Evidence for Neurodiversity or Disorder?

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RN, I hadn't thought of that 3rd. possibility. Now I'm even more undecided...

btbnnyr, LGBT fought very, very hard to get homosexuality out of the DSM. Why do you think that was?

My therapist has corrected me before, telling me that autism is a difference, not a disorder, even though she is a mental health professional well-versed in the DSM in which autism is defined as a disorder. I think that she was trying to make me feel good about myself, but I didn't feel bad about myself in the first place. I said that I don't care if autism is referred to as a difference or a disorder, and it is fine to refer to it as a disorder in my presence. Of course I am different from the large majority of people, and of course I have a disorder and impairments according to the standards of the large majority of people, but it is much moar useful and practical for me just to focus on what my traits are, what I want to do in life, and how to get the two to work and play well twogether.

It's beyond the scope of the DSM to go around defining "differences" or "personalities."

There's the daily horoscope in the newspaper for that sort of thing.

I'd personally refer to it as a disorder when describing it to others, especially those who have shown themselves to take things the wrong way no matter what is said. "Neurodiversity" I consider a bit closer though, mainly since it seems a bit more optimistic of an eventual day where maybe AS will actually be considered a boon by the companies rather than "just another disability we'd have to pay to try to fix". The problem with using "Neurodiversity" now would lead to several people saying "Well, that just means you're weird and that's all YOUR fault and you should fix yourself" as compared to "well, it's a disorder, so it must be a serious thing, that is until I hop on the internet and find all the articles saying it's fake and pay no attention to the other ones".

Kind of boned whichever way you look at it, just pick the word that is more fun to say outloud.

AS brains are both different and disordered.

AS is a disability because there's a deficit when you look at the skills demanded of the average person in our society (for the sake of argument let's say Western, but it's probably similar for all cultures). Disability is a relative thing: In a world where everybody is deaf, the world is set up to accommodate deaf people, and deafness is not a disability. The world assumes that we will have social skills, multitasking ability, speech/language competency, and high tolerance for sensory input; because we do not, we call this difference a disability.

However, the fact that AS is a disability does not mean I reject the neurodiversity viewpoint. Disability is a normal part of human existence. Just about everybody acquires one, if they live long enough. Disability is neutral; lacking an ability does not mean that you are less valuable to a society. In fact, because we live in a social world, disability can be accommodated for to the point that it is irrelevant. In an interdependent society, Person A can use Ability A to compensate for Person B's disability in Ability A, while Person B uses his own ability to compensate for Person C's disability--and so on. We already do this with things we don't consider disabilities. For example, I can't grow my own food; so I buy it from specialists who can. When I make a crocheted blanket and give it to someone else, I'm compensating for their inability to crochet a blanket for themselves. Disabilities aren't too different from that. Even the people who are extremely disabled and can do very little can improve society by their very existence, which says, "We value you as a person, rather than for your ability; we will not abandon you if you are unable to care for yourself." That means that people in that society feel freer to contribute to the whole rather than to try to be self-sufficient.

Neurodiversity is the philosophy that the world is supposed to include different sorts of minds. That includes conditions we consider disabilities. A disability can confer absolutely no benefit in terms of extra skill, and still be beneficial to society at large, because of the different perspective that person contributes. If no one were dyslexic we could never have the perspective of a dyslexic person to add to our store of knowledge and culture. If no one were autistic we could never have that perspective. Different perspectives are important; it allows for creative thinking, for multiple approaches to a problem. We as a society need more than just the NT perspective--the diversity of minds in and of itself is a valuable asset. Ensuring the equal rights of neurodiverse individuals is not just a matter of ethics (though of course it's that too): It's a way to make sure that we do not lose that library of perspectives, opinions, and thinking styles. In the future, having access to those diverse viewpoints could save the world.

One of the things that I figured out was that I am most impaired/disabled/disordered when I try to do things in the ways that work for most of the people around me. For eggsample, learning about an unfamiliar topic through reading. I feel overloaded from reading lots of words at a time, but I really want to read lots of science papers, so I came up with my way of reading that made it easy for me. I call it "look-reading" as opposed to "read-reading". When look-reading, I don't try to interpret the meanings of the words or pictures on the page. I just suck them in through my eyes, store the photographs in my brain, don't worry about whether I am getting anything, and realize after a few hours of look-reading that I have gotten a bit of the meaning. Then, later that day, I will have gotten a bit moar. Then, the next day, I will have gotten a bit moar. And each bit moar builds on all the others until after a few days of sucking stuff in through my eyes, I have learned a lot about a topic. I have learned enough to be able to formulate my own idears about the topic. I use my autistic traits, detailed perception and eggseptional memory, to suck stuff in through my eyes, and I don't apply the standard "drive for meaning" in the moment of reading, because I know that it doesn't work for me. It works for people who see and think in different ways, but not for me. I also realized that my way of look-reading is what I did as a hyperlexic child with good word recognition and bad reading comprehension. Previously, I was seriously impaired in reading comprehension in general, but after I learned to speak and communicate, I gained some abilities in verbal and abstract thinking, so I was no longer impaired in reading in general. You could say that I gained some abilities that are moar commonly found in NTs than autistics, but my level of NT abilities is not as high as the levels found in NTs. Less previously, I was impaired in being able to read as much as some of my highly intelligent peers, but I eventually figured out my own way, which resembles my childhood way a lot, eggsept that I am bester able to eggstract the meanings instead of just recognize the words as an adult. I have had years of cognitive development and life eggsperience. I am not impaired in this area anymore, because I figured out a way, and it took awhile to figure it out. This time, I eggstended my autistic abilities to meet a higher demand.

I think what I'm trying to decide is does the autistic brain function differently or does it malfunction?

Eg: homosexuality used to be considered a malfunction, nowadays it's a difference (removed from the DSM) and I never heard of a homosexual person in the last 3 decades claiming they have a disorder / illness / sick brain / disability / limitation. Then again, some say that the only reason they were removed from the DSM was political, lots of pressure.

A cat is a cat; it's not a damaged dog. It's meant to be a cat. But you still can't leash up a team of cats to a dogsled and expect them to pull you across Alaska.

Point being: The impairment is real; but it's not caused by damage. It's caused by development that was different from the beginning, and related to the fact that the autistic brain simply works differently from the NT brain.

Harvard has been collecting autistic brains for study over a period of several years (the vagueness of my statements here are really annoying to me but I am having a hard time finding precise numbers), I think up to ~150 or so for research purposes. They've been used in studies about autism to learn things about the anatomy of autistic brains and such. If brain damage were a consistent feature in autistic brains, I think that one of the studies that made use of these brains would have found it.

Also:

http://www.brainhealthandpuzzles.com/ca ... utism.html