NO link between ASD's and Planned Violence, and Why.

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48% is a lot (seems like many could have an undiagnosed condition along similar lines too).

Mental illness + emotional turmoil + firearms + some media coverage = these rampage killers (no matter how rare, there seems to be patterns of behavior specific to this type, just like with other types of crime)

Why is it surprising there would be Asians and blacks, I wonder? The military veteran factor seems to get downplayed in the press. That's certainly not surprising - either that it's a common feature of spree killers, or that the media downplays it - or ignores it entirely.


This is if we take the official version of events for true. I am inclined not to do so, as I think most people would be if they did some research. There are too many incongruities.


This bit of data contradicts what the US secret service profile states:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/School_shooting


First off, I presume the reference here is to William Spengler, "Shooter who gunned down N.Y. firemen was armed with the same rifle Adam Lanza used in Newtown police" (link here. Why the paper felt the need to emphasize the same rifle being used in the headline is a mystery worth looking into...)

The points made above seem to be that the public or the media can only have one focus at a time, and that this case is somehow intrinsically different from the Lanza one because the suspect was in prison previously and officially (?) diagnosed with mental illness. I don't really see much validity to these points, however. For one thing, in most people's mind autism is a mental illness. For another thing, the picture I saw of Spengler doesn't look like "a hardened criminal capable of murderous rage" to me. He doesn't look like the violent thug stereotype, and if anything he resembles the stereotype I was describing. But even given that he does look like a hardened criminal, that wouldn't really prove anything. My point about the alienated or "androgynous" youth stereotype of a killer is that it has very little statistical basis. Violent crime and "hardened criminal capable of murderous rage" type does have a real-life basis, obviously.


Yet despite this, the stereotype is becoming more and more widespread and easily recognized. I've done some more digging and one of the first cases of this type appearing in a movie was in Empire Falls TV series, adapted from the 2002 novel by Richard Russo. At the end of the movie, a bullied school kid brings a gun to class and shoots a teacher and several students. The character is described thus:


In an interview, the author Russo said that his book's climax was inspired by the real-life shooting in Paducah, Kentucky, in 1997, when 14-year-old Michael Carneal "opened fire on a group of praying students, killing three and injuring five more." link here


Michael Carneal

In Empire Falls, the teenage shooter is played by Lou Taylor Pucci, pictured below.


If there are any doubts about his fitting the stereotype, just this year, Pucci played the autistic title character in The Story of Luke


This sounds reasonable but it has little to do with what I posted about, which was the increased insistence on "intervention" in the lives of autism in order to "prevent" incidents of violence.

To reiterate: The facts are that, of the last half dozen or so "spree shooters" in the US, at least four (& one in Norway) have been stuck with the autism tag - erroneously. The pattern is consistent: one "expert" (medical prof, FBI profiler, newsreader, journalist) makes the "diagnosis," which is then challenged by autism spokespeople, and then (often) followed by an apology. The result of this - regardless of whether you want to posit a conscious agenda or "conspiracy" - is a growing belief in the public mind that autism and senseless acts of violence overlap. That belief inevitably increases the pressure for parents and other caregivers to "intervene" in the lives of autists so as to "prevent" - at any cost - something similar happening. (This is the same kind of "reasoning" that has justified a drastic reduction of privacy and human rights in "the war on terror.")

Those who advocate early intervention may or may not be aware that they are advocating, not treatment (since autism is not a condition to be "treated"), but behavior modification. B.M often include aversive "therapy," which a form of conditioning similar to how rats in cages are conditioned into desired responses. In a least one case (Judge Rotenberg center) is even involves electric shocks.(Those interested can look into Michelle Dawson's work: http://www.sentex.net/~nexus23/naa_aba.html )

and then there is this, from our gracious host Alex Plank:

http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/21/opinion/p ... index.html

This might be a bit of a side track, but it's well worth placing here at this point:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlu2_zf4P6c[/youtube]

Big surprise huh?

I only hope that the searches were NOT initiated by people trying to find out the identities of people who have been diagnosed with AS.

Interesting. At first I thought you meant the "blocked from display at this site" message! Things they don't want aspies to know...

