Use of the word "autism"

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i do not conceal anything in my life.
those that matter don't mind and those that mind don't matter.
I share information indiscriminately and i also believe the personal is the political, so advocacy starts with personal "I" statements. Aspergers and Autism are not dirty words. The only way I know of profound change in attitude is through decent and honest and balanced education of the masses. Social change is often activated by personal courage. The civil rights movement is a great example of that. In Australia, the honest activism of the indigenous people here is also wonderful. I we show our faces and speak out, talk, and give a face to autism and AS, people have a greater understanding of it.

That may not suit everyone, but it is right for me.

xactly how I handle it, I am a private person BUT my family mum and dad and my aquintances know about my autism aspie etc I am liberal and when I meet a friend after a few weeks/days I will say I have it and telltem about what it means for my relationships, that they are NOT my friend but merel an aquintance for I do not hold people close to me not even family so if one day they don't see me for weeks I've lost interest sounds harsh I know but I believe in honesty, I did know a guy who had a major problem so from that relationship I say got a problem don't bother I don't want to waste my time

I run a venue...and that means dealing with lots and lots of people on a continual basis..while paradoxically having a hard time dealing with people.
While I'm not gonna hang a sign over the bar that says "The Bartender is on the Autistic Spectrum", there are certain times when I feel the need to make certain things understood to some people.
Also, I value the fact that neurodiversity is a major part of the foundation of our venue and the fact that as long as we have been open we have sorta been a beakon/comfort zone for unusual people who have a hard time fitting in and feeling comfortable at a lot of places. We have been having informal AS meet-ups here for almost a year...
(and I forget my point)

I don't plaster it on the wallpaper, but I do like sorta subtly letting people know...and I am certainly not against increasing AS awareness.....

At the same time I have been warned against disclosure for various reasons.... So it's confusing.

I would say AS to others if asked but to myself I sort of think autistic though mildly.

Actually I am not sure I would say anything to anyone about the AS at all, I dont see it as my job to educate them, I just want above all to be able to just get on with things: Ive been through quite enough and I dont want to put myself out there as an anything.

They can already see that I am weird and I am happy to let them believe that, I dont care anymore what they think.

Autism, HFA and AS is VERY DIFFERENT, but not all people open their heart to this. I think the "HFA" guy that goes in my class is misdiagnosed, because when i had a conversation with my private techaer, she said he was "a kid". CHildren do not have Autism, they're not mentally developed, even though they are social, but ret*d people behave worse, like him, he behaves VERY differently than most people with HFA, he speaks like a Downie, and sings Winnie the Pooh songs (which i find very f****** annoying), i'm really beginning to wonder if my psychologist misdiagnosed him, as many others, but goddamn, seriously is there a difference between ret*d people and people with Autism!!

Do you know people (as in, several) with forms of MR who behave 'worse'? There are probably always some people with MR who present much more obvious than those with autism. I mean, there's more to all people with a disability than their disability even if people commonly forget that.

I for example always found that autistic people with the same level of intelligence as others with 'just' LD/MR behave much 'worse' when compared to common standards than the many people with borderline, mild or moderate (no idea beyond that yet) MR.

There are so many autistic people who can't be in a normal classroom, can't talk, can't talk normally, can't go out, can't adjust to changes in routines (obviously)... whereas you can go about a pretty average day with even a young kid with mild or moderate MR. There are not that many weird things, though of cause they can occur with any person no matter their disability or 'normality'.

There was a low-functioning Downie which went to my previous school, and he was destructive sometimes. Even though Autism and downs are different, both can be angry and unstable. But when it comes to the little knowledge my psychologist and techers possess, i have found out that they should be fired for misdiagnosing a mentally ret*d person like the "HFA" guy. You should note that i go to a school for NT's, not for specialnedds people.

Are you talking about purposes of Psychoanalysis or Neurology? What era or school of psychoanalysis or neurology? As understood by whom?

The difference between the autism of Kanner and the autism of Freud and the autism of Asperger and the autism of Miller and the autism of the DSM and the autism of Wing is great. And those are all psychoanalyticals. I follow the school of Wing, for I always follow the school of knowledge which is the most encompassing. Wing says Autism is Autism is Autism.

She happens to be the one who brought the studies of Asperger to everybody's attention through sheer force of will forcing them to adopt the facts that he had discovered. So they created an Asperger's Syndrome. Because they ignored the studies of Miller she was also trying to show them.

