Use of the word "autism"

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Hardly anything fits me. Aside from the lack of interest in others. My mind is AS but my motor skills, movements, eye gaze etc aren't autistic.

I'm closer to an NT in almost all regards, yet I'm expected to acknowledge autists as my "kin" rather than NT's, because I have AS?
My relatives are NT people, I'm different from them but I'm even MORE different from an autistic person. I CAN identify and relate to much of what NT people do and think even though I can't be like them 100% and experience everything they experience the same way. However, the world of an autist is alien to me.

If hardly any of those criteria fit you then I don't understand how you could have been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome.

Because I developed? I was always rather high functioning but my mind evolved further. I had some of those things as a five year old but not as a 12 year old when I was diagnosed. Autism is supposed to be permanent, a brain damage which is visible on scans. I had no permanent damage, my behaviour patterns changed and evolved many times. When I think, I think more like an NT than an autist. I feel "uncomfortable" around most autists and even most people with AS but can bond with NT people if our personalities match. The AS doesn't really matter if I meet an NT I have chemistry with.

Surely, then, if you once possessed many of the aspects that are shared between AS and Autism, you should be able to relate to/identify with people with Autism on some level.

Reality must be seen in relation to the current time and age. I accept change, I don't see things as fixed and unchangeable. If I would have had the theory of mind as a five year old to understand why I was the way I was and recognize this in others, I might have related to others like that. However, today that's long gone. I must relate to what I am today.

A nation isn't automatically "great" because it's built on the same place as an ancient, long gone civilization which was world leading in it's age. Everything must be seen in relation to the present and presently I do not relate to autists.

I'm dxed with AS but meet criteria for HFA, so I feel okay to answer this too. What would you say are really AS-ish features about you? Because in the following I can only speak about what a person with AS is supposed to have and base my lists of similarities and differences on that. No idea what applies to you about AS/classical and what not.

Obsessions though do apply to you from what I gathered if I remember correctly? I personally don't have them at all (very atypical yeah haha), but from what I know about kids with both disorders and have read about some users here with definite classical a common traits are obsession. The obsessions are in both sets of criteria too, meaning those with AS and those with classical can have them by definition.

According to the current versions of both DSM and ICD, kids and adults with AS can have the same problems to learn appropriate eye-contact, facial expressions, gestures and body posture as those with classical autism. In both AS and classical making friends and establishing other relationships appropriate to developmental level (romantic, for one) can be impaired. The DSM also says that in both AS and classical kids may lack the motivation to have friends, though adolescents and adults may have it.

Not a similarity but a connection is that in family with AS there's an increased risk for not only AS but also classical autism.

By definition, the social deficit in a person with AS is supposed to be as severe as that in a person with classical autism. (Non-verbal deficits, difficulty in relationships, no emotional and social back-and-forth, no appropriate reaction to emotions of others)

The supposed difference is that those with AS are actively trying to be social and engage other people in an eccentric, one-sided way. Those with classical are supposedly often indifferent to others and do not care to be social.

More differences according to the definitions are that those with AS usually do not have motor mannerisms (those with classical usually have), while those with classical sometimes have special skills such as amazing calculation abilities, reading abilities, ability in art and music that a normal child this age doesn't have (no such thing for AS).

The critera are just a load of unproven BS. They change every three years or so. My AS can't even be physically proven by an EEG or brain scan. SO I don't value strictly theoretical criteria at all. Many, many psychiatric diagnosises have been flawed, wrong and abandonded with time.

I'm still strongly in favor of splitting AS off from the "spectrum" and giving everyone who isn't happy with this the diagnosis HFA. To me, AS is something different. This is based on my own mind and experiences of both psychiatry and others with AS or autism. Most people like me are actually undiagnosed but still clearly AS.

You can give me all that crap about "it's empirically yada yada yada" but it's still a fact that when I grew up, one man named Christopher Gillberg ALONE dictated how the critera should look. This, coupled with the fact I don't even have a visible brain damage and have other non autistic traits like a perfectly balanced IQ with no jumps or leaps, makes me look at the critera as meaningless. They mean nothing and aren't even close to the truth.

