Could a rational obsession lead to Aspergers symptoms?

Post Reply New Topic

Imagine that you found something amazing. like a cure for cancer, or proof of aliens among us, or you just decided to totally devote your life to ending a particular horrific injustice.

* You would focus on that to a highly abnormal degree.

* You would lack empathy with others because they do not see the value that is obvious to you. Rather than helping they make your life harder by expecting you to conform to their norms. How can you empathize with such people?

* Your social life would suffer. If your obsession started young then you would never learn basic social skills.

* You would want to talk at length about your passion, but your voice would be monotonous because you never connect with others so you never learn how to be a good conversationalist.

* You would avoid social groups because you would find them dull or shallow - your obsession is always a much higher priority than whatever they are doing.

* You would have trouble making friends because you have nothing in common

* You would find it hard to understand others, as their life experience and priorities are so different.

* Any part of your life that does not contribute to your obsession would receive little attention - you would war the same clothes, eat the same things, and prefer repetitive habits because
they require little thought.

* You would be clumsy around anything other than your obsession because you simply have little experience outside the lab, and may even resent the wider world for getting in the way.

In short, you would gain Aspergers symptoms ,purely as a result of being a NT person doing something amazing and wonderful.

What do you think?

I don't know it is a bit of a chicken egg scenario. I think if they fit all of these criteria and had done for nearly the entirety of their life then they would be someone with aspergers doing something amazing.

Just to clarify, I don't think that is the whole story in my case. Even as a child I avoided eye contact and preferred to obsess over anything, avoided social groups, etc., so I think I have a genetic component. But once I found an obsession that profoundly moved me then the isolation and resulting symptoms were magnified.

This is an interesting topic. I guess this is why it is so hard to tell if a person really has Asperger's.

What you describe sounds like experiences individuals with Asperger's go through

I have some really impressive research projects - I stumbled on them myself by searching through databases and making correlations,
the professor I mentioned it to didnt accept the significance I attributed to it though admitted it may have some effect. [in other words]

If you were trying to develop a cure for cancer or something altruistic or groundbreaking, Id be really interested as a research scientist and healthcare professional

It may be interesting to ask someone such as a family member [eg your mum or dad] what you behaved like when you were a child before you developed your interest in this.

Individuals with Asperger's make some really impressive discoveries by making connections no one else makes - they have the kind of insight people like Steve Wozniak had when developing computers - he would make connections no one else at the time would make and develop boards from pencil and paper stage.

I agree that is it possible some individuals in society may not have the same circle of friends others have and hence not develop some of the necessary social skills, become self consious for instance and hence withdrawn - this is a possibility and an NT could develop into someone who appears to have Autism.

I used to be really interested in computers, a lot more than I am now and spend all night after school on mine [it was a Packard Bell, so it broke down a lot hence part of reason I would spend so long on it trying to fix it]

I think the problem is that the bigger, or more complex, or more groundbreaking the topic is,the more the researcher will look like a crackpot, and the longer it takes before the topic is ready to connect to the mainstream.

I once heard a story of a guy who discovered some of the Dead Sea Scrolls decades before the famous 1947 discovery. Nobody believed him and he finally killed himself. Or scientists like Trevithick and Tesla or artists like Blake and Van Gogh who were all ahead of their time and died penniless.

Being different is always lonely, regardless of whether it's due to autism, madness, or genius, and it's often hard to tell the difference. Statistically the crackpots outnumber the geniuses by ten to one, and they look the same both to outsiders and to themselves.

Yes, on the surface a devoted researcher could look very much like someone with Asperger's.

But, I suspect there is a fundamental difference in how someone with Asperger's think--we have excellent single track minds--once on track--it may never occur to us that anything else is important. We don't think we are sacrificing anything because it never occurs to us that we are missing out! Yet, it may not be an obsession in the sense that once we complete our goal, we are satisfied and just move onto something else.

I know when I have a deep obsession I do become a lot more detached and conforming to social norms become even more irrelevant to me than they already were.

I do think that the list you gave though showed some aspects of confirmation bias, however. But I do think it makes a good point regardless.

I think really, from a social perspective, neither really help and both contribute to social ineptness. I think an obsession of that degree is inherently indicative of some sort of abnormality though, even to my self as someone who considers themselves to have had obsessions to the degree that it impacted on my life quite a lot, I do find that the extent of the obsession you listed is excessive.

I find it hard to think that an NT(not just in the context of how the Autistic community use the term, but in a neuroscience context) could spontaneously manifest an obsessions of the degree you specified. But as I've said previously, the post you have made is interesting and has got me thinking.

That's so true! Yet it is so rational, whether aspi or not. By focusing intently we get better results. The hard part is seeing why other people DON'T focus so much. Do they not want to do the very best at what they do? Don't they care about achieving objectives? Are they just drifting through life?



That's really got me thinking. Yes, that is definitely me. Several times in my life I have completed major projects* then lost all interest in them, whereas other people assume I must still be attached. Nope. Done that. Moved on. They were major achievements in their own right, but were just steps toward my main task, which will have lasted fifty years. Even that one will be complete one day and then I will walk away and not look back. I started my project at the age of 12 and planned to continue until I was 64. I am now 42 and on track.

