Is autism related to schizophrenia?

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you say tomato, i say tomato.

your only as schizophrenic as much as you let it (others thoughts) get to your head.

Are you sure this is what he was diagnosed for, as opposed to this being a side effect of antipsychotic? To me the "moving slow" part sounds like the latter.

Anyway, I definitely see your point with the rest of your examples!

What you just said assumes that the "actual" mental illness (bipolar, schizophrenia, etc) does, in fact, makes a person "crazy". In my opinion, this assumption about bipolar or schizphrenia might be just as wrong as it was when it was applied to autism. It is quite possible that none of the "mentally ill" people are crazy; we just fail to understand them.

As a child I definitely had schizophrenic tendencies. I used to imagine all possibilities of an event, and would rerun it in my head many times to see all the different forks the conversation could have gone. I could always see a conversation could being bad easily, and was always worried people hated me because of it. That it was so easy to get people mad, and I would be hated. Schizophrenia/Anxiety at 5 years old? definitely.

As for the chicken or the egg type question, I have no idea. I agree with the whole it is not a temporary personality issue, but a negative feedback from the high IQ.

Of course, my parents never realized any of this about me as a child. I did not talk about it; and it never got reported. My parents as a child believed I had a personality issue only as a child; and would try to grow me out of it. It is only now, as a college student, and having built the courage to get a diagnosis that they are finally seeing something else besides delinquency (no I wasn't some druggy rebellious teenager; just struggling with with hitting back bullies, handling certain grades).

First, we have to define what exactly "crazy" means...

How about we leave it to the patient himself. If a patient says "during such and such times I am crazy, and I know these times will be repeated, I don't know what to do about it, please anyone help me", then by all means, help him. But if a person is just fine the way he is until the SOCIETY managed to make him bad about who he is, then he is not crazy and the problem is with society.

While the latter has been said a lot about autism, I think it should also be said about other conditions. We all know that psychiatrists sometimes have to treat patients against their will. May be the reason the patients don't want to be treated is not because they are "too crazy to see their problem" but rather because they ARE in fact JUST FINE the way they are. The psychiatrists (as well as the rest of society) are too close minded to see that just MAY BE it is okay to operate the way these patients are operating.

Any scornful dismissing you read into it was in your own head, not in my words, and I'd appreciate not have it read into what I write. It's very, very difficult for me to form words around how to explain how commonly-accepted concepts work, (which is one reason I end up using too many of them) and "guess" wasn't meant to be read the way you're reading it. It's just extremely difficult to know what the right words are, especially with such a complicated history.

Yes. I saw him when he was first brought in, it was probably an effect of some kind of a movement disorder, much like my own tendency to move slowly a lot of the time (caused by what's variously known as "autistic catatonia" or "parkinsonlike movement disorder related to autism" or whatever). Unfortunately, catatonia existing for no other obvious known reason is frequently diagnosed as schizophrenia (and then the person is assumed to be psychotic even if there's zero evidence for this). Although there's now a push for people to look for a history of autism in anyone presenting with catatonia, I'm not sure how much that's actually happened by now.

@TPE2 - I love the dissection, it was quite educational.

Last edited by Dinosaw on 09 Apr 2011, 12:59 pm, edited 4 times in total.

My concern about differentiating autism from mental illness is based on society's perceptions of mental illness and those perceptions mostly suck.

I agree with giving people more freedom to define themselves and I'm well aware of the need for people to be able to do so.

Last edited by Dinosaw on 08 Apr 2011, 9:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.

My mom loves to compare me to my uncle, who has schizophrenia. She doesn't know I have AS, so when I "act up," she asks me why I'm trying to be like him.

The "scornful dismissal" of your post wasn't limited to your use of the word "guess". From your first post to this thread:



You don't see the scornful dismissal there? It's not merely "in my own head", it's plain as day.

I've noticed that you have a very recognizable M.O.--you provide copious, literate commentary on a topic, and then retreat behind these supposedly crippling language difficulties anytime someone takes issue with what you've said. I'm not suggesting that you don't have some "language issues"--I'm sure you do--but it sure seems to me that this pattern (which comes up almost every time you contribute to a semi-contentious topic) represents a sort of defense mechanism. I think it's at least partly nonsense. You seem to bypass the possibility that you've articulated your ideas sufficiently, but that they're either not particularly valid, or at least problematic. I think you're a smart person with a lot of interesting things to say, but the dynamic I described above is incredibly tiresome.

Those very language problems that you deny the severity of prevent me from explaining what's truly going on here. But if my communication isn't taken in good faith then it's better that I communicate nothing further at all, because anything I say will be only further misunderstood. "Tiresome" isn't my explaining things, "tiresome" is having to have this conversation over and over and never getting any better at it.

Look I also have language problems. Professors misunderstand me and decide I am not interested in their work when I merely say I am interested in something else. I manage to phrase it so strongly that they don't understand that I have room to be interested in more than one thing at a time.

