The Autistic sense of self

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Hi all,

I'd like to hear about different experiences regarding a sense of self and/or identity from other people on the spectrum. I have read theorists who suggest that people on the autistic spectrum lack a sense of self and/or identity, to varying extents (e.g. Hobson, Fitzgerald), usually because of not being able to relate to others.

However I don't feel like I lack a sense of self myself and in reading autobiographies of others I find similarly strong senses of self or identity. Gunilla Gerland describes her strong sense of self nicely:

‘As I was not particularly close to my parents or to anyone else, my views had always been my own, not adjusted to what others thought. I couldn’t imagine how it was that people seemed just to merge into others and other people’s opinions, and formed their identities by thinking like other people. My sense of identity had always been clear, never connected with anyone else.’

In this description we find a sense of self that stems directly from not relating to others (rather than this being a hindrance to her sense of self).

Do other recognise this in themselves or do you feel more like you lack a sense of self? I am wondering if many autistic people do have a stronger sense of self than is usually though, but that it is not recognised as such due to bias in regards to what counts as a sense of self.

Would be very interested to hear what your diagnosis is and sense of self are like so I can get a better general idea (also any recommendations for literature/essays on the topic are welcome!).

Thanks

I think it's important to acknowledge that an individual with autism is not developing their identity in isolation, society will always play a role in shaping individuals, both autistic and allistic. I think sense of identity will vary according to the way aspergers or high functioning autism interacts with different types of socialisation, gender, race, etc. I'm a young woman with asperger's syndrome and I was raise by a Turkish family. Turkish people tend to be more tactile and tend to have closer family relationships than anglo-white people. My family have played a huge role in my development and I think that I have been influenced by them a lot. They have formed quite an integral part of my identity and so my sense of identity stems from my closeness with them and status as an ethnic minority in the UK. What stands out is my difficulty expressing warmth with most people (except one or two close friends) despite being raised in such an environment. I also was aware of not entirely feeling like a "girl" from a young age and my almost entirely uninhibited honesty meant I would sometimes express that or even ask other girls "do you feel like a girl?". I was always genuinely surprised when they said "yes".

Aspergers and High functioning Autism (and possibly other types of Autism) are as you know, considered "invisible" disabilities. So in that case, society will respond to someone exhibiting deviant or unusual behaviours in different ways depending on gender etc. and that's how it's interpreted, as "socially deviant". I had a very strong sense of self as a child,(and as I said, my family's influence was part of that) almost stubbornly so but I feel that was crushed more and more as I grew up because girls are supposed to be meeker and quieter than boys. I had very strong interests that I obsessed over and they became my world. I was very creative and wrote and drew a lot. As I hit puberty my mind became foggy and I was picked on at school. I was also sexually harassed by boys. The world became a whirlwind of overwhelming gendered social pressures. I became afraid to walk on the street because men would stare at me. I even felt too embarrassed and awkward being in a room alone with my piano teacher because I kept on getting intrusive thoughts about him jumping on me (which I didn't want to happen). The new anxieties about not fitting in at school and having to deal with daily patriarchal violence made me obsess over myself and how to form a "social identity". Despite that I was always told that I seemed to "not care what others thought of me" and some of my peers respected me of that. I found I was less focused and couldn't concentrate on reading as much as I used to. I would still escape with my interests but later this became harder. As i became more overwhelmed I became really confused at age 15 as I found that I had centred "social acceptance" among my priorities rather than my love of the things that have always inspired me and inspired self love. Now I have quite severe social anxiety and battle that on a daily basis but I understand all of this and have come out stronger. My childhood has become really important to me and my family's influence still is. I've become more accepting of the weirdo that I am...but basically what I'm saying, is my identity was something I had to reclaim through reflection and self-acceptance...and rejection of certain societal pressures...

So I do not really relate to that quote, and in fact, I've read accounts from other women with aspergers in which they say that they "no longer know who [they] really are" because of all the social mimicry and anxiety.