Not really. I knew for a while that people believe whatever they want to believe. And they say autistic people do black and white thinking and always want to be right? I have noticed this in lot of people.

"The mind is a terrible thing. And it must be stopped." ~ Bob Nelson

[Moderator note: long url's in this post have been edited and replaced with tiny url equivalents as the length of the original links was messing up the page format.]

DISCLAIMER: Throughout this post, I will be using the word “retardation” in place of “disability”—for example, “intellectual retardation” instead of “intellectual disability”. Please understand (as you should once you read the post) that I am doing this for the sake of clarity and not out of ignorance. I believe that “intellectual disability” is a preferable label in just about every other circumstance and that calling people “ret*ds” is in exceedingly poor taste. However, we are talking about serious stuff in this thread, and clarity is at a premium. I have put a lot of careful consideration into this post. Thank you and apologies to those who are offended.

Let me begin by saying that there at least appears to be (more on that near the end) an extraordinary amount of misunderstanding regarding the nature of autism on this forum. With this post, I will do my Sisyphean best to try and alleviate some of it, and in the process shed some light on what happened in Connecticut recently.

First, there seems to be a lot of confusion over what I will call the “diagnostic specificity” of autism.

Some diagnostic labels are more specific than others. For example, take a condition that’s caused by a virus sub-strain. Unfortunately, I have to make up an example here as I’m not exactly an expert on viruses, but let’s say there’s a diagnostic label—Blue Hair Disorder—that we apply to individuals who contract a certain virus sub-strain that turns their hair a certain shade of blue. Blue Hair Disorder is (or at least would be) a VERY specific condition…of all the vast variety of circumstances that might play into a person’s general being and the development of a medical “condition”, only an exceedingly narrow set apply to Blue Hair Disorder. You don’t just have to contract a specific virus to get it, you have to contract a specific sub-type of a specific virus. Furthermore, the results are very specific—everyone with Blue Hair Disorder develops hair that is the same shade of blue.

Now, let’s look at a slightly more general diagnostic label. Let’s say that people that contract other sub-types of this virus develop Pink Hair Disorder, Purple Hair Disorder, etc. –labels that would have basically the same diagnostic specificity as Blue Hair Disorder. If the “treatment” of these conditions didn’t depend terribly on which sub-strain the people in question contracted, clinicians might get together and decide to develop a new diagnostic label, Hair Color Disorder, which would apply to people who’ve contracted ANY sub-strain of this virus. In terms of diagnostic specificity, Hair Color Disorder is a bit more general than Blue Hair Disorder (even though it’s still quite specific relative to other labels…segue!)

One of the most prevalent misconceptions about autism relates to its diagnostic specificity. Namely, people tend to speak of autism as being a FAR more specific condition than it actually is.

The truth is, autism is extremely general, among the most general labels in the entire DSM. The only comparably general diagnostic label I can think of is intellectual retardation. This is not a coincidence, as, in many ways, these are “sister” diagnoses, describing the same basic condition (brain disorder) in terms of emotional (in the case of autism) and intellectual (in the case of intellectual retardation) manifestations (if you don't believe/accept/understand this description of the nature of autism, it's time to read up...start with Kanner's seminal paper and pay special attention to the epigraph). Of course, there is so much overlap between these two profiles in so many individuals that lots of under-informed people (regrettably) use the words “autism” and “ret*d” interchangeably.

One of the main differences between autism and intellectual retardation (as noted in said epigraph for “Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact”) is that intelligence lends itself to relatively precise measurement, while emotion does not. Thus, we can “see” the spectrum of intelligence much easier…it follows the “curve” of normal distribution (more or less) that becomes plainly evident after many individual measurements. While we know “autism” also represents a spectrum, the fact that it’s not measured as precisely as intelligence means that there isn’t as vivid a “curve” that just naturally crops up in our faces following mass measurement. We just kind of know it’s there based on the nature of the diagnosis. You might think of it as an invisible curve…real, but invisible.

For the sake of this post, I’m going to focus on the left half of the curve…in other words, people who have some degree of retardation when it comes to intellect/emotion.

