Is aspergers genetic?

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It's perfectly natural to jump to the conclusion that its genetic, especially if one sees (some of) ones own family members displaying the same kind of behavior, but that idea, if looked at very carefully, can be somewhat easily disputed. Most of the skeptic arguments, just as with the twin studies, are so obvious I kind of hesitate to even present them, at least right now. The fact is that people tend to jump to conclusions that seem to rather easily present from looking at various data, and it can work, and is even very practical in many instances concerning human survival, but in some instances can lead to wrong conclusion. I do this probably as much as the next person, though I do try to watch for it in myself and am always quite amazed when I spot something so obvious but that I previously completely missed seeing.

Also, the point needs to be emphasized that no one is really saying there is not some kind of genetic component which can very much figures into the picture, though I am not sure that in every single instance this is the case.

So, one question that arises is--when a person fights to preserve the genetic-only idea of autism, which I do not see you doing in particular, as you are just stating an opinion, but which I see many doing on WP, what is the functional value of doing this as weighed against the functional value of looking at ones own autism with a keenly observant mind and deeply enquiring into what autism is? I think some approaches are based more on belief whereas other approaches are based more on the desire to try to sort things out coupled with the belief that it will be of value to try to do so.

it also should be noted that anybody who has looked at any volume of so-called scientific or professional opinion on the internet regarding the nature of what autism actually is, it must be very obvious that almost no one is saying that autism or at least most kinds of autism are entirely genetic, though some material from geneticists is obviously slanted more in the direction of trying to prove this (by means of twin studies and other such flawed studies and subsequent under or over-interpreted data:-) And yet this idea of autism being entirely genetic seems to have taken over the thinking of a large segment of the population of people who are autistic. How did this even happened.

I would say a tentative working explanation is that it just happened. Many things start happening when enquiry is taken out of the equation and people start mechanically jumping to conclusions with all kinds of data.

I believe it is..at least in my family. My father has undiagnosed autism (and this took me many years to figure out), my grandfather was possibly autistic as well, my son has autism and I have undiagnosed Aspergers. Can't deny that genetics were involved here.

Genetics are obviously in some way involved in everything a person is experiencing, but this alone does not explain various kinds of behavior in families,

For instance, if a parent suddenly out of the blue hits a very young child very hard for an irrational reason or even for any reason, this will, according to the child's genetic disposition, affect the way the brain of this child develops.

Why aren't more people on WP looking from this angle, also, but rather just from the genetic angle? Kind of weird, isn't it?

In science it doesn't really matter if a theory is convincing, it needs to be proven.

Autism is a multifactorial disorder, meaning there are some genetic components (which are not clearly understood yet) and some environmental ones.

TheCrookedFingers wrote

I had difficulty understanding what was meant by this which if why I stopped posting.. I guess I am kind of slow. Anyway, here is what I cam up with--in terms of understanding oneself and ones own brain function, a theory does not need to be proven to others. of course various theories will be accepted by oneself that may not even be true, but this is how thinking works in terms of self-understanding. Ultimately probably in terms of human interaction, self understanding and happiness, the proof is in the pudding..

After reading many messages on WP in the last year and also doing a lot of reading on the internet and talking to some doctors and researchers who were my customers, etc., it seems to me that people generally understand environmental factors to be some kind of pollutant in the environment, that kind of thing, and not a very child being slapped very hard in the face, which to me is a very blindsided understanding of the word environment.. Am I correct that most people, at least here, understand environmental factors in this way?

I do not understand it in this way but rather as anything that happens to a child after or even before it is born that affects the development of that child, even as a fetus.

This is from The Complete Guide to Asperger's Syndrome by Dr. Tony Attwood:

This is certainly true for me. My father definitely displays some aspie traits, but in a mild way. My son has classic autism. I suspect there is a genetic link.

So the same gene set functions on a spectrum is what you are implying here? I do not know much about biology, but this is one possible explanation I get of what you are trying to say....and/or are you saying that certain kinds of personalities affect certain children in certain ways according to the genetic makeup of these children?

What I mean is that no matter how convincing something seems from a theoretical point of view experiments must be conducted to prove it's likely to be true. And even after a theory seems to be proven, it's still quite possible for it to be wrong, or incomplete. That's just the way the scientific method works.
Statistical studies have been conducted on autism, showing a certain degree of heritability, but not 100% (this means, among other things, that if one homozygous twin has it, there's a pretty high probability that the other has it too, but not 100%).
In genetics, everything that isn't explained by heritability is considered an environmental factor. So yes, being hit should count too.
What I don't understand is, what does it matter if autism is partially explained by genetics, in terms of self understanding?

"TheCrookedFingers" wrote:

Thanks for replying to my message. I don't think it matters at all if autism is partially explained by genetics, except that the knowledge of ones own brain function-- not so much the cause, but what it IS probably does play into sorting things out/. What does matter, though, I think, is if people attribute what they are experiencing entirely to genetics. The latter does not allow for comprehensive mental processing, flex and change, because what about other people's genetics? I forget which thread or who, but someone made this point today. We are all interdependent/ I do think it is important to function from ones genetic self. This is to claim ones natural birthright, and in my experience that has to be earned (back) and not at all easy, because all this other stuff gets mixed in with it and imprinted over it. It is a real rite of passage and the path has many obstacles.