Not sure if that answers your question. I suppose we are all different!


*also I'm aware the extent to which you can bond with your family depends on how much you reciprocate at a young age. I was still somewhat distant, I didn't respond unless someone called my name. I didn't smile very much, apparently my facial expressions were rather blank and I didn't communicate to express what I wanted except through crying etc. I'm aware that it varies from person to person in gradations though.

I was diagnosed with autism when I was about 3.

Until about age 5 1/2, I had practically no awareness of the existence of other people. For some reason, once I developed speech at age 5 1/2, I discovered I had a self distinct from other selves. I began to socialize with other people--though somewhat awkwardly.

I've never been "perfect" in discerning the motives/feelings of other people---but it's improved over time.

Funny, because I used to ask the same and couldn't at all understand how someone could feel 'male' or 'female'. I don't feel male nor female, never have.

I'd say I have a very strong sense of self, but I don't have much of an identity, probably because it mostly forms and happens in social relation.

The lack of self and integrity in other people in social interaction used to baffle me alot when I was younger.

For example try this. Let's say you are having a dinner with friends or e.g. at work. And you have come to the above stated conclusion and want to see if it really is so. And you say: Isn't there some weird taste in this fish? The fish tastes actually perfectly normal to you, but as soon as you said it, in case you are ranked socially high, others will now inform that they taste the same thing too now that you said it...

What do we mean by “sense of self” exactly? Does anyone have a clear, operational definition?

Hi all, thanks for the replies! Very interesting and helpful to read.

Proteus, by sense of self, I mean something like a feeling of yourself as an individual (i.e. who is separate from and different to others). But it is also often associated with other things, such as an ongoing narrative. You could include an idea of what kind of person you are (kind, generous, lazy, hard-working, honest, dishonest, etc.).

selin, thanks for your very interesting story. You make a good point about the cultural aspects, and it is clear that your sense of self is constituted in large part by your relations with your family. On the other hand, to me, given that you say things like 'the world became a whirlwind of overwhelming gendered social pressures', this seems to express something quite similar to Gunilla's strong sense of self in certain respects. I say this because the very fact that you so sensitively experience gendered expectations as external factors being imposed on you, seems to presuppose that you do already have a very strong sense of self, which you always have been highly conscious of. (And this is the case even if you gave in to them temporarily.) To see what I mean here, contrast your own case with a (hypothetical) neurotypical Turkish girl growing up with a close family in the UK who, in contrast to you, isn't so sensitive to these pressures, and thus just unthinkingly goes along with them, allowing them to transform her with no resistance. In this case I would say your sense of self is much stronger than hers in a certain sense. For to experience and recognise your own periods of inauthenticity *as* inauthenticity, seems to me to show that you had a strong sense of who you were all along (minus normal teenage identity anxieties, etc.). What do you think?

In another thread that I started, someone described an issue some of us have on the spectrum with the phrase "a very strong self but a weak identity". I thought that was so well put--without social interaction we develop a sense of self that might not readily align with an identity that is out there in the world.

Ok, I can work with these definitions. Thanks!

I guess I’d describe my sense of self as almost entirely hinging upon alienation. I would love to know if the feeling of belonging is all it’s cracked up to be. Everywhere I go, even in my own family, I routinely feel like an alien. I say alien because at a very fundamental level, how I sense myself seems very different from how others around me say they do. I’ve always been very instinctively Buddhist-like in my view of self. Literally, this mysterious sense of self can be boiled down to the appearance of thoughts (memories, rationalizations, ideas, beliefs, images, calculations, etc) and emotions within one’s personal awareness. The thoughts are often collated into the narrative RobsPlanet spoke of. My narrative was never quite… narrative. I’ve never been able to latch onto a coherent story about who or what I am. I can list various attributes about myself, sure. I can also list the descriptors other people would use to identify me. But does a list of characteristics and attributes comprise a compelling personal narrative, the kind that people kill (others or themselves) to protect and defend? I’m guessing not. Yet, that’s what I see all around me: people whose personal narratives are so enthralling, so powerful, so all important, that they are willing to lay emotional (and often physical) waste to everyone and everything around them. That’s one of the fundamental differences I see between my own sense of self/identity and others.