One problem with having a relatively obvious “spectrum” of intelligence comes when it’s time to draw the cutoff for intellectual retardation—in other words, where do we draw the line along the spectrum of intelligence to separate those who we will refer to as having an intellectual retardation from those we won’t? Typically, a cutoff of 70 has been drawn. So, fair enough…everyone with an IQ of 70 or below is intellectually ret*d. But what about someone whose IQ is 71? Isn’t their intelligence virtually identical to someone whose IQ is 70? Why should the latter be labeled with intellectual retardation when the former is not?

Well, it’s simple, really. For practical purposes, the line has to be drawn somewhere. No mystery there, or in the issues it presents with categorization. When a parent comes in with a child whose IQ is tested to be 75, the clinician involved wouldn't be wrong to simply state that, while this child doesn't make the relatively arbitrary cutoff for what is labeled intellectual retardation, he or she still has relatively low (testable) intelligence.

Now, think about the “spectrum” of emotion…the left side of the spectrum, to be specific. Let’s assume that it follows a curve just like intelligence. Where do we draw the line that denotes who has autism (“emotional retardation”, if you will)? Right there at 70, of course. But this curve is invisible. How do you draw a line on an invisible curve? You can’t. You can either a) provide case studies that give the gist of what emotional retardation looks like (which is what Kanner did), or b) try to fashion a diagnostic “net” with criteria that are balanced *just so* that it catches people below the general level of severity desired as a cutoff (which is what the DSM does). In other words, you try to assemble a set of diagnostic criteria that are met ONLY by those who would rank a “70” or below on the emotional curve, if it weren’t invisible—that's the game played by the people who author the DSM.

One of the biggest misconceptions regarding autism on this board (and one of the biggest obstacles to a full understanding of autism in general) is what I will call “70 and under” thinking. By this I mean the way we tend to think that there are two types of people: a) those with emotional retardation/autism, which fall on this invisible scale from 0-70, and b) normal people/NTs. In other words, the fact that the autism “curve” is invisible makes it very easy to ignore the fact that there are people of “emotion quotient” 71, 72, 73, 80, 85, etc. –that there is no clear line to be drawn between autism and normal emotional functionality. What was a harmless logical quandary in measuring intellectual retardation becomes a sort of blissful ignorance in measuring emotional retardation.

Let’s say, for the sake of discussion (I know it's not this simple in real life) that having an “emotion quotient” of 70 or below means that you are simply unable to form relationships. So people who can’t form relationships are autistic, and people who can are not. Simple, right? Black and white, right?

But what about people who are able to form relationships, but unable to maintain them? It's not too hard to imagine these people stringing together a number of “failed” relationships, right?

Uh-oh.

Ridding yourself of “70 and under” thinking is the key to understanding why there is such a HUGE amount of discussion (search this website) in regard to autism being “mixed up” with psychopathy, NPD, BPD, etc. Is it simply that these conditions, as a matter of complete coincidence, often look like autism “on paper”, etc.? Or is it that these labels represent what autism looks like as you go “up” the “emotion quotient” curve? That someone with BPD might be rightly thought of as having an AQ of 71 (or whatever)? Has it occurred to any of you that NPD and BPD are cluster B—“emotional” PDs? Is that also a mere coincidence?

The alternative is, I think, ridiculous: To believe that a person who fits the profile of Asperger’s who engages in psychopathic/personality disorder type behavior has, as we have been told time and time again on Wrong Planet, two TOTALLY COINCIDENTAL conditions. In other words, the recent shooter should be properly understood as having Asperger’s AND psychopathy, but that the latter has nothing to do with the former. It’s just a coincidence! This, of course, is absurd. The rationalizations provided are even sillier…for instance, that this person’s Asperger’s and psychopathy are unrelated because there are lots of Aspies who aren’t psychopaths. Yeah, no kidding. That’s like saying a person’s being a huge fan of Batman has nothing to do with their owning Adam West’s signature because there are lots of people who aren’t huge fans of Batman but do own Adam West’s signature and, conversely, lots of people who are huge fans of Batman but don’t own Adam West’s signature.

See how utterly dumb this reasoning sounds when applied to an issue without strