Taboo thread #1: A possible theory about the nature of AS.

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Actually, yes. I have heard several mental health professionals describe people (sometimes me, sometimes others) as weird, eccentric, crazy, batshit, oddball, half a bubble off plumb, and a number of other colloquial versions of "weirdo" and "crazy".

A couple of things about your main point, though:

1. Why are you asserting that autistic people lack sociability altogether? We're supposed to (according to popular opinion anyway) lack certain typical forms of social skills, but not necessarily to lack any social desires. (People have at times attributed that to autistic people, but what they have really seen in most cases is simply a lack of typical social body language.)

2. If you are claiming that autistic people lack a trait fundamental to humanity, how can you say that it is fundamental to humanity? If autistic people truly lack that trait, then it cannot be fundamental to humanity, because it is impossible for a creature to lack a trait fundamental to its own species, or it would be a separate species.

3. Humanity is described accurately as a social species in that we depend on each other to survive. It does not mean that every single one of us enjoys particular forms of social interaction. You are mixing up two different meanings of 'social'. One is 'sociability', the other is 'depending upon one another for survival'. If I need to have surgery, I am far more interested in the surgeon's ability to make the necessary repairs to my body, than I am in his or her sociability. If I use an invention, I do not care if the person who invented it was a social butterfly. If I use a public restroom, I don't care about the social habits of the janitor who cleaned it. Surgeons, inventors, janitors, and many other people, contribute to the survival of other human beings in ways that have nothing to do with how inclined they are to socialize.

I am not saying that in order to say that people's existence should be justified by their contributions, nor that all contributions are as tangible and easily quantified as these are. I am just showing that "sociability" is not what is meant when we're said to be a social species, and that there are many people who contribute to others' survival (the actual meaning implied by "social species") in ways that require no sociability of the "hi how are you?" sort.

This is similar to how the word "antisocial" when used technically, does not really mean "introverted," it means "commits acts that harm society as a whole and/or cause harm to other members of the species," such as murder, gratuitous theft, etc. A person can be quite friendly and social in the "sociability" sense, and be given to antisocial acts that severely harm other human beings. (Such people are, in fact, rarely autistic. Autistic people have as much conscience as anyone else, this has been studied.) So the inventor/surgeon/janitor who doesn't like hanging out with people is not antisocial (may in fact be quite the opposite) but also isn't sociable, and the charming, outgoing, and friendly mass murderer is highly sociable but antisocial.

Given a choice of which people were entrusted with my survival, I would choose an unsociable but non-antisocial person every time over a friendly and perfectly socially-skilled but antisocial person.

Do you take her advice to heart and try and change or do you deny her analysis?



Autistic people lack socialbility. That is what makes someone autistic. It is not only about lacking social skills. People with AS do not have nearly the desire or need to socialise that NTs do. It is severely lacking. This is what makes autistic people flawed.

Regardless, the ability to be social (or skills) is a fundamental human characteristic. Have you ever been around a 3-5 year old neurotypical child and saw how they interact with others? Their minds might not be developed like a 30 year old person with AS, but believe it or not, that baby has better social skills than the 30 year old. They respond to communication from others better than the 30 year old. Take the time to observe a young NT child and you will understand.



It doesn't mean we are a separte species. We can still be human, but be severely flawed. Most people on this board believe there is nothing wrong with the way we are and that we are not flawed in any way. We are just "different". No we are not just different. Something is wrong with the way we think and act around other people.





If those people can't socialise or doesn't have social skills, something is wrong with them as well. Just because they can contribute to society doesn't mean nothing is wrong with them.



Yes you are.



1> You are playing semantics.

2> Just because they have a conscience doesn't mean something isn't wrong with them.



Irrelevant to my point.

Last edited by JWRed on 14 Oct 2008, 7:18 pm, edited 6 times in total.

That's clever. I always feel awkward with the term "classic autism" though I have used it, because I think of classic cars and start wanting to go into a monologue about cars.

LePetitePrince, it seems to me that, you have a personal (rather than factual) preference about the issue at hand, and that preference constitutes your reason for arguing the conclusion you are positing.

Much of the reason I conclude this is the incoherent nature of your argumentation. It has all the hallmarks of post hoc rationalization, and none of the hallmarks of reasoning that lead one to a conclusion.

Your preferred conclusion appears to be that there is only a narrow range of manifestations/presentations that are actually autism, and all other 'cases' are instances of personality traits being misdiagnosed. The earlier group excludes, and the latter group includes most (if not all) persons with Asperger's Syndrome and/or 'very-High functioning autism'.

If you hope to convince people of this, perhaps it would help if you constructed an argument (substantiating or at least supporting your preferred conclusion), that is at least as convincing as the alternative contrary theory you are arguing against (in arguing your theory). Whether you wish to argue there is no such thing as AS and/or very high functioning HFA, or that personality is the cause of the behavior/trait/characteristic cluster that the AS diagnosis refers to, you have not constructed a single convincing argument for either.

It is difficult to conclude that you reached your position because of the reasons you give in trying to convince us, because they seem inadequate to producing such a result in the context of objective reasoning. What fits better with the incoherence, incompleteness, stretching, lack of substance and mud-slinging that constitutes your argument/reasoning on this issue, is that you have a particular conclusion that you want to be true, and any reasoning is secondary to, and employed only for the purpose of, supporting that conclusion.

Have you considered that the extent to which your preference for a particular conclusion may be generating a level of cognitive bias, in the absence of sufficient compensatory measures, is impairing your reasoning on this particular issue? If you have some good fact/logic cause to have arrived at the conclusion you posit, you've not communicated it in your posts.

