Do ALL Aspies Have a Special Interest?

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According to Professor Attwood you need one, you need one with Gillberg's criteria too; the oft-snubbed DSM-IV-TR says you don't need to with Asperger's, but it says in the expanded text that they are usually there.

You need to devote much of your time and thought to this special interest, jus' FYI and all; you can have more than one interest, but you must focus on that one interest for a period of time.

For example, I cannot stop thinking of [military] tanks at the moment.

I'm not diagnosed but I absolutely have special interests. Some I've had for years, but others kind of rotate. And some come out of nowhere-- but they're very intense, and leave as quickly as they came. Last time it was all about Mary Pickford (and 1920s film stars, but Mary Pickford mostly).

And some others (some long-time, some that come in spurts) :
Survivalism - specifically, surviving various Doomsday-type scenarios.
Victorian houses, and victorian-era /early 20th century furniture, especially dressers
Acne
Waste management (esp. incineration)
The occult & paranormal
Eating disorders, brain tumors, surgery horror-stories (like anesthesia awareness)
Places - Ireland (county donegal in particular), New Orleans, Romania, Maine, and Crimea, Ukraine.
People - Abraham Lincoln Mary Pickford, Virginia Woolf, Janis Joplin
Volcanoes - supervolcanoes mostly (I'm very paranoid about the one in yellowstone)
Catholicism
19th century medicine.
Astronomy
Demonology and angelology
Irish & Norse mythology
Animals - moths, sparrows, ravens

My interests are Sport and Internet.

Right at the top - I don't call the interests "obsessions". The only sort of interest that qualifies is the sort that is a threat to your mental health. That is, it encompasses everything to the exclusion of things that are essential (such as eating, sleeping and such).

The correct word in my opinion is "fixations".

Putting timelines on mine is difficult. I still have a passing interest in the things that were at the forefront when I was young - such as pylons (do Americans call them that?), maps and music.

My interests of today have a variable life.

Football (Australian Rules) - 1972 to the present
Pro Wrestling - 1985 to the present
Aspergers (yes I consider it an interest) - 1997 to the present
Rail Travel - 1974(?) to the present
Politics - 1992 to the present
Doctor Who - 1974(?) to the present
MASH - I only recently recognised this even though it's been there for awhile
Star Wars - 1977 to the present
Asterix - 1975 to the present
The Goon Show - 198? to the present (on and off)

Within those interests the focus has changed over the years. The top two I have had the pleasure of participating in (footy as an umpire for 18 seasons - wrestling as a referee, commentator and manager) and I'll tell you what. I recommend it because it's a rush!

I have only ever been interested in just one thing. Now with treatment, I do have other select interests but the main one is what I live for. I too find it good to have a passion in life.

I feel it's a bonus for us aspies. NT's usually have no special passion and often have no goal in life, wandering about it aimlessly.

I've had many special interests. Sometimes I stick with one for years, sometimes it goes away after a few weeks and is replaced by something else. One of the weirder obsessions I have is with names. I love learning the origins and meanings of names, complaining about terrible names, admiring the coolness of good names, reading books of baby names, studying the naming conventions of various cultures, and thinking about what to name future pets or RPG characters, etc. I enjoy GMing partly because of the joy it gives me to be able to name all the NPCs This weird desire to name something is probably the closest thing I'll ever have to a mothering instinct.

A few of my other interests over the years have included bead weaving, reading, writing, programming, learning the words and melodies of all of Simon & Garfunkel's songs (when my classmates were listening to the New Kids on the Block, I was off by myself singing, "The Sun is Burning"), collecting buttons (the Office Space flair kind, not the hold-your-shirt-closed kind), collecting kaleidoscopes, Doctor Who, various video games, various anime and manga, cryptograms, Sudoku, and studying various unconventional types of shelter (like underground caves, concrete domes and yurts).

I have a tendency to hyperfocus on one interest at a time. I was into baseball cards for awhile. Then it was computer programming. After that it was poker. Now that I'm more aware of it, I try not to spend too much time on one thing. I ended up missing out on alot.

Most ppl wid AS who i know do have special interests some have 1 n some have more den 1 n 4 me i have 3 n dey r maps, trains n weather i have other interests but dey don't play a major part of my life.

I'm into rollerblading too. Not just that though, but with Latin, drawing and math primarily.

I can't speak for all Aspies having a particular obsession, though it's entirely possible they have an obsession they either don't recognize as an obsession or they're not aware of it. I, for example, never realized my obsession for math until later in my life.

