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Jamesy
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15 Oct 2010, 10:17 am

I heard once on this website that in general autistic people cannot relate to others properly so they create fantasy worlds?

What does that mean exactley?



Callista
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15 Oct 2010, 10:20 am

It means the person didn't know much about autism. :)

That statement actually goes back to the refrigerator-mother hypothesis, in which doctors believed that autistic children were neglected children who formed their own internal worlds to withdraw from their cold, unemotional parents.


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industrialx
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15 Oct 2010, 10:54 am

It's quite similar to the premise that people diagnosed with Schizoid PD had cold/neglectful parents, and so created a rich inner life.


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bicentennialman
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15 Oct 2010, 11:39 am

It just occurred to me how odd that assumption was. Why does something have to be wrong for you to have a "rich inner life"? If you have a choice between having a rich inner life or a poor inner life, wouldn't you choose the former? It doesn't mean something's wrong elsewhere.



PangeLingua
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15 Oct 2010, 11:46 am

bicentennialman wrote:
It just occurred to me how odd that assumption was. Why does something have to be wrong for you to have a "rich inner life"? If you have a choice between having a rich inner life or a poor inner life, wouldn't you choose the former? It doesn't mean something's wrong elsewhere.


That was my thought, too.

It seems to be predicated on the assumption that social relations are the center and focus of everything and objectively more important than anything else.

One might just as well assume that people who spend all their time and energy in socializing do so because their inner life is gravely deficient, and so they have to fill up the emptiness with hours of talking to other people. (Actually, I used to think this was true. But I am increasingly recognizing that that is probably not how NT extraverts experience it.)



industrialx
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15 Oct 2010, 12:16 pm

Would firstly like to clarify by saying that I possibly used the wrong terminology - I think I probably meant a rich imagination, but it is something that has apparently been documented by psychiatrists. I think it's something quite patronising, as the previous two posters have inferred - I think it is insulting to imply that you have a problem/there is something wrong with you just because you have a rich imagination and prefer spending time in a world of your own creation, where you can relate to things, and where there is little threat, as opposed to social relationships where people frequently misunderstand you, and where you can feel little comfort and/or safety.


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