Last edited by pandd on 14 Oct 2008, 9:01 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Actually, I do have a lot of social desire, and enjoy socializing. I like to converse and engage socially, but I do wear out quickly, and due to language, speech, auditory, and sensory issues, end up usually being pretty quiet, and I don't give typical NT body language.

So while there is a subset of autistic people who lack social desire (perhaps this subset is quite significant, I don't know how large a subset it is), it's not everyone.

Are you actually thinking of Schizoid Personality Disorder? As an 'aspie' without SPD, I have always had a lot of desire and need to socialise. It's the feeling for naturally mixing in with others that didn't come.



This is true from a functional point of view; as when a car engine has parts that won't work. However, it would also be wrong to spend the rest of your life fuming over it, because the result of that would most likely be underachievement in every aspect of life. I should know .



I'm not sure I agree. Asking for anything over and above a fair contribution to society from your own or anyone else's life seems excessive.

I don't see why ANYONE on the spectrum should have to defend their disorder as 'just autistic enough'.

You know, LePetitPrince, maybe you should look into PDD-NOS.
It may be where you fit, since you feel you are "not autistic enough" to be HFA, but can not be labeled with asperger's (because of your speech delay.)

Just a thought.

Sooo... what do you do with disabled Aspies? There's plenty of us out there.

You seem to be desperately clinging to the idea that disability is bad and wrong and horrible and must be cured, to the point that you insist on dividing the Spectrum arbitrarily, assigning the label to one half but not the other, and then insisting that the two halves are fundamentally different. But the line is just that--arbitrary. AS can be a disability. People skip from disabled to non-disabled depending on how old they are, where they are, their stress levels, and how people treat them. The line between disabled and non-disabled just can't be neatly placed across the spectrum.

If you drop the idea that disability is inherently bad, then your entire house of cards falls flat.

If disability isn't inherently bad, then that means you don't have to try to single out who's disabled and who isn't; you don't have to put an arbitrary line between them. You just have to treat both sides as humans with basic rights--including the right not to have their personalities, however off the norm, forcibly altered. In fact, you can begin to drop the bad connotation from the word "abnormal" altogether. Abnormal is just something that doesn't happen as often as something else. If it happens to be a very low skill or an unusual, disabling neurological trait, then that's still neutral.

You just can't put "that's abnormal" at the top of the list when you look at a person. Or even "that's disabling". Human rights always come first.

^Thank you, Callista. I agree.

Yes, yes, yes, ten times yes!

I'm new to this, but I don't think the concept of the 'spectrum' is about the personal experience of the individuals in the spectrum. I think it is a neurological similarity between Autistics and likewise a difference with NTs that defines the spectrum. It makes sense to me that those with the more extreme (for a lack of a better word) neurological difference would have much more dramatic experiences than those with the much milder differences.

I think I understand the tendancy to be negative about Autism, and thinking of it as a disorder. It's natural to think that way when navigating a world primarily dominated by NTs, and experiencing difficulties your entire life; especially if you are still having difficulty finding a nitch.

If a young woman is told she is fat all the time, she would think something is seriously wrong with her (even if she isn't really fat). Besides, don't forget that perspective is everything, and a girl who is considered chubby, or even fat, in one culture, would be welcomed with flowers in others. In the wrong culture she may become bolemic, anarexic, depressive, or what have you

The problem with the spectrum is that there is no nation of Autistics and AS's so it can be even more difficult for us to keep perspective. I'm really hoping though that wrong planet keeps moving in that direction and continues to validate all of us.

Not that its not difficult, but I believe autism and AS people really awsome, and that we have tons to offer; and believe me, it is not just pep talk.

Re: what JWRed said, I have better things to do with my time than to continue to talk to someone who clearly wants to insist they know what's in my head already (as in, when I talk about a hypothetical "Even if this were true, then it wouldn't work out to meaning such-and-such" situation, and then clarify by saying "But I'm not saying it's actually true", and the person response with "yes you are"). This is a good example of where communication is clearly not the point of the conversation, therefore I am out of my depth.

I want to communicate (said in the style of Luke Skywalker telling Princess Leia "I care" in episode 4).

Anbuend, you made some good points before, though I have to admit, you lost me on the last one -but maybe that's the point

From the [url=http://www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/asperger/detail_asperger.htm
]National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke[/url]:


What causes AS? Is it genetic?

Current research points to brain abnormalities as the cause of AS. Using advanced brain imaging techniques, scientists have revealed structural and functional differences in specific regions of the brains of normal versus AS children. These defects are most likely caused by the abnormal migration of embryonic cells during fetal development that affects brain structure and “wiring” and then goes on to affect the neural circuits that control thought and behavior.

For example, one study found a reduction of brain activity in the frontal lobe of AS children when they were asked to respond to tasks that required them to use their judgment. Another study found differences in activity when children were asked to respond to facial expressions. A different study investigating brain function in adults with AS revealed abnormal levels of specific proteins that correlate with obsessive and repetitive behaviors.

Scientists have always known that there had to be a genetic component to AS and the other ASDs because of their tendency to run in families. Additional evidence for the link between inherited genetic mutations and AS was observed in the higher incidence of family members who have behavioral symptoms similar to AS but in a more limited form. For example, they had slight difficulties with social interaction, language, or reading.

I guess those wicked Nazis were into gene manipulation and neurodesign, too, huh?

marbledog... what's your point?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jnLT2EfLepo&feature=related[/youtube]