Also, even as a three year old I felt intuitively that it was wrong to fart in public and I was usually embarrassed when NT kids did things like that.

I see. If the criteria are unproven BS, then I am sure you have proven your own subjective imagination about what AS is with objective evidence so that your opinion isn't unproven BS as well, yes?

I can't say I disagree too much with your assessment of the criteria as I also do not think they provide a valid explanation and definition of AS and classical, though I do realise their importance and worth as the current only way to define AS and classical with an acceptable quality, but your argumentation sure is funny!

I think I might have an idea about what you mean though. A little hard to get, because your post made laugh, but I think I got it actually.

Some people with AS are just totally not like the rest and I also sometimes come to doubt if they have a known PDD at all because they seem to have the developmental disorder or a developmental disorder of childhood, but nothing more than that. Then of course, on the other side, there are people who clearly have some form of PDD. Yet currently, both are grouped under PDDs as 'AS'.

I don't really like that personally, because people get the wrong idea about PDDs all the time anyway and this broad grouping under the same label only adds to the confusion. I usually feel like blowing up on people who claim I must be oh so close to normal, probably misdiagnosed with AS because I am so much like the. Then I'm always like, sure hon, you wish, my symptoms are moderate to severe but I have but I made an effort and that makes me ten times more awesome and successful than you could ever be.

For reasons of comfortability, I'd prefer if people wouldn't assume I'm the same as someone who looks similarly but is actually very very mildly affected by their AS and hasn't done as much as me and is just totally not worth being associated with me in respects to overcoming symptoms and 'AS achievements'.

Oh yeah and Gillberg's can't be compared to DSM and ICD. He compares badly to the ICD, mixing the spectrum up where the ICD-10 separates some HFA and AS.

Glad that he's not used where I live because according to him, I'd not even be on the spectrum! I couldn't be diagnosed by using Gillberg's criteria. I'm surprised you are then though? You can't be that totally mild if you once met Gillberg's criteria, you know.

The diagnosis boom in Sweden in the 90's was more based on the psychiatrists personal oppinions rather than any rulebook of critera. The people who used the Gillberg critera suggested I had borderline while a specialized psychiatrist who viewed herself as "above" others and took inspiration from other scientists, as well as doing research of her own, diagnosed me at age 12. The ones I had to deal with were probably Gillberg diagnosed. Autists diagnosed with AS. The one who diagnosed me also seemed to do it to have a guinea pig for her new medications. She was one of the first in Sweden to introduce Anafranil and Risperdal in AS treatment and she tested about 8 different medicines on me over 4 years. Every single one backfired. When I was 16 she lost interest in experimenting with me and just recommended other "non psychiatric instances" to take over. I never saw her again and my family didn't have anything to do with her after that. I still feel I was diagnosed so she could experiment. I know she was a very ambitious person because just a few years ago she also tried to get into politics to advance further in her career. Maybe she was even after some professor's title or something, I don't know. It was pretty clear she experimented in order to have material to "impress" her colleagues with.

The fact remains that I have never ever met another diagnosed aspie like me, with the same kind of fine tuning. My best friends in school were "nerds" and hyper-empathic, but not autistic in any way. They seemed to understand WHY I was in social pain and got into conflict without us ever talking about it and with those people I didn't have social difficulties either. We got along well, they understood my body language fine etc... We joked all the time in a nerdy and maybe not typical, but still NT kind of way. Several of those people were also shy so I was kind of the bridge between the nerds and the rest. I held people together because I wasn't naturally like those in any group but others liked me for my weird humour and sometimes outrageous behaviour. I hanged out with the nerds but everyone talked to me and appreciated my humour and lack of social limits.

I once had many autistic traits, most dissapeared with age. I still have a few very invisible ones I can hide, they only concern me and my need for privacy because of social exhaustion at times.

Last edited by Zoonic on 31 May 2009, 6:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

ASDs are a continuum that merge into the typical--we all know that. It's not at all illogical that someone with a barely diagnosable ASD might have more in common with the typical range than with the definitely-autistic group.

(This is a simplistic way of thinking of it, because the continuum has dozens of dimensions, not just one, and merges into the typical along all of them. Still, it should be possible to say "barely diagnosable ASD" as someone who is very close to typical on all the possible dimensions.)

