Diagnosing dead people with aspergers

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beau99
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30 Nov 2007, 11:39 pm

Kitsy wrote:
Mozart? How did he have aspergers? He had no problems entertaining a crowd, had a bubbly personality.

Him being a child prodigy who was vulgarly shy might have been something to do with it.


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Kitsy
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30 Nov 2007, 11:41 pm

beau99 wrote:
Kitsy wrote:
Mozart? How did he have aspergers? He had no problems entertaining a crowd, had a bubbly personality.

Him being a child prodigy who was vulgarly shy might have been something to do with it.


I didn't know he was very shy as a child. Any other traits?


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30 Nov 2007, 11:57 pm

Kitsy wrote:
Do you get nervous in front of a crowd or anxious?


Just to be a stirrer and play devils advocate... Don't more people fear public speaking than fear death? :lol:

I'm not saying that as a counter to an argument, I think you make a good point, I'm just being pedantic.

Personally I don't know how people would fear death less than public speaking. I quite like public speaking! I'm also an Aspie.


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01 Dec 2007, 12:00 am

Unknown_Quantity wrote:
Kitsy wrote:
Do you get nervous in front of a crowd or anxious?


Just to be a stirrer and play devils advocate... Don't more people fear public speaking than fear death? :lol:

I'm not saying that as a counter to an argument, I think you make a good point, I'm just being pedantic.

Personally I don't know how people would fear death less than public speaking. I quite like public speaking! I'm also an Aspie.


What kind of public speeches do you do? I'm just curious now. Sorry if you don't want to publicly speak about your public speaking.


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01 Dec 2007, 12:05 am

The only two reasons I can think of to diagnose dead people would be (a) closure for family and friends, and (b) for research purposes (eg. diagnosing Einstein with AS in order to finish that last chapter of a book about his life).
No other reasons exist IMO, unless the dead can claim social security based on thier diagnosis or something :lol:



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01 Dec 2007, 12:10 am

Kitsy wrote:
What kind of public speeches do you do? I'm just curious now. Sorry if you don't want to publicly speak about your public speaking.


:lol:

I used to be great at debating. I spent a long time thinking I wanted to be an actor and got leading roles in a few Am-Dram perfomances. I used to do comedy sketches and I came up with a gameshow for my highschool talent show. I get a kick out of delivering presentations at uni. I'm a total show-pony!

:D

I want to get into Big Brother this year as well.


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01 Dec 2007, 12:19 am

Unknown_Quantity wrote:
Kitsy wrote:
What kind of public speeches do you do? I'm just curious now. Sorry if you don't want to publicly speak about your public speaking.


:lol:

I used to be great at debating. I spent a long time thinking I wanted to be an actor and got leading roles in a few Am-Dram perfomances. I used to do comedy sketches and I came up with a gameshow for my highschool talent show. I get a kick out of delivering presentations at uni. I'm a total show-pony!

:D

I want to get into Big Brother this year as well.


That sounds really cool. Good luck with Big Brother. I like to write short comedy skits but most of the time they take a demented turn....well so some people think.

There was a time when someone in my family pushed me into getting into acting. It was a really embarrasing rehearsal too. I did embarassing things while this other girl just knew what to say.


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KimJ
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01 Dec 2007, 1:58 am

Beethoven had various physical ailments and depression, becoming deaf eventually. I always thought Mozart was bi polar or something.



ixochiyo_yohuallan
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01 Dec 2007, 6:29 am

Frankly, it is somewhat irritating. One thing is that there is never enough information to "diagnose" someone who is deceased - they might have had certain symptoms, but without their actually having described to someone how they feel, it is usually impossible to tell whether these symptoms were due to autism, or some other disorder. There is a variety of other conditions that may make a person withdrawn and eccentric, including schizophrenia and the schizotaxic personality disorders. So that any attempts to determine whether someone in the past was autistic or not are commonly reduced to pure speculation, and usually end in some group insisting that the person was autistic just because they *want* him or her to be (no offense to anybody here who likes to guess whether some famous person was autistic or not).

The most annoying thing though is that doing this feels utterly irrelevant. What does it matter whether Mozart, Einstein etc. were or were not autistic? They were who they were, and accomplished whatever they are known for. That's it. I see no point in dwelling on whether they had a condition which may or may not have been there, and there's no way of telling for sure, ever.



