aspergers vs schizophrenia

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I know this has been covered before, but can someone in a nutshell tell me what the differences are between the two? I have been searching but can't seem to find anything that compares the two.

This won't be a thorough reply, but schizophrenia is a mental illness, which AS is not. I guess a schizophrenic being "cut off from reality" is a bit comparable to Aspies feeling cut off from the rest of the world, but schizophrenia actually impairs one's ability to think rationally or logically, which I seriously doubt applies to many aspies. I for one have never heard voices, but I guess that doesn't apply to all schizophrenics.

Through the 1970s, all children on the spectrum (including aspies), were diagnosed with schizophrenia, childhood type.

These days, the definition of schizophrenia has been greatly narrowed. Schizophrenics have difficulty distinguishing reality from illusion and may have delusions of grandeur or auditory hallucinations. Those conditions are not a part of the spectrum of autisms.

There are some psychiatric patients right groups which argue that schizophrenia simply does not exist - and that mental illness does not exist. Many of them rely upon the views of Thomas Szasz, M.D.:

http://www.szasz.com/

My mother has said that Aspies are at risk of developing schizophrenia, and I wasn't surprised. I could easily see myself being one of them. Getting so confused trying to figure the world around me and myself out with perfect logic that I become schizophrenic, or give up, have a breakdown and think nothing is everything and everything is nothing and then become schizophrenic. I had the nothing is everything, everything is nothing thing before, it was terrible and scary but I figured it out and was perfectly happy.

nominalist, that's not exactly true; Dr. Kanner had his criteria running before then (circa 1967), just that it was "narrow" in its requirements, so many individuals didn't fit it who are deemed to be on the autistic spectrum nowadays.

Those on the spectrum tended to fit schizophrenia for a variety of reasons, the negative symptoms: lack of voice modulation/inflection in autism that can give an appearance of the "flat" effect (voice peculates are very common in ASD), social withdrawal and whatnot. Then you have those with an ASD who take things literally and perceive things differently to normal people, i.e., '...do you hear voices?'

It can all add up to a misdiagnosis.

1. schizophrenic reaction, childhood type
2. schizophrenic reaction, paranoid type and
3. schizoid personality disorder.

To support Daniel;

LFA's weren't being DXed with schizophrenia. They were the ones getting either the correct DX or getting lumped with MR (mental retardation). Sometimes HFA was also nailed (by the doctors who were schooled in Kanner's work properly). It was the rest of the Spectrum that got lumbered with Schizophrenia - although having said that there were certainly quacks around who put Eugene Bleuler's 1912 interpretation of Autism ahead of Kanner's (hence the problem until the DSM-IV in 1994) and DXing schizophrenia like clockwork.

The aspect of schizophrenia that hasn't been mentioned is split personality. When a child Aspie develops a fantasy world it will include "friends". This is of course not unknown in the NT world either - but with Aspie children it is highly detailed. Now the difference is the Aspie child is aware that their world is seperate to the real world. Those with schizophrenia can't make that distinction, so the different personalities become a part of them as such. This doesn't happen to Aspies.

As I said, Kanner [and Rutter] had an early criteria [before the DSM-III] that wasn't standardized across the field, kinda like how some institutions use Gillberg's criteria to diagnose AS now. DSM-III had atypical autism too, I think, i.e., late onset, not meeting all the requirements for autism (I don't know if AS would fit this or not).

Like with your experience, there wasn't anything around for those with a specific type of autism (AS) until recently, it was the stereotypical presentation of "classic autism"; a lack of social contact/affective contact and repetitive behaviors at an early age, or something else.

My adopted brother has schizophrenia, and I have AS, so I hope I can illuminate.
Schizophrenia is often marked by bouts of mental confusion, lack of clarity, word salad (where speech is random and makes no logical sense), auditory and visual hallucinations, and delusions. AS is marked by social problems and issues with sensory input (we are very, VERY sensitive to textures, lights, sounds, etc). Schizophrenics tend to lack organization, though Aspies are obsessed with order and patterns.
Big differences.

That must be why I hear voices, sometimes.

TLPG, Danielismyname:

I'm not sure what was happening in the West because I haven't read enough about this, but in Russia, there was (and still is, I think) a theory which regarded autism as a type of childhood psychosis. Classic autism was considered distinct from the cases that were definitely diagnosed as "childhood schizophrenia", and placed in a separate category, but it was still treated as a specific type of childhood psychotic disorder. Parallels were drawn deliberately between autism and schizophrenia - for example, most forms of self-stimulation were seen as "rudimentary catatonic symptoms" (e.g. the rocking or hand-flapping), impulsive running or sudden tantrums in autistic children were seen as synonymous to similar-looking symptoms in catatonic adults, and it was even supposed, judging by the external behavior of autistic people, that they hallucinate. Functional inability to speak and typical LFA behavior in older autistic children or adults was always seen as a sign of "oligophrenic defect", that is, a state resembling mental retardation which follows after a severe psychotic episode.

The whole theory roughly amounted to stating that autism is a kind of schizophrenia (while AS is schizoid personality disorder).

Bashina, for instance, states that she feels it unnecessary and inaccurate to diagnose autistic adults with Kanner's syndrome, since to her they are no different from schizophrenic ones, and she thinks schizophrenia is the more suitable diagnosis for them. In effect, she believes autism to result from a psychotic process which either ends early in childhood, leaving lasting residual symptoms, or which continues in a milder form with periodic relapses throughout adulthood.

(for those who are interested and speak Russian, there are interesting details on this in Bashina's book, availiable on www.psychiatry.ru)

So that, at least in this case, it is not about misdiagnosis.

DSM-IV criteria
(from http://www.behavenet.com/capsules/disorders/dsm4TRclassification.htm):

ixochiyo_yohuallan,

The thing is, hand-flapping, rocking and other motor mannerisms in autism are due to emotional upset (good or bad), "normal" people do these too, it's just far more prevalent in those with autism due to our emotional disturbances. Tantrums are the same.

This is a good website that explains the differential diagnoses of Asperger's and the differences between the conditions.