My sense of self seems atomistic and even boring. It’d be like reading a laundry list, while NTs seems to be like getting swept away in an epic novel.

I was diagnosed with Aspergers about 7 years ago. As far back as I can remember, I've always known I'm different and separate from others, in fact one of the things it took me a while to realise is the interconnectedness of humanity and of all life. I began to see that as a result of looking into socialism, meditation and Zen.

Finding out who I am has been an ongoing quest which will probably never be complete - again, that was started by looking at meditation. Some of the books I read were saying that the question "who am I?" was central to the pursuit of enlightenment. And it made sense from a practical point of view too - if I knew who I was, naturally my decisions would be better. I was surprised to find that I really knew very little about the detail of who I was, so I began taking personality tests etc., and gradually built up the picture. The ASD diagnosis was a big leap forward.

I'm always floating around people, never grounded. But I feel I do have a sense of myself, I just can't put my self into someone elses shoes.

I am also somewhat confused by the phrase "sense of self". Based upon the above, it sounds like it is based upon comparing oneself with others.

If this understanding is correct (which I have no clue), I have a pretty good "sense of self" when comparing myself with someone I know very well (e.g. I am more hard-working than my wife but nowhere near as kind).

However, generally, I have a pretty lousy "sense of self" when comparing myself against a larger unknown sample size (e.g. while I would like to think of myself as being hard-working, I have no idea if I am or not). Now, if you supply me with clear metrics (e.g. a hard-working person is defined as someone who regularly works > 55 hours per week) or clear examples (e.g. someone who is honest would do this or that), then this gets easier. As these things (kind, generous, lazy, hard-working, honest, dishonest) are all wishy-washy terms.

I am also somewhat confused by the phrase "sense of self". Based upon the above, it sounds like it is based upon comparing oneself with others.

If this understanding is correct (which I have no clue), I have a pretty good "sense of self" when comparing myself with someone I know very well (e.g. I am more hard-working than my wife but nowhere near as kind).

However, generally, I have a pretty lousy "sense of self" when comparing myself against a larger unknown sample size (e.g. while I would like to think of myself as being hard-working, I have no idea if I am or not). Now, if you supply me with clear metrics (e.g. a hard-working person is defined as someone who regularly works > 55 hours per week) or clear examples (e.g. someone who is honest would do this or that), then this gets easier. As these things (kind, generous, lazy, hard-working, honest, dishonest) are all wishy-washy terms.

I agree they are wishy-washy. They're unlikely to appear on a scientific psychological profile, though they're popular terms that get bandied about all the time. Don't get me started on "hard-working." I think that term was invented by factory owners.

I am unclear about what people mean when they talk about sense of self or identity.
I feel like I am just me, is that a sense of self?
It is probably not an identity, perhaps I don't have that.
It seems like a lot of people want an identity as part of a group.
Certainly I am part of certain groups and not part of other groups, but I feel the group identification is secondary to me being just me.

btbnnyr - Your mention of group identity sparked a thought.

So, you have mentioned in prior postings that you are a baseball fan. I am as well (but, undoubtedly for the better team ).

Anyway, I wonder if being a baseball fan is different for NTs. That is, whether as baseball fans, NTs not only identify with the team they follow, but also with the group of people who follow the team. Where being part of a group of people who follow the team, is more important than following the team itself. Where as, being a fan, it different for you and I. I have no idea if I am making sense or not.

I think in practical terms, for NTs identity = tribal marker. For NTs, it seems as if a belief’s capacity to facilitate tribal belonging is its most important function. For me at least, a belief’s accuracy is more important.