Autism <-----> Schizophrenia (Opposites?)

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Juggernaut
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30 Mar 2012, 2:42 pm

Sweetleaf wrote:
All people with autism have ordered, rather than disordered mind? from what I've heard some people have schizophrenia and autism, so couldn't one potentially have an ordered and disordered brain or neither of those even?


I'm not saying all people with autism have an ordered mind. I'm saying autism cognition is a functional means for creating order just as other functional cognitive styles create order - just via a different route. No cognitive style is defined by having order - if it does create functional order, it is defined by the means in which it does so.

Schizophrenia on the other hand is defined by a lack of order - the outcome of this defining deficit is that the order the schizophrenic attempts to create is fundamentally dysfunctional, for it has no correlation to an underlying order.

Yes, an autistic person can become schizophrenic, because our means of ordering the world can dysfunction just as the non-autistic person's cognitive process can break down.

Actually, I bet autistics are actually (statistically) more likely to become schizophrenic, simply as the result of having more mental health issues (this applies to any outlier; high IQ and low IQ also correlate to mental health issues)



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31 Mar 2012, 8:54 am

Juggernaut wrote:
Ganondox wrote:

Last time I checked hyper empathy wasn't associated with schizophrenia.


Correct. I am referring to the tendency to see intention everywhere which has been defined as hyper-empathy to fit the schiz/autism model.

Random thinking "outloud"

I get paranoid, obsessively perceiving intention, and it's precisely because I can't read people. Perhaps schizophrenics do the same. I see excessive intention on the social level because I'm looking for it, because my brain works well enough to realize that people I interact with have intentions, even if I can't read them intuitively. So, I look for them and this can be taken to excess.

The schizophrenic also has trouble reading people, but it's because his mind is falling apart and attributing everything to intention is his way of making sense of all the splintered bits. So he is not hyper-empathizing, he is creating false connections, which is the opposite of empathy, in the sense that empathy means one person making a true connection with another.

The paranoia of an autistic is inferring intention on social signals because you don't understand them, so you just assume everything has some meaning, even though you don't understand what it is. Thus, it's the result of a logical mind that is blind to social signals getting carried away looking for them.

Schiz. paranoia is looking for patterns, and being unable to find them due to a mind breaking down, latches on to some over-arching intention, some conspiracy, even in absence of anyone being around.

Maybe the autistic mind is in fact the opposite of schizophrenia - but only in the sense that an ordered mind is the opposite of a disordered mind. Well, in that sense, any sort of functioning mind is the opposite of schizophrenia. So, with that conclusion, I'm going to go ahead and call B.S. on the aut/schiz. theory.


Well I'm an aspie and hyper-empathetic and what that means in my case is that I can experience others' peoples emotions as my own and even at a more intense level e.g I might be even more sad for someone's sorrow than they actually are which is a kind of emotional over-understanding I presume. On the other had I am a-sympathetic since I cannot share those emotions with synchronicity, my emotional hyper-empathy comes from an "intellectual" understanding of others emotions which means that I cannot be sympathetic and share those emotions as they are displayed, I am always off key.
Anyhow, I too am calling B.S on this theory. I know someone on the schiz. spectrum and he is actually completely functional in society, the only thing one might notice is his short fuse after jumping to conclusions.



evil_expresso
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20 Apr 2012, 6:05 am

Autism brain and the Schizophrenic brain may very well be opposites!

"Both the systemizing/mechanistic skills characteristic of the male brain and the empathizing/mentalistic skills characteristic of the female brain are distributed normally in the population. It means that most men and most women have their sex-typical brains in the moderate range, but some people have extremely strong or extremely weak versions (just like most people are of average height, but some people are extremely tall or extremely short). What are the “extreme male brain”? What are the “extreme female brain”?"

Here's an article on such a topic:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the ... le-brain-w



OddDuckNash99
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20 Apr 2012, 6:59 am

I don't see this at all. Schizophrenia results in the positive symptoms of psychosis and the negative symptoms of poverty of thought/speech and apathy. There are lots of neuropsych disorders that don't result in these symptoms, so how are ASDs specifically the opposite?


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20 Apr 2012, 11:26 am

evil_expresso wrote:
Autism brain and the Schizophrenic brain may very well be opposites!

