers Briggs, when does a personality type tip over the edge to become AS? Am I just a jerk or do I have an impairment?

I had never even heard of AS two years ago and I had got through nearly 52 years without knowingt that there was anything wrong. I certainly did not realise that I had an impairment, or that I was a jerk for that matter.

One's a diagnosis with criteria.
The other's a popular personality test, with about as much relevance as a horoscope.
It's way cool there are some overlaps,
but it's like asking what separates a Narcissist from an Aries.

I miss a lot of things so I don't always show that I care. I suppose that might make me a jerk but only by accident. When I realize someone is in need or upset then I try to help.

Answer: where one defines and sets the boundary.

The INTJ personality type seems to fit the impairments that fit my AS. does INTJ = AS?

Well, in one sense, it's all just words to try to describe how a person is. I'm not sure what the accepted percentage of the population that's Aspergers' is around here, but one website indicated it's about 1%. So maybe one approach to the idea is that we "extreme INTJs" might also be more likely to also consider ourselves Aspies.

Keep in mind, also, that there are a lot of people who probably are Aspies who refuse to describe themselves as such. I suspect that my brother's family (the males, anyway) could all be diagnosed as Aspies if they wanted to be, but I understand that my brother had a meltdown when his ex-wife even suggested that. One of his sons works as an accountant and the other one lives under a bridge. Hmm...

So neither "name" is a hardwired definition, and in particular, a person is generally not considered an Aspie unless they or their parents worked on getting that diagnosis. And in general, once you're past 21, an Aspie diagnosis really doesn't get you much in the way of services, but it could work against you. Some INTJs are on the border and might come up with some other result if they took the test again a few years later... or they are able to overcome their INTJ-ness and be sociable when they need to be, others of us can't...

Mostly, though, it's all just words that someone proposed to try to describe a situation (some people consider religion to be the same thing), and Aspie in particular is a term we tend to choose to (or not to) use to describe ourselves.

Same. People who are perceived by others as rude due to neurologically-based differing social predispositions (NT-supremacists call this "impairment") are hardly "jerks"- the word to me implies deliberate callousness. People often remark I'm more empathetic than most, but only when it comes to suffering that strikes me as unnecessary or deliberate: abuse of vulnerable populations will make me depressive (and furious); someone crying because their long-ill elderly grandmother has died will not.

Me too and I feel realy awful when I realise that I have missed something that I should have known, particularly if I have inadvertently said something or acted in a way that has been hurtful.

Right, but there is still much debate about where that line is with Aspergers. I'm not sure as much thought has been put into it with the personality test because like it was stated before it is not really scientific. I couldn't find anything that said any of the personality traits where impairments but Aspergers trait are defined as being impairments.

Agreed but for someone who doesn't know you it might be hard for them to realize your motivations.

True. I forgot that's the relevant point...
they project their own modes of thought and behavior onto others, IE, NT LACK OF EMPATHY.

It doesn't mean you are a jerk just that you seem like one. Yea, it seems like empathy is like a language. If one person doesn't speak it neither side understands what's going on.