Donna Williams' "fruit salad"

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Is there evidence supporting her contention that autism/AS is basically a whole bunch of different physiological and psychological problems combining in varying degrees of severity?

I haven't read the article she wrote about this but I think there's some truth to the idea that autism is a collection of symptoms. But I think it'd be more like stew or soup because its hard to separate the pieces.

Yes, and as driven by "a whole bunch of different physiological and psychological" *factors* that are neither necessarily nor automatically "problems". Problems only enter the picture when people are actually dysfunctional and/or when the expectations of others have become unreasonable.

I'm finding this topic very interesting.
Leejosepho has made a valid point, however.

Yeah, agree with leejosepho's point. I think that's what Williams had in mind. One person's most troublesome thing might be not being able to deviate from routine even a little without melting down. Someone else might not have so much trouble with that, but have really difficult sensory issues. And yet someone else could have tics, or bipolar disorder as the more significant parts of their "fruit salad."

You're right, "problems" was perhaps not the best word given that aspects of autism may also be positive or neutral as well as challenging. However, I think many of the things that come with autism could be described as problematic.

Here's an excerpt from her website:

This does seem to fit with much of what I've read though I'm not sure about the last part (addiction? really?). I guess I'm partly wondering to what extent all these aspects are neurologically interrelated; I mean, there seems to me to be a difference between a person ending up with a bunch of different disorders and/or traits, almost as a casualty of random distribution or something, and a person's brain developing differently in such a way that causes many of these disorders/traits. (I don't know if I'm saying it well.) I can't tell what Ms. Williams is thinking, but her writings raised this question for me. To me, the second seems much more likely - that is, that they are interrelated on a neurological level, as opposed to randomly co-occurring.

I guess I'm curious about this because throughout my life I have often felt like rather a mess, because I seemed to have so many different things wrong with me (sensory processing disorder, problems with physical coordination (I guess this is called dyspraxia), marked social inability, a seemingly congenital inability to be organized, anxiety disorder, etc) but it wasn't until I read about autism that I saw connections drawn between all these things. Now I'm wondering what the connection is.

All of this goes far beyond mere neurology, for our neurology is but one component of our overall (and quite individual or personal) makeup. And to see that, we must begin by looking at the core of *every* human being where we can find our inherent and common-to-all natural instincts, desires and needs. Where the writer you have quoted has mentioned "mood, anxiety, rage, or compulsive disorders", our natural instincts, desires and needs are what we are being moody, anxious, angry (or even mad (insane)) or compulsive about ... and when an attention deficit is also present, our overall dysfunction in relation to our natural instincts, desires and needs can only be worse.

Concerning "tendencies [toward] addiction which can manifest in addiction to emotional extremes and fixation on what which trigger them ..."

Whew. That writer is trying to say *way* too much all at once!

Using the term "addiction" in the broadest sense, we are each "addicted" to things we like ... or maybe it would be better to say we are at least prone to become "addicted" to satisfactions of our natural instincts, desires and needs ... and that begins at the breast where/when our suckling brings us something well beyond mere nutrition ...

... and then tongue-in-cheek, I used to say I later began drinking as I did because my mother must have weaned me too early.

All human beings face a common set of challenges in life, but for some of us, the neurology of autism can *really* complicate (or even completely inhibit) our dealings with anything and/or everything.

But in those aspects that have a neurological cause/component, are they more likely to occur in combination with each other?

For instance, if one has SPD, is there a greater likelihood of having something else that's part of the "autism cocktail" - like Tourettes, or ADHD or dyspraxia? If not, then I would expect to see a kind of probability curve where you had a lot of people who had any one of these by itself, and then lower down the curve you have some people who have two of them together, and then near the bottom of the curve you have those who ended up with the whole lot of them. I don't really have a sense of whether this is so or not. (And one could add in mood disorders and poor family environments, etc, but I'm trying to keep it a bit simpler than that!)

Others here know far more about that kind of thing than do I, yet I would say it does makes sense to me to imagine "mini-spectrums" within the overall ... and I actually do find it quite interesting to observe myself in that kind of way. For example:

For the first quarter-century of my life, I had never really thought very much or often at all about the "Why?" and "What?!" kinds of questions that finally did begin appearing in my mid-20s when some troubling circumstances and consequences in my life seemed to begin driving me toward some kind of insanity ...

... and then at age 31, I felt so *tremendously* relieved when somebody labeled me "alcoholic"! Whew. I did not even know what that meant at the time ... but at least I had not been called a lunatic. And of course, it was also a concurrent relief to then be told what specific *action* I needed to take. However ...


I certainly have far more than mere alcoholism, and it is impossible to isolate even that from "the spectrum." So, this past year of at least beginning to lean about my AS/HFA has been like "icing on the cake" at least as far as gaining a little more peace-of-mind concerning myself has been concerned.