More psychiatrists and neurologists are now cooperating and exchanging information and discovering all kinds of important new things about autism, and the more they find the less sense an Asperger's Syndrome makes. There are no specific "types" of autism as we currently describe them, the whole thing is a type of difference in the brain. I follow the school of Baron-Cohen and Hammer. From a genetic generalized analysis of our species, there is a defined difference between male and female. The female brain is more prone to ability in certain tasks and the male brain more prone to ability in others. Autism is the shift in the brain towards an extreme male version of formation. Many things can cause this shift and the specific shifts towards the male we currently identify as autistic are not the only extreme male shifts that can occur.

The current set of behavioral disorders described by psychoanalysis as the Autistic Spectrum, specifically relate to the set of shifts that result in communication deficiencies in exchange for perception superfluity. If the individual has enough intelligence of a specific kind, they can compensate for the lack of certain communicative brain areas with those same perceptive brain areas they have instead. They are actually the same areas, communication is based on perception, in this context the female form of perception is oriented towards relation and the male form of perception is oriented towards systematization.

If they compensate to a certain degree, they get moved from a classical autism to a high functioning autism diagnosis, compensate to another degree and you are now Asperger's Syndrome. The underlying physiological differences remain the same related set of differences, but other variables change the presentation, which changes the psychoanalytical diagnosis.

We even have a limited understanding of the biochemical process by which some of these differences occur, estrogen and related hormones increase relative understanding, testosterone and related hormones increase concrete understanding. During gestation, a radical increase in testosterone while the brain is developing sensory cognition structures in the brain will shift the form they take to emphasize the concrete. We actually experience day to day shifts on our relative/concrete balance simply based on the change in balance between the amount of testosterone and estrogen we are processing.

If you have ever heard of Roid-Rage, it is a reference to this. One of the things that can happen from abusing testosterone injections is that you shift your perceptions to a more concrete form than your mind is used to. You lose your sense of relativity, small slights of your person become reason to respond with the full force of your ability. Somebody cuts you off in your lane of traffic trying not to hit a bicyclist and suddenly you are firing a gun at another human being as you drive down the highway. The constant elevated adrenaline and testosterone levels of come combatants in a theater of war can have a similar outcome on their relative perceptions, as well as the reinforcement of military doctrine, leading to soldiers who have extreme difficulties reintegrating into societies.

Autistic individuals are born with this concrete shift that can make it extremely difficult to understand why human relations are done the way they are. We see the right way to do things in a concrete fact based fashion, somebody shifted more towards harmonious togetherness sees them differently. The vast majority of humanity is far more relational than the autistic, so the autistic by comparison seem unwilling to cooperate with their insistence on abiding by concrete rules and not allowing deviation.

The right thing to do is the right thing to do every time unless you can give a concrete logical explanation on what variable has adjusted the situation. If you are basing it on some relational understanding of how to best progress it will be as much nonsense to us as explaining to you the concrete hard facts will be useless to persuade you away from a relational understanding that the only way to achieve the ends we desire is to not do things the "Right way" but a semi wrong way until people slowly end up at the right way at a later point.

Personally, the use of the word Autism or Autistic can be in relating to many things regarding this interesting area of people, myself included therefore when I refer to myself as being autistic, I'm not stating I have atypical autism but, tend to be many people with an autistic spectrum condition overall..I hope this works as an explanation??

The distinction betweeen HFA/AS is blurry and may be diagnostically moot; I have a dual Dx. I do know the formal definition between HFA/AS (that is language/developmental delay) but still doesn't necessarily hold true.

Anyway...I do refer to myself as Autistic. More specifically, an Autist. Autist is an all-inclusive term (that is, all and anywhere along the spectrum) so it's always appropriate. Aspie is fine too. The dilemma can be some in the general public truly do not know 'Asperger's Syndrome!' Or don't know it's an ASD! Lab Pet has a high genetic propensity; Autist seems the refined way of referring to self, yes? Not to be caught in the semantics.

I am Autistic and fine with saying/writing so. Specifically Autist.

I say I have Asperger's because I live in a residential for people with autism and disabilities and I see the big difference between autistic people and me. In my place, i am the only one with Asperger's and Aspergers is on the spectrum but not considered the same as high functioning autism. the HFA's in my program have way mental retardation and are not as independent and capable of taking care of themselves. They need 24/7 assistance from staff and can not be able to go out on their own, like I can. That is what i was told by the residential people just recently.

