Autism & Introspection.

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Has anyone else noticed that the more severe a person's ASD appears to be, the more focused they are on themselves, even to the exclusion of external issues?

I mean, some members who seem to be more severely autistic than the rest of us also seem to engage in more introspection than the rest of us.

Just curious if anyone else has noticed this.

Thanks!

Introspection not so much, the tendency to chronic rumination is what I have noticed more.

How are you guaging severity levels?

That's the same thing, isn't it?

I know that the word 'Autism' itself is derived from the New Latin word autismus, and was coined by the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler in 1910 as he was defining symptoms of schizophrenia. He derived it from the Greek word autós (αὐτός, meaning "self"), and used it to mean morbid self-admiration, referring to "autistic withdrawal of the patient to his fantasies, against which any influence from outside becomes an intolerable disturbance". (Wikipedia quote).

I mean, the more severe a person's ASD seems to be, the more they seem to post about personal fears, anxieties and failures.

So, is this the 'self' that Bleuler was referring to?

Last edited by Fnord on 11 Jul 2018, 4:19 pm, edited 1 time in total.

No. I'm making a correlative observation between number and severity of people's reported symptoms and how often those same people report their own subjective experiences, feelings, and opinions.

In meta-terms, the question arises from my own subjectivity.

yup. the headfucks have been going on since I can remember remembering things.

aged 5 - "how did God create himself"

aged 6 - "Is Santa Claus my neighbour?" - clearly I was onto something here. much more sophisticated than the self creating God dilemma

That's NOT what I'm talking about.

Please stay on-topic.

also, to deal with the topic with more ~ introspection ~ I guess I would say that I spend way too much time in my own head and then when I talk to others - even online - i realise how ill equipped I am for conversation. I am expressing myself, always, but perhaps learning to listen and understand people's perspective better would help me better. I sometimes - correction, often - fail to find people interesting - as horrible as it may sound - unless they are talking about subjects I find interesting. I do try to fake it but since you ask...

Last edited by Gallia on 11 Jul 2018, 4:54 pm, edited 4 times in total.

i already had that covered

I am so confused by this topic.

I have met people who were extremely autistic, had severe difficulties communicating. Remember one in particular who always thought of me when others never did. He had a good heart and was loyal, when someone was against me he would stand up for me, even when he never defended himself and I could defend myself pretty well. Good kid. Everybody hated him for some reason but I always had his back and he knew it. Hope he is doing well.

Have also met people on the spectrum who were not that autistic, high functioning and could communicate pretty well who were incredibly egotistical and even narcissistic.

So in the end, no, I don't think it has that much effect. Everyone is unique.

I saw an article that mentioned studies found that people with clinical depression seem to use first-person pronouns at a much higher rate than non-depressed people, and this is actually a super accurate predictor of depression. So I propose that it is people who are severely depressed that are probably prone to post a lot about introspection and be focused on their own experiences. As for severity of autism, I don't know how to tell that apart unless they have it listed in their signature, so I can't judge. I highly doubt it does though.

I feel like I definitely rant a bit too much about myself in posts (if that's the case I wish people would point it out to me), but my degree of autism would be considered not severe at all, so I am not sure I can serve to prove your hypothesis.

Even though it's not the best of sources, if you're interested, here is the article (I admit I got clickbaited ):
https://tonic.vice.com/en_us/article/xw58ea/depressed-people-use-these-words-more-often

I think the "narcissistic" part is a little out of topic but I agree that everyone is unique. Obviously, if you spend more time in you own head you may come across as selfish because people expect you to chit chat when truly you just enjoy fantasising and thinking about things you like. Nothing selfish there.

and i'm sure being socially isolated does that too.

Uhm, okay. I wasn't talking about you

Last edited by LoneLoyalWolf on 11 Jul 2018, 6:22 pm, edited 2 times in total.

i know

This thread was a horse with a broken leg from the start. The OP should demand that the mods put a gun to its head, and put the topic out of its misery.

Figure out a better way to ask your question if you need to ask it (whatever it is that you're trying to ask). Refashion the question, and try again if you want.

Problem number one is the title. "Introspection" is not quite the same thing as "self absorption". Self absorption seems to be what you're talking about. But we, the readers, cant even be sure of that.

The very word "autistic" (as the OP himself even says) means "inward oriented". And the second problem is that he starts out by asking in effect: "are more severely autistic people more inward oriented than the less severely autistic", which is basically the same as asking "are more severely autistic people...more....severely autistic than are less severely autistic folks?" That's a tautology. Like asking "do bachelors tend to be single guys?".

Then he refashions the question by asking "do the more severely autistic complain more about being disabled in life than do the less severely autistic?". In essence "do folks who are more disabled complain more about being disabled than do folks who are less severely disabled?"

Okay. That's not quite a tautology. On one hand you would expect folks who are more severely disabled to complain more about being diabled than do folks who are less severely disabled.On the other hand sometimes counterintuitive things turn out to be true. For example if person A has a club foot, and person B is entirely missing both legs, you might consider both to be on the same "locomotion impaired spectrum" .And you might label person A as being the more "high functioning" of the two. And you would expect person B to complain more about being disabled.

However, if you observed both of their complaining behaviors over time, who knows what you would find? The counterintuitive thing might be the truth. Person A might compare themselves to normal folks more, and thus complain more about how his life is impaired by his club foot. And person B might only compare themselves to other handicapped folks and not to normal folks, and might complain less about their disability. You never know.

From what I have observed on WP its hard to say how anything correlates with how folks self report as being on the autism spectrum. One lady on WP self identified as NT, and though she wasn't exactly a "complainer" she had a short fuse and was one of the most easy to anger folks on WP, and finally got herself banned. A self righteous person (if not self absorbed) who was not even on the spectrum.