"Both the systemizing/mechanistic skills characteristic of the male brain and the empathizing/mentalistic skills characteristic of the female brain are distributed normally in the population. It means that most men and most women have their sex-typical brains in the moderate range, but some people have extremely strong or extremely weak versions (just like most people are of average height, but some people are extremely tall or extremely short). What are the “extreme male brain”? What are the “extreme female brain”?"

Here's an article on such a topic:

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the ... le-brain-w


Wait a minute, this seems kind of ignorant actually:
The male brain tends toward systemizing and mechanistic thinking, treating other people as if they were logical systems or machines. If you take this tendency to an extreme, you would treat everyone as if they were machines without minds or feelings. That, according to Baron-Cohen, is the essence of autism, which he calls “mindblindness.” Mindblind people (autistics) are blind to other people’s minds or emotions. In fact, they don’t even know that other people have minds separate from their own; autistics tend to assume that other people know and think exactly what they do. Baron-Cohen’s notion of autism as the extreme male brain explains why an overwhelming majority of autistics (four out of five) are men and there are relatively few female autistics (although, once again, there are exceptions to the general pattern; there is an occasional “girl with a boy’s brain.”)

And most women I know do not treat machines and objects as people...and it is quite ridiculous to attribute schizophrenia to that, hearing voices that sound real is hardly the same thing as treating objects as people, or thinking they have feelings emotions. Also if shizophrenia is the 'extreme' female brain why statistically speaking are most schizophrenics male? how does the author explain that one?


where is this author getting his information because so far I'm not sure whether to laugh or be saddened by the ignorance.


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20 Apr 2012, 12:10 pm

I don't think autism and schizophrenia are opposites at all. In fact I know people who have both.

I also feel like I have some traits that are vaguely in common with schizophrenics, from first hand experience interacting with them. It seems they are people who have a lot going on inside their mind but no way to express it to others. I've felt this way before. They're also very obsessive and constantly thinking and making up theories, something I can also relate to. Even if they come across as a bit illogical and nutty, I don't mind listening to them as I'm sure they appreciate not being dismissed, laughed at, or treated condescendingly.



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16 Feb 2013, 9:05 am

I have both autism and schizophrenia, and I am pretty sure they are not opposites. If they are, my mind is way more screwed up than I thought it was ^-^


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16 Feb 2013, 12:11 pm

For real.

I would all cancel out and you would be normal if the two conditions really were "opposite".

Nature does not necessarily set up things with opposites.

And schzophrenia is a such a broad category with so many subdivisions that it probably the opposite of itsself.

Ive toyed with the notion that the opposite of psychosis is clinical depression. Depressed people are hyperaware of dangers in the world and might be thought of 'hypersane'.

But thats another topic.

You might break schzophrenia down to some narrow subtype - like paranoia and try to imagine an opposite condition.

Folks say the the "opposite of autism is William's Syndrome"- a rare condition in which the person is compelled to socialize nonstop. Makes sense to me.

But I dont see how szchophrenia and autism are opposite- in fact both involve being self involved - and being cut off from the outside reality.



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16 Feb 2013, 12:42 pm

Schizophrenia and Autism are very different. A person with Schizophrenia Paranoid type is usually paranoid 95 percent of the time, they seek out conspiracy sites as a way to relate to the paranoia that is inherent to their brain state. I never had that, but at one point I got diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, schizo-affective, schizophrenia undifferentiated, adhd, bipolar and finally with just one look a woman says 100 percent she's certain I've been misdiagnosed, that they need to change my treatment plan and I'm actually high functioning Autistic. But I'm such a good actor, that I could play any role!

Sometimes society projects its fears onto a person, and in a way scapegoats them into schizophrenia because they're too lazy to figure or read between the lines of what's actually going on. Words don't always fit to explain a certain state of mind because people are so complex and so is consciousness.

My doctor and therapist started to suspect I had been previously misdiagnosed based on the fact I've been doing well in college, that I can drive, I have no cognitive deficits, I'm never paranoid. My problem? I'm very susceptible to suggestive input. So if someone told me I had schizophrenia, I would look it up and apply it to myself. If someone said I had Bipolar, I'd start acting moody. Because these labels display only a fraction of human consciousness and the ability of the mind. People aren't always sad, or always happy. I'm never moody either. But anti-depressants make me ill as they do for many people. Since I can't take them, my doctor than adds bipolar to the mix even when the mania went away off Prozac etc. It feels so manufactured. I only heard voices when I was put on a high dose 180mgs of Geodon against my will. I only got catatonic after being put on Risperdal, I even got the fatal face rash on Lamictal.

