Before Aspergers

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So I have read that up until a certain period around the early 90's, often the only thing diagnosed as autism was severe autism.

I read comment from a man in his 50's saying when a small boy in the early 70s he was given all kinds of tests because something was obviously wrong with his behavior. Then they put him in a special classroom for "educationally handicapped". He was never told a diagnosis other than "perceptual problems".

In his 40's he got diagnosed with Aspergers.

So what do you think they might have diagnosed him with back then? PDD maybe?

There was no PDD then

Depression, anxiety, narcissism, retardation

Many of us did not get diagnosed as it was thought of as a phase we would grow out of. When we did not grow out of it there were a lot of negative informal labels. All people were able to see was the average to above average intelligence without the expected results. Egghead during the 1950's. Depending on how the Aspergers presented, painfully shy, rude, lazy, attention seeker, excuse maker, drama queen, loser, queer/fa***t (LBGT was viewed very negatively at the time), weird, odd or oddball, booksmart but not street smart, space cadet etc.

As you may have noticed a lot of these labels are largely just historical memories now, but lazy, attention seeker and excuse maker, drama queen, loser are still with us and bigger then ever.

I'm a man in his 50's. I was diagnosed with autism at age 3--autism was only severe classic autism in the 1960s.

A little later, I was diagnosed with "brain-injury/damage." I suppose I was diagnosed with "minimal brain dysfunction" was well--though I'm not sure about this.

I, supposedly, had "perceptual problems."

I was placed in a school for kids with all sorts of conditions. I was probably thought of as being 'emotionally disturbed" within that school. I was placed in small classes, though they were academically as rigorous as "regular" school.

I believe I exhibited classic autistic behavior before I spoke; Aspergian behavior after I spoke.

I feel I would have been diagnosed with Asperger's if it existed; I believe many kids with "minimal brain dysfunction/brain damage" would have been diagnosed as Aspergian as well.

He said they did a lot of EEG and head xrays, so it seemed obvious they thought something was wrong with his brain. He also said that the special classroom he was in was a portable building on the other side of the school. He said remembering his classmates, he thinks a lot of them also had Aspergers

I was dragged from doctor to doctor for EEG's as well.

In fact, because of the EEG's, I used to think I had brain surgery to cure my "retardation." I went around telling people that "I used to be ret*d."

This was especially so when I was 9 years old, in 1970.

I was not mainstreamed. I was placed in a special school. Fortunately, my parents had to money to pay for it.

Before I was in the special school, I was in a public school class for kids with ALL kinds of disabilities--deafness included.

In retrospect, I had a really good teacher in the public school. She was able to cater my curriculum to my needs. She was very strict when it came to my behavior. I had to fold my hands at my desk at all times while she lectured.

I get EEG's, but I think that's because I used to get seizures.

Lack of eye contact, mumbling speech = rude
Inability to socialize = shy
ASD-related physical symptoms = hypochondria

Ah, being an Aspie kid in the 70's and 80's... Fun times.

I can relate with the guy, although I am a self-diagnosed Aspie. Back in the 1980s, I moved to a different state. The new school was a very rough one for me, as I was constantly bullied being the new nerdy fat kid. Aspergers was not really known about and autism was only linked to people that were severely disabled with it during that era. A few years pass by and I was tested to see where I "fit in" on academic achievement. Someone had mentioned the possibility that I was a "special needs" student, but I did not believe them as I was labeled "very highly gifted" at my previous school. The new school left me where I was at because the test results showed that I was still "very highly gifted". Some of my teachers could not believe it because I was not a strait A student in their classes, so they punished me when they could. (Back then the test results got around the schoolyard, so it lead to even more bullying towards me. There were no privacy laws in effect on the information there.) Emotionally, I was a few years behind my classmates, yet far advanced from them in certain academic subjects. My reading comprehension was at PhD graduate school level by that point in time (8th grade).

Last edited by QuantumChemist on 11 Nov 2015, 12:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I was diagnosed as having autistic behaviors and I had other labels like communication disorder, cognitive disorder NOS, suspected OCD, language processing disorder, ADD, Dyspraxia, sensory processing disorder. I went to a bunch of different doctors and had different tests because my mom always knew I had something but didn't know what it was. Not one person picked up on Asperger's because it wasn't known then. Then when it did appear in the DSM, then it was brought up. But one doctor said I didn't have it so it was back to square one again figuring out what was wrong with me and then I was diagnosed with it by a psychiatrist when I was 12 when my therapist thought I might have it. I did have the autism label at one point in my life from when I was a toddler but then it got erased because it was no longer appropriate and I even had to be re tested so I could be in mainstream. But even other doctors didn't agree with the label then and it was only one doctor that said I was autistic. If I had been born ten years later, maybe I would have been diagnosed with AS sooner or PDD-NOS but hard to tell if I had ear infections that caused my speech delay, no one would know if my other problems were caused by that too. I think that was why I was so difficult to diagnose in 6th grade.

I wasn't diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome until I was 47. Before then I had no diagnosis at all, people just thought I was shy and a weirdo.

I had several grand mal seizures as a kid and I also had delayed verbal learning skills. I went through pretty rigorous testing back in grade 1 which was in the early 90's and they failed to diagnose me with Asperger's or any autism diagnosis. It wasn't until the age of 29, that just a few days ago did I finally get diagnosed with Asperger's. All of the signs were there the entire time, it was just that doctor's and other healthcare professionals did their best to ignore them and dismiss everything, sometimes coming up with some pretty ridiculous and lame excuses over the years.

Brain damage, mental retardation, weak character, in need of dicipline, rude,

Another aspie oldster her. Around 60.

Aspergers didnt exist as a diagnosis in the USA (or much anywhere outside of Austria) until 1994. And even then it was whole decade before most shrinks in the USA knew aspergers from aspertame. The lady I went to for years in the early 2000's had never even heard of aspergers until mom and sis mentioned it to her.

If you were on the high end (HFA,aspergers) of what is now recognized as the "autism spectrum" (you are correct) you would not have been diagnosed as "autistic". Nor as PDD (that dx didnt exist.

Back in the sixties/seventies/eighties only the classic "low functioning" autistics were classified as "autistic".

They sent me to shrinks for years and years. Basically it was treated as a "software problem" (my term), not a "hardware problem". The shrinks treated my aspergers as a neurosis (they didnt use that word-I assume thats where they were coming from) that had something to do with family dynamics, or something. Some of the many shrinks I got were better than others. But even the good ones were limited in what they could do.

I was simply called "gifted"
and decided along with my parents
that I did not want to skip ahead any grades in school
because I was small and would have had even more trouble
fitting in than I already had.

Classmates and others called me other things
that tended to be insults ...
that is, when they bothered with me at all.

I was the misfit
in the misfit group
at my high school.

Oh well.
I went on years later
to have one of my nerdy science fiction photos
be accepted into an art show and win a prize
in that particular city where I went to school.
So I got the last laugh after all.

I think I was better off not getting an official diagnosis.

...

I am a 73 year old, self diagnosed Aspie. My father was career military, and my family Christian Scientists. So I was never taken to any doctors or (gasp!) psychiatrists. I was undisciplined (smack!). I was aloof (smack!). I wouldn't listen (smack!). I was however, the best reader in my class at elementary school ... in the third grade my father was sent to a university to get a Phd. And the teacher's in the Education department there had a great time with me. They had speed reading machines, and I was put through a million tests. I think some of those results followed me right into my own university.

My diagnosis was "autistic tendencies".