I don't know why that would be considered either negative or positive; people identify more with people who are like them than not like them. But strength of traits is not the only way that one person might identify with another; having similar traits is another reason; so is having similar interests, being from similar cultures, or having had similar experiences. Maybe you simply have more in common with most neurotypicals than with most autistics.

Whether you identify with most autistic people or not shouldn't stop you from believing that they should have the same rights as anyone else. You don't have to think less of someone simply because you don't connect well with them. That's why I said it was a neutral thing not to connect with most autistic people... There's not necessarily a connection between seeing yourself in someone else and caring about them. It's the same reason one can care about someone without feeling emotional empathy.

Incidentally, yes, I use "autistic" as a general term for the entire autism spectrum. I think Asperger's and autism are too similar, with too much overlap between them and no clear dividing line, with too many cases on the borderline between them, to be truly separate entities. Certainly you can pick examples of Autism that are very far away from certain other examples of Asperger's, but you can also pick examples where they are entirely indistinguishable. I am more in favor of a broad range of expressions of Autism than separate entities with different names.

A broad range leads to people who are far apart being treated the same way and fundamentally viewed as functioning in the same way. Many autists are perfectly fine with treatment which would make me feel murderous.

I also want an explanation for why I am the way I am. A proper explanation. The BS other aspies and aspie-specialized psychiatrists give doesn't seem acceptable to me. Accepting it would be like lobotomizing myself and accepting a flawed explanation.

I could say "yay, I'm happy I'm like you!" and be in the aspie sandbox with others, while still not identifying or relating to these people much at all. It wouldn't give me an answer. I am a living paradox because my AS/PDD directly contradicts other aspects of my personality. It's like oil on water.

Last edited by Zoonic on 31 May 2009, 6:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

"And I identify as a corpse, but that doesn't make me dead..."

This thread is so far gone in my opinion... If you are right, and autism does show up on EEG, it would be detectable at birth, and screening would be mandatory, but since that is not the case, I have strong reason to believe that that is wrong. Autistics have a similar brain to epileptics in terms of one particular quality, and maybe what you are thinking of is the stuff they pick up when testing for epilepsy.

I don't think you're a troll. The way you're bringing up the AS vs. Autistic issue all the time makes it look like you have some kind of OCD-like self image problem similar to anorexia nervosa or body dysmorphic disorder. By attacking autistic people are you trying to purge yourself of some niggling fear of appearing autistic? You're so obsessed with your physical appearance that the thought is devastating. I think you're just being paranoid.

Last edited by marshall on 31 May 2009, 6:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Sounds bad. I can imagine that because I know that some professionals here too base their conclusions all on their personal uneducated opinions on what AS is and what it isn't. Hilarious and misleading, because people who clearly could get the diagnosis according to ICD-10 aren't receiving it. (Can't say there's much of an explosion in numbers of diagnoses here, but I expect it to happen.)

Same here, strange enough. I didn't found one similar to me so far. Especially none that presents the same as me with my unique combinations of a certain form of AS/HFA, ADHD and inherited traits of a guy with a I think sure but undiagnosed PD.

Yes, that's it. I want to purge myself of self hatred and I also had BDD tendencies (but surgery cured this) and I am a perfectionist when it comes to appearence, hygiene etc. I feel awkward in an environment full of sweaty people who are just "natural and happy with it" regardless if those are AS or autists or NT. I'm also paranoid by nature and my AS type fits the description of "paranoid boy" from the asperger subtypes. My AS contradicts my other traits. I'm a living paradox and I can't find a way to really handle it. I'm fine with AS as long as I can dictate the terms of it but if I'm compared to others with AS just because we share the same diagnosis, my world crumbles and I feel a compulsive obsessive need to attack people wether it's autists, ethnic groups etc.

I think we sometimes accept being second-class citizens because we don't know how much better it could be, or because we have been told so often that we are inferior. Ask a black guy from the USA in the 1800s how he expects to be treated; then ask a black guy from 2000; you'll get different answers. And yet they both have the same fundamental rights. Part of any civil-rights movement is to teach people that they don't have to accept bad treatment, nor accept assumptions of their inferiority.