How about this: when you miscommunicate something, instead of saying that you miscommunicated it, just say what you REALLY meant? I mean simply saying "I didn't mean what you think I meant" doesn't help anyone. Alright, we know you didn't mean X. So what was it that you actually meant?

Once again I beleive you you probably miscommunicated things. I am simply giving you an advice on how to handle it. Just write another post and articulate your intended meaning. Granted, you can be misunderstood again, but then you can again adress the misunderstanding by writing another post. Eventually you will be understood. I think it is far better option than simply leaving a discussion.

This is kind of a response to Poke, too.

Here is the problem:

When you say you have language problems, you put it on the same level as language problems others might have. anbuend's language problems are pretty severe. This doesn't mean she can't use language, but it does mean that she may very well have difficulty explaining a lot of things for clarification, but when this happens she just says so. This is not a cop-out, it is not a defense mechanism. Sometimes the words aren't there. Having a vocabulary and strong grammar does not translate to having good language skills or even consistently good language skills, as there can be problems that start anywhere from the initial thought process to the ability to think in concepts to the ability to associate concepts to translate the concepts into language to talking or writing about the concepts in language. Once the thoughts actually reach that final stage that can be worded wonderfully, but getting to that stage is not always easy.

But "instead of saying that you miscommunicated it, just say what you REALLY meant?" is also not as easily done as said. Sometimes the only way to say it is to go back to what was said in the first place because alternate explanations aren't there because one has to go through the process of thinking of the concepts to associate the concepts to translate the concepts to language to write about them in yet another way that will hopefully clarify what you meant. In other words, it's not necessarily a simple process. And it can also take up a lot of energy, causing shutdowns and requiring tradeoffs. That's even assuming it's possible to produce something about a given topic even if one does want to write about it.

I'm kind of generalizing the above from difficulties I have with language, and trying to relate them to things anbuend has said about her difficulties (which are much more severe than mine - and I have problems with translating my thoughts into words on demand as well), but it's not meant to be so much a description of how anyone's brain works (although it actually is pretty close to how my brain works), but more my best way to explain how language usage can seem to be quite good, even while the person using the language can have trouble with language. I am sure if anbuend were to describe how she writes posts, it would not be the same as what I wrote.

I've only been here since December, but I have read a lot of older threads, and I will say that yes, anbuend does often say that she cannot explain something right at that particular moment because of her difficulties. But I have also seen her come back to explain it later and I have seen her own up to her mistakes when they're pointed out to her.. It's frustrating because, with communication problems, it's easy to be misunderstood and mischaracterized because someone is reading things between the lines that were never there in the first place, such as "scornful dismissal." But even beyond that, it's a matter of framing. It's so easy to frame someone's participation as being in bad faith, just by imposing a particular interpretation onto their words and refusing to grant them that their explanations of what they really intended are meaningful: In short either telling them they don't know what they really intended, or telling them that they are being deceptive, or both. Or perhaps describing it as a defense mechanism.

And, in the time I've been here - and, okay, in the three years I've been reading anbuend's writings - she has never struck me as someone to engage in bad faith.

Anyway, not everyone who posts here has the same symptoms at the same level. A few posters have much more severe symptoms than one might expect. Given how many times people will say that someone who is like anbuend can't even use the internet, let alone access this forum, I think this is consistently true. I have seen people who have had conversations with her say within the next day that someone like her cannot possibly be online.

But it does strike me as over the top to tell someone who has clearly explained her language difficulties on this forum over and over that they do not really exist and that she can really engage on your terms if she were to only try harder, or suggest that she's actually just faking it to get out of an argument. She's been very consistent about this over a period of years. She's not faking it.

I am stepping in to say this because these posts are really discomfiting to me. I find it disturbing to see someone defined against her will, because it's something I hate to have done to me.

My attitude about anbuend is not the same as Poke's. I think anbuend is being a lot more unfair to herself than she is to anyone else. I am sure she has a lot of valid points, but she cuts herself short by saying "no I won't even try to say what they are because of my communication difficulties". Its kind of the same thing as when others were telling ME "no don't even try this or that because of your Asperger". But in her case no one does it to her, she does it to herself.

I do understand the communication problems. But still, what does she have to lose by trying? The worst that can happen is that she would miscommunicate, again. But then there will also be time to fix it later, again. I just don't think that anyone does the favor to themselves by giving up.

But yes, she SHOULD talk about her communication difficulties, but in another context. Communication difficuties is a very good reason why others should take their time and read newer and newer versions of her response. This is, in fact, the exact thing I keep asking others to do: just be patient with me and hear me out over and over whenever I miscommunicate. Unfortunately, in my case, people ignore such requests. In case of anbuend it seems like they are more than willing to give her this favor; yet she turns herself down, herself. And that just makes no sense.