I say I have Asperger's because I live in a residential for people with autism and disabilities and I see the big difference between autistic people and me. In my place, i am the only one with Asperger's and Aspergers is on the spectrum but not considered the same as high functioning autism. the HFA's in my program have way mental retardation and are not as independent and capable of taking care of themselves. They need 24/7 assistance from staff and can not be able to go out on their own, like I can. That is what i was told by the residential people just recently.
Plus, when I used to tell people that I had Autism, they would treat me like I am ret*d. Now I tell people that I have Asperger's and they treat me like a normal person. When I went to college the first time back in 1997, when my mom told them i had High functioning autism(which end up being Asperger's), they did not think I was capable of doing my medical concentration I wanted and told me to go to disability classes, which i did not need. I do not have any learning disabilities and I am highly intelligent, so this was insulting. Now I told them i have Asperger's and they actually see that I am capable of doing the Histology Technician program without the disability services.

You see a big difference between yourself and you? Asperger's is a form of autism. Autism is the Autistic Spectrum. None of the sub-headings of autism in use today actually refer to any concrete underlying differences between autistic individuals, they refer to superficial mutable symptoms for identification of specific behavioral disorder subsets. Autism and Autistics are general, low functioning autism, high functioning autism, asperger's syndrome are all referencing behavioral symptoms of specific forms.

Two individuals with the exact same autistic traits but with differing intelligence of specific types (because intelligence is not one monolithic thing, spatial intelligence and verbal intelligence are very different beasts) can present as a different behavioral based diagnoses. Neither one had any intuitive theory of mind perhaps, but one has a strong intelligence for understanding the verbal anyways (thanks to the acute hearing the both have and immense ability to memorize sounds and create a systematic relation between them that one has and the other does not) and so learns how to speak on their own without having inborn intuitive ToM relating to the verbalizing practices of humans, while the one who can't actually remember any of the sounds long enough to figure out a systematic relationship between them never learns to speak. Instead they learn how to write. The speaking autistic ends up classified as Asperger's Syndrome, the writer is High Functioning Autistic. Through a painstaking process the writer eventually is able to put together enough of an understanding of verbalizing concepts and begins to learn to speak at a much later age. Eventually they verbalize well enough that they are moved from HFA to Asperger's as a classification.

Somebody who hears them both identify as asperger's and has the first one explain what that means for them, then assumes that the same is true of the other and doesn't realize the extreme difference in amount of effort that is required for each of them to be speaking starts using "this aspie boy I know" to make critical judgments of the other and claims they "just have to try harder" so that they can be "as sucessful at holding down a normal job as this aspie guy I work with." Oh I just have to try harder, gee thanks that is helpful, I thought I could just sit here and things magically happened, I wasn't actually trying to do stuff with an intensity you could not ever hope to match internally just to make small token external gestures. People who find speaking to be easy will never be able to fully understand how hard it is for some, just as I with my ability to systemize things will never fully understand the stresses involved in other people trying to keep up with me in a conversation about a topic I have a strong ability to articulate.

I don't even know if anybody who will read this post will have any prior exposure that makes them understand what I mean when I reference the improper use of inductive versus deductive logic. Psychoanalysis is largely based on inductive reasoning and needs to be properly tempered with the largely deductive reasoning that comes from the complimentary field of neurobiology. Psychology versus Neurobiologic Psychiatry.

I got Diagnosed with Asperger's also because of my excellent speaking abilities, my very advanced vocabulary, and according to my some of my doctors, I should not be diagnosed with anything. I also make excellent eye contact(for the most part), and the way I carry myself around other people, especially in familiar settings, it is very hard to detect anything. I also being female, have excellent communication and conversation skills, so it is very hard for anyone to know. I also am more able to talk about other topics that others want to talk about and I am even interested in some. I can stop talking about what I want to talk about and allow the other person to talk about their topic and I even try hard to listen. Though I may not be interested, but to the other person, i look too interested in their topic and it gets boring. I just tell them I have to go or make up some excuse. That is also because I do not want to be rude and/or lose a potential friend. I think being female, i am more able to mask things, especially in the interest, communication, and social parts. That is why it is very hard to even believe that I have Asperger's, never mind anything.
I also get the whole "you know better" thing, as well, especially when I have problems where I have my "shut down" periods, or if I can not do something because of my Asperger's. They would tell me that I have no problems and that my disability is that i am just acting lazy, stupid, and doing it for attention. Then I tell them i have Asperger's, which is a form of autism and then they say that I talk well, so I do not have that and the whole "that is a lie" thing. They even accuse me when i have my "shut downs" of being depressed and mentally "crazy", even though I just need a break from things. That is where at one point I was diagnosed with Psychosis NOS, but that was immediately taken away.

The way I see it we are all under the bigger autism umbrella, the autism spectrum is vast especially if include all neurological differences, I have Aspergers and like many others a few associated neurological differences which to me is the very core of who I am, an autistic individual