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01 Dec 2007, 6:57 am

Speaking of Einstein, there is a different version popular in Russia states that he had a marked schizoid personality disorder. Which, when it comes to that, is also ENTIRELY likely. So that there's no real way to determine whether it was that or AS in his case, or perhaps both combined.

The bottom line is this: why do this at all? Just so that certain individuals could feel more worthwhile by thinking that they have something in common with famous people like Einstein etc.? A person's value is not determined by whether they are like Einstein or not. It is determined by the plain fact that one is ONESELF.



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01 Dec 2007, 11:35 am

It's a great search for people to be held up as Heroes to the Cause.

Champions of AS.



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01 Dec 2007, 12:25 pm

KimJ wrote:
I think it's okay if it's clearly speculative and there's plenty of supporting documentation. I don't like it when people claim it as fact or repeat someone else's theory without researching on their own.
I'm currently studying Hans Christian Andersen and he's on several people's lists as an Aspie. With the information I have, I don't see Asperger's as part of his personality.
Einstein is a difficult one because some sources say he had developmental delays and some say he had no developmental delays. If he had delays, along with his known traits, he might have been autistic. Another reason to dislike the separation of autism and Asperger's because the distinction seems so arbitrary.
There are also issues of cultural and historical context that one must consider. Something more common today may have been unheard of when these people were alive. So, modern man has coping mechanisms to deal with, say being gay, developmentally slow or PTSD. These factors were dealt with quite differently in the past and had drastically different outcomes.

I do imagine that Soren Kierkegaard and Thomas Jefferson were Aspies. Perhaps Thomas' friend and rival, John Adams too. Philo T. Farnsworth too.
Someone who isn't well-documented but was both a genius and pariah was Sor Juana Inez, the Mexican nun.


Some say that Einstein had ADHD... what to believe?
I've never heard anyone guess that Søren Kierkegaard should be an Aspie... why do you think he was? Just curious. :)



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01 Dec 2007, 1:56 pm

Kierkegaard was incredibly pedantic and highly accomplished in his field at a very early age. However, he had serious social difficulties. He had a bizarre obsession with his fiancee, Regina Olsen, whom he rejected. He didn't feel he could be married and be a minister at the same time. However, he writes about her quite a bit.
Some of his social difficulties can be attributed to the social climate of Copenhagen and how caustic it seems, they criticized everything and made sport of it. However, people specifically picked on Kierkegaard's difficult-to-read style of writing, repetitiveness (in writing and speech) even referring to him as a parrot.
In Jens Andersen's biography of Andersen, he addresses Andersen's and Kierkegaard's common issues: "loneliness, a fear of women, enthusiasm over fairy tales, an interest in the importance of childhood, and a desire to figure out other people."

Hans Christian Andersen actually inserted him into a play of his as a parrot, that the audience could easily identify, "an exotic bird who philosophically babbles on, constantly shaking his head and sending ripples through his birdlike coiffure and crooked nose.<snip>And many people in the city nodded with recognition at this bird who was so good at 'making a quip, quip, quip' and lavishly scattering philosophical remarks, such as: 'Now, let's be sensible people!'"
Kierkegaard was an ambitious theology student, though obsessed with fairy tales as well, needing to curb his hobby for his studies. However, his first paper was on Andersen, a critique. His disliked Andersen's sentimentality and felt fairy tales should be for adults.

Source: Jens Andersen's, Hans Christian Andersen, A New Life, A Kierkegaard Anthology and some other Kierkegaard source that's not in front of me that I read a long time ago.

I haven't heard anyone discuss Kierkegaard at all since college, let alone if he was an Aspie. :D On the surface, Kierkegaard and Andersen have very similar lifestyles. But I think they are dramatically different people.



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01 Dec 2007, 2:05 pm

blue_bean wrote:
The only two reasons I can think of to diagnose dead people would be (a) closure for family and friends, and (b) for research purposes (eg. diagnosing Einstein with AS in order to finish that last chapter of a book about his life).
No other reasons exist IMO, unless the dead can claim social security based on thier diagnosis or something :lol:

Einstein could not have been aspie,he had significant language delay and years later stated himself he had not been able to speak,there's a whole section about Einstein and his relatives [some of who were/are also on the spectrum] in Thinking In Pictures,he would have been classic/kanner type.


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01 Dec 2007, 2:11 pm

Kingdom, some say that he never had delayed speech. So, there are apparently different accounts of his development.



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01 Dec 2007, 4:56 pm

Michaelangelio apparently had AS too.