*My main project: solving global poverty. Sub projects include: running my own business (in order to get money). Making several Google-number-one niche websites. Writing and researching a book that was far better than anything else in its (narrowly specialized) class.

Just to comment before I read a single post in the thread, I must admit I do wonder what a "rational obsession" is. In my understanding, once something becomes an obsession, it's not rational anymore. I may be wrong. English is not my first language.

I think you are. Obsession carries negative connotations, if you were to tell someone that they were obsessed it'd be considered an insult. Interest is seen as far healthier.

Sorry if this post was patronising, just confirming what you said.

I am assuming a starting point of somebody who is not on the autism spectrum, NT, for these purposes. Lots of NT people get consumed with an obsession. The difference is that if they are NT, rather they seek out others who share that obsession and have standard social interactions- but only with those people.

Yes. An obsessed NT would.





Yes, that happens too. The obsessed NT can't understand why other people don't see the importance of the obsession or discount it as silly. If the obsession is conspiratorial in nature, (UFOs, secret societies, 9/11 Truthers) the obsessed NT decides that the other NTs are simply lacking needed information and devote themselves to giving them that information. If the obsession is not conspiratorial, the obsessed NT decides the others are simply missing out (on fly fishing, old movies or whatever).



No. And here's where obsessed NTs diverge from obsessed AS people (AS meaning anywhere on the autism spectrum, so as not to make this just about Aspies). Obsessed NTs still have the intense NT need for socialization and will attempt to combine their obsession with social experiences. In childhood, this means attempting to convert your friends to the obsession.

yes, no. Listen to an obsessed NT sometime. Their voices are never monotonous. If anything, the pitch and cadence varies even more dramatically when they are talking about their obsession. If you can stand to listen to an obsessed sportsfan talk about his beloved team, you will hear that his voice is all over the place. This leads to the expression "talking feverishly".



No. You would desperately search out social groups that shared your obsession and when you found them (and you always would), you would be bound to them like glue. You are underestimating the NT need for socialization and thinking it will go away when an obsession comes into place. But it doesn't. Instead, the obsession drives who you socialize with. An obsessed NT will not rest until they have found others who share that obsession and who they can socialise with.

* Again, no. You would instead search intently for those who shared your obsession, ignoring all others. And you would find them.

yes.

No. Obsessed NTs don't lose their ability to multitask just because they are obsessed. If you are NT, choosing what clothes to wear and what to eat requires little thought in the first place, unless you decide to care about it. And then there are NTs who make what to wear their obsession (Lady Gaga) or what to eat their obsession (gourmets and anybody on a health food kick).

no. Being obsessed doesn't get in the way of having a good body sense. Yes. Absolutely. There are countless obsessed NTs who are absolutely furious at the world for either standing in the way of their obsession (by putting legal limits on it usually- such as zoning ordinances that won't allow beekeeping in certain towns for one example) or by not taking it seriously (UFOs).



I think that an obsessed NT will definately have a seemingly autistic single minded focus and will definately have black-and-white thinking if the obsession is conspiratorial in nature. But you are underestimating the intense need for socialising to NTs. That doesn't go away. Instead, the obsessed NT puts out feelers and will hunt relentlessly until they have found others who share the obsession and will then socialise with them, sometimes exclusively if it's a conspiratorial obsession.

I take patronising over lies any day
Not that i thought it patronising at all, really.

I usually rely on dictionary.com:


That is all I meant. Neither negative nor positive. Words carry so many connotations, often leading to disagreements, that I always restrict myself to the dictionary.

That is brilliant. Very insightful. You are exactly right. That is the piece of the puzzle that I was missing.

When I was a child and formulated my life's goal - to understand why there is poverty and find a way to fix it - it seemed obvious to me that this could best be achieved alone: it would require a massive feat of concentration and correlation over many years, and a group could not be reliably standardized for that long.

I never understood why nobody else came to the same conclusion. but you have hit the nail on the head. Over the years I have met other people who care about global poverty, but their solution is ALWAYS to join a group. To me this was a fatal flaw: immediately the group becomes concerned with its own survival, and also dumbs down to the lowest common denominator. This group-think mentality is crazy to me. These people all claim to care about global poverty, yet they will never take the obvious first step - go away and become entirely independent, then focus, focus, focus.

I suppose this is why I see aspergers as sometimes morally superior to NT: aspies will focus on the problem, whereas NTs will ALWAYS place socializing pleasures above all other considerations.

Now I finally understand why NTs seem so wrong to me.

Janissy, you are a genius.

Last edited by trappedinhell on 17 May 2011, 6:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Which is a good thing, I think. But that kills context. It kills the feeling you had the very first time you read or heard what was. Those moments are important. As a minimum, add them to the dictionary. The dictionary only tells you what concensus are among the people with similar language. It does not say anything about what you heard or said. And that is what people want to know. Believe it or not.