Maybe I'm just sensitive to medications!?

For someone who's been on the schizophrenia spectrum for like eight years, I know that schizophrenia equates to pure socialist BS. At least for me, and many others who have probably been misdiagnosed. But my doctors never account my childhood or my life situations, they just look at the book as if that's more real than the person in front of them.


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16 Feb 2013, 12:54 pm

I don't think they are opposites either. I think that all diagnoses like autism, schizophrenia, schizoid, ADHD, bipolar etc are all related to each other. A lot of people will have a little of all of them. I think I might be one of thoose people who have a little dash of every diagnose. I am diagnosed with ADHD, and I am pretty sure I have an ASD as well. I also have elements of schizoid and probably also bipolar.



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16 Feb 2013, 1:59 pm

Schizophrenia means bad interaction between left and right hemisphere.

Autism means over connectivity or under connectivity or under connectivity in some parts of brain.

Autist also has some less connectivity between hemispheres and can lead to schizophrenia if they have the similar or same problem as schizophrenics.

More importantly the different wiring in autistic brains is clearly creating differently pronounced AS symptoms. Some may be very logical may have bad memory for learning in school, but still may have great rote memory etc.

I think an AS with lack of motivation or with problems to focus maybe miss diagnosed and labeled Schizophrenic too.

Also bad communication and lack of communication may cause autist to withdraw from social interaction. The withdrawal is different from schizophrenic people, because schizophrenic people withdraw from society, because they can not comprehend other people. Not that they can not read them. Honestly the confusion is pretty obvious here.

However schizophrenic may have episodes where they think something that is not real. For example they may seem to see aliens. And apart from normal people they can not tell this is not true. A non schizophrenic person will think about aliens. But will not say that they do exist until they actually see them. But schizophrenic person will point to sky for example and say “Look aliens!”, nothing will be there.



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16 Feb 2013, 3:09 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
For real.

I would all cancel out and you would be normal if the two conditions really were "opposite".

Nature does not necessarily set up things with opposites.

And schzophrenia is a such a broad category with so many subdivisions that it probably the opposite of itsself.

Ive toyed with the notion that the opposite of psychosis is clinical depression. Depressed people are hyperaware of dangers in the world and might be thought of 'hypersane'.

But thats another topic.

You might break schzophrenia down to some narrow subtype - like paranoia and try to imagine an opposite condition.

Folks say the the "opposite of autism is William's Syndrome"- a rare condition in which the person is compelled to socialize nonstop. Makes sense to me.

But I dont see how szchophrenia and autism are opposite- in fact both involve being self involved - and being cut off from the outside reality.


l did a lot of research on the schiz spectrum more recently. l got interested in the first place because of family history and then became genuinely interested, especially seeing in how it relates to AS.

l agree with a lot of what your'e saying.

l think it's important to consider the different disorders on the entire schizophrenic spectrum and how some could rather be ambiguous in whether are more similar to autism or schizophrenia and may have been placed on one spectrum or the other largely for reasons related to patients receiving the right kind of aid but also for political reasons.

Some do even appear to be nearly the opposite of each other (schizoid PD being nearly the opposite of StPD in many ways and sharing introversion as one of the only core traits).

So l think when one realizes that schizophrenia can be poorly defined anyway and historically has been, the similariites between the two diagnoses aren't all that frightening to consider.


There is a definite focus on defining autism as something very separate from mental illness which is obviously understandable, but there was great debate about Asperger's itself.

it's still considered to be more similar and also to have more genetic relation to schizophrenia by many professionals, but since it is classified as autism, it's not acceptable for professionals to discuss these similarities.


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naturalplastic
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16 Feb 2013, 6:58 pm

It gets very mirage-y.

All of these labels.

Doesnt it?



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16 Feb 2013, 7:03 pm

lol yes it does.

l feel like l was trolled.


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naturalplastic
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16 Feb 2013, 8:39 pm

[quote="EXPECIALLY"]lol yes it does.

So what brings you to wrongplanet-since you're not on the spectrum?



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16 Feb 2013, 9:05 pm

oh, l've hung around here for a long time. kind of, l just don't post for months on end. l considered the idea of AS many, many moons ago but never self diagnosed.

Are you kicking me out lol?


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