A general comment:---it feels really good to be oneself, meaning ones genetic self, but, yes, as you suggest, with understanding....if a person does not feel good then he is probably not in touch with his natural self....and I would not blame it on other people. That is going up a blind alley...I don't think it is possible for a person to be himself and experience the true benefit of being himself that unless he understands this.

From what I've seen elsewhere, this need for environmental explanations becomes almost ideological, and that while lip service is given to heritability, many people seem almost desperate to assign environmental causes greater validity and strength. Hence you have people like Gabor Mate writing outside of his specialty to find new ways to propagate new versions of the long discredited "refrigerator mother" theory.

Even acknowledgment of the genetic aspects often involve a heavily reliance on Lamarckian inheritance as explained by liberal misunderstandings and/or explanations of epigenetics.

It's all too easy to get dragged down someone else's rabbit hole in these conversations.

I do want to add that I am not saying environment plays no role, or that environment has no impact on how autism or other neurodevelopmental disorders with any heritable basis play out, but that there's a tendency to rely too much on environment just as much as there is to rely too much on genetic/heritability explanations.

Last edited by Verdandi on 14 Apr 2014, 5:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yeah, I got severely scapegoated by my legal father, and he groomed my half-sister (his daughter) to participate in that abuse directed against me as well as against my mother. My biological father is pretty Aspie-like, but he wasn't involved in my upbringing.

My legal father was evaluated as a psychopath by the US Navy before being dishonorably discharged (I think there were incidents that led up to this but I do not have that information). His behavior certainly is consistent with psychopathy, and his daughter certainly inherited many of his bad habits, although I do not believe she is herself a psychopath. And to a large extent he groomed her to be an abuser herself.



I didn't blame my difficulties in life on anything, I just spent all my time trying and failing to make much headway and not understanding why things that were easy for other people were so difficult for me. I did try to find solutions, but few - rarely any - lasted for very long.

For me it seem to be both genetic and environmental.

My mom is a NT with a light prosopagnosia (she can't recognise someone at first when she mets him in a unusual place but remembers right after she starts talking to him) and an obsessive degree interest (gardening - she spends all days in our garden and she always buy new flowers even when she doesn't have enough money for them).

My dad probably got a BPD (he never was diagnosed but he seem to have all the traits). He can change mood with a blink of eye. He seem to be very aware of social cues and manipulative, double faced - he can act like a devil toward us just a moment after he was nice to us but we said a wrong word but a moment later he speaks casually to a neighbor, then when the neighbor is gone he becomes the devil again and yells the hell of us and then stops talking to us for a few weeks although he still talks to other people casually.

His much older sister (almost 70 year old, my father is 50year old, he was born when my grandma was 40) got a serious mental issue, I am not sure what is is but she is on a disability pension her whole life. She is considered a wierdo, she speaks to everyone and even herself, she hangs out with teenagers that make fun of her and she is not able to do anything correctly but maybe it is because she is old already, I remember her acting as my grandmas maid when I was a child (the aunt was about 50 year old back then) and she was cooking, cleaning, taking care of the animals etc fairy enough. She was also always giving me money and chocolates . I like her even though everyone else seem to think she is greatly ret*d and plain crazy.

I probably got some of my aunt genes and my mothers prosopagnosia. The fathers abuse and my moms passion did the rest.

Very much agreed, and its also easy to get dragged down ones own rabbit hole, and I include myself here. And it should be pointed out that subscribing in a blind sided way to the possible role of parenting in the development of a condition, if parenting even does play some kind of role in autism, which I think it may in certain instances, does not lead to comprehensive mental processing. What is interesting is the swing from one thing to it's opposite. That is probably kind of extreme. I think balanced thinking is a craft that can affect brain function (though even holding strictly to the middle can be overdone and turn into a kind of buffer). The capacity to think in a balanced way requires development in most people, and seeing one person do it helps other people learn how. However, some facts are just plain painful and there is no way to completely resolve the pain except by simply feeling it. This is not to imply that feeling emotional pain around social injustice is the solution to changing that injustice or that action does not empower and that learning and insight does not come out of certain kinds of action..

Before I was 10 I realized there was something wrong with me and that my extended family seemed to be under the same curse. I promised myself that I would not pass on the curse if I didn't understand it or couldn't fix it. That was more than 40 years ago and now that I finally understand the curse I am so happy I did not pass it on

I want to be clear that I wasn't referring to you when I made that post. I don't know if you took my comment that way or not, but I realized it is a possibility and wanted to clarify. In this case I wasn't even referring to this forum.

I had to respond to this message, Verdandi, as even though I may disagree with some of the points you are implying, it seemed very good to me in the sense that it is not only presenting a more comprehensive view but also talking about the value of developing a more comprehensive view, and so I wanted to draw attention to this particular message as imo developing a more comprehensive perspective can alleviate a lot of very horrible human suffering/.

But what if you were referring me or people on this forum? We all tend to get caught into these various theories, including our own, and then go down the rabbit hole chasing after them. I think a lot of times it can be quite subtle--it becomes built into the way we are processing data, and we do not even realize we are doing it, so to be on the alert for this in not only ourselves but also in others is one way we can function in a community setting to help each other out. I watched part of a fascinating video today about mercury in children's vaccines which illustrates how people do this, and will be writing about this today or tomorrow on my documentary thread.