Here are some of my present (and past) obsessions
Being an airplane pilot
Being an architect
Entertainment industry
70s and 80s and early 90s stuff
vintage electronics
synthesizers
graphic design
logos

No, not all have it.

I have no 'encompassing preoccupation with one or more stereotyped and restricted patterns of interest that is abnormal either in intensity or focus'. I find it confusing to say 'special interest' at times, because really, everyone starts to define it differently and it can confuse you about what it is. I am still a bit confused whether or not I have, because I started out believing I had one. Then I read more about it, heard about it from others and couldn't identify one bit with what I heard.

I have normal interests. They are intense sometimes, but not life-overtaking. I become bored fast and rapidly with most of them, too.

I have many.
However, mine are categorised into primary and secondary and tertiary


Primary

art and painting. never stops and never goes away and the door to that rather large compartment in my brain is ALWAYS open.
oil paint
art materials
life drawing
australian contemporary painting practice.
art theory and public lectures ( i give talks. great at monologuing and lousy at listening.)

Secondaries and tertiaries :
- vary in duration.

my special interest rarely vary in intensity. all beome completely consuming for the period of time i am engaged in them. they help to relieve my sensory dyfuntion problems at times. i can hyperfocus and not hear someone talking 1 meter away from me.
Quite frankly, my special interests feel so good they are akin to a big intravenous blast of coke. (which at one time was a special interest...but i actually no longer partake in it by virtue of the rather precarious fact thait it verily killed me....oh well.)


now, where do i start re seondaries and teritaries?
For the sake of brevity and my son's need fo rbreakfast, i shall not separate out the two tiers:


Patterns and shapes everywhere ...get inebriated by them.
National Geographic Magazine
World Book Encyclopaedias,
marbles.
Rugby league - westerrn suburbs magpies circa early 1970's under the coaching of Roy Masters.
Collecting wine labels.
stamp collecting.
sticks and stones and pebbles.
tobaco smoking at age 9. (became fixated with it.)
The WHO and mods...lambrettas. (saved up and bought one and once i obtained it never even rode it or had anything to do with it again.)
Drugs and alcohol (well, that was propbably a primary for about 12 years, but i shall refrain from further details.)
gardening
gourmet cookery (for a year or so, then never cooked again except when hassled to do so by others.)
middle-distance swimming.
pop-pscychology and 12 step recovery (5 years.)
maps of any kind - purely to look at and not to read.
starving myself (anorexia and dieting in adolescence. )
calorie coutner book (i admit to this one ashamedly. it lasted for years in adolescence. i memeorised the whole thing, just about.)
youtube music clips ( i can sit there for a whole day and can play one song a whole weekend. i did this recently to gary wright's dreamweaver.....a whole weekend. went up into the cosmos with that one.....)
WP
ASD's
fabric painting
small trinkets/objects - preferably animals
cats and dogs - well animals really
nature
Yeats,
Comparative religious study
music
mysticism and spiritualism
chilli sauces
short story writing and poetry (i won an award and then promptly stopped. But i am feeling the twitches to start again soon.)
Dante's Divine Comedy.
Christian Symbolism in art.
India. (particularly southern region south of mumbai.)
particular books --- i will re-read favourite factual books hundreds of times and carry them with me everywhere..better than humans.





Really - i can break down my life in accordance with special interests. there is nothing else.
they completely take over, which makes factoring in what others perceive as normal life to be very difficult. things like the mundane practices of life are literally hurriedly squeezed in between the more important special interests pursuits. Usually i get really fraught and upset when i have to do anything that is not a special interest... it is like ripping kunjewoi from a tidal rock.

eg. i could spend 8 hours a day on WP easily and nothing else gets done. this is how i live.
there is no mid range in me.

Films
TV Shows
Led Zeppelin & other bands which I listen too

I've read that studies show that 90% of Aspies have at least one special interest. So, it is a very, very common symptom of AS, but no, not all with AS have them. And for those who do have special interests, some Aspies focus more intently on their special interests than others. For example, my AS is defined by special interests, not my social deficits, and it is how I garnered a diagnosis. I also started having special interests very early on, around 18 months of age. I have never been without a special interest of some sort, and I think that I'd be really taken aback by the vast change of not having one.
-OddDuckNash99-

Alot of people have said more than one interest but when i think of it ive only really had one major interest at a time. off the top of my head i can remember i had trains (especially thomas the tank engine ) then lego then video games and computers (they kinda count as one)

Simpsons, South Park, urban planning, geography, geology, art, architecture, and foreign languages and cultures.