Shall we put AS DXs in some perspective?

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I am beginning to have doubts in the whole enterprise of defining Asperger and even more of labelling AS a certain number of people on the basis of the DX of authorized official experts.
In the first place I am thinking that to submit people to a DX is subject to very casual conditions: troubles of personality which make difficult integration in family and job. But I am quite sure that most affluent strata of population have other means to cope with these problems and would never submit one of their kind to the evaluation of an expert not of their tribe and trust. And, given that a DX of AS was given, I doubt that this would have some mark of official status and even less of publicity. Can you imagine a president of the US being officially labelled as an autistic (more o less high functioning)? Or even can you imagine that for much lesser fish? Moreover, in wealthy and powerful strata, troubles of integration are absorbed by an extraordinary abundance of resources, and justifications for odd behaviour are easy to find in an array of occupations considered quite acceptable. One of them, for example, is the very profession of psychiatrist. I have known personally in my life some twenty or so persons who began to take interest in psychology, more often in psychoanalysis, because of their own difficulties. Once they got hold of some concepts, they established themselves as shrinks and earned in such way a life and a position in society. People who participate in this forums are only the social disadvantaged and I sympathize for them. But modern contemporary society is such a systematic organization of “productive” demented activities that has slots for all sort of people devoid of sanity, no matter how you define sanity.

As the saying goes ....

The only difference between excentric and insane is money.

Paolo, there are several ideas in your post but they appear somewhat tangled up.

There is the technical, medical, question of Asperger's as a diagnosis.

There is a separate question of how it is seen by the public, and its use and abuse as a label in social and occupational environments.

The second gives rise to circumstances where people might wish to seek or avoid the diagnosis, seen as a label.

That the rich and powerful tend to play by different rules is true in much broader reaches than just AS. Times are a-changing a little. JFK might nowadays might have got into as much trouble as Clinton did. Leona Helmsley may also have been a little out of date when she claimed "Only the little people pay taxes" but historically there has been an underlying truth.

Hans Asperger himself recognised the condition, in part, in terms of ability, with particular valuable roles for such as his "little professors".
That society has "slots for all sort of people" (sic) does not render, of itself, Asperger's a redundant or non-existent medical definition. That would have to be decided on other grounds.


But...

"People who participate in this forums are only the social disadvantaged and I sympathize for them.

Watch that "only". Some here might object to being defined as being nothing but socially disadvantaged, and I include myself. And I'm not sure I want your sympathy, if you can deliver it while making such a social gaffe. You may need it for yourself.

In addition, consider Krishnamurti:
"It is no good thing to be well-adjusted to a sick society."

I am not saying at all that AS are nothing else than that, but only that people in higher strata as a majority have less chances to need an AS DX. Should that be a gaffe? It seems clear what I think of this society and of its higher strata.

That's an awful lot better than what you said the first time through!

People in a higher strata have less need full stop.

Those with greater resources have more opportunity to conform the world around them.
It's not just power and money, though those are classic "levers". A supportive understanding family group or community would also be a major resource.

If services or support becomes available with an official DX, there's good reason to go for it.
If it makes employment more difficult, or labels an individual as part of a ridiculed minority, it will tend be avoided.

Whom am I talking (?) to? Am I like S. H.? But for the knowledge he has. Is my soul, or mind, or brain like his body? Being not in the least interested in physics, abhorring physics, and any science as such, even evolutionary psychology, as far it aims to build a branch of science, what am I really interested in, except some crumbs of survival, being in a sense hope indestructible in me, at least for now? I have in my mind this cinematographic image of a man lost in a torrid desert and crawling in the sand, hallucinating some piece or fragment of oasis, a palm, a spring of water. Is this hallucination for me the caress I longed for all my life? The touch at least , the gentle touch of friendship and affection.

Ah, the question of physics is akin to the question of God: it matters not so much whether you believe in it or Him, and much more if it or Him believes in you.
Abhor God or physics as much as you like: if they exist, they continue to exist, and rule the universe.

But as for the hallucination in the desert, Oh, Yes.

Is one who can stand outside the hallucination and see only the bare, hopeless, desert happier?
What should they say to the one hallucinating? There is no oasis, no gentle touch, no soft breeze? How would that benefit the dreamer?
(who will die anyway, but at least still reaching, hoping).

And harder: how can one who has lost his hallucination begin to dream again?

The more I think about it, the more I am unsatisfied not only with the AS DX but with any psychiatric DX. There is always a tendency in the medical establishment to mske a fetish of DXs. Dx spare the effort of a real undertsanding of the suffering person relying on definitions and labels. Often this is due to the modest intellectual equipment of practitioners. As far as AS is concerned I am sure that the diffusion of “functioning” autism is much more frequent than what falls in the nets of DXs.

First there are the well to do strata of society, where even a cold is sometimes kept out of the public knowledge. The tendency to keep the secret increases with the gravity of the illness and becomes an absolute duty for the family when you come to mental disabilities. In my family there was a schizophrenic sister of my mother who took her life. I knew nothing about it until very late in the years. And again my grandfather also very probably took his life. I still have to rely on clews to know how he died. All this within the family. Outside the family the secret is kept with much more rigour.

Then, in wealthy families, the are more slots to place unhappy people, more resources to cope with an unproductive member of the family. Ad, finally, definitions and DXs of autism, especially of Asperger are a fact of the nineties. This excludes a large number of middle and old age people from being diagnosed as functioning autistics. They will be described as unhappy, selfish, egocentrics, eccentics and so on. But the term autistic will not be employed in most cases.

The two James (William and Henry) had a sister mentally ill of whom not much is known. This is only a case among many coming to my mind. But we might find much interesting material in literature, fiction and even in folk tales: was the evil witch of Snow White an autistic woman?

Of course, all this does not lessens the importance and utility of DXs and of the awareness of the true nature of the condition, in order to cope with it in the best possible way.

There are probably no “wild boys” reared by animals in the forest, but autistic children abandoned by their families. This is the case of Truffaut’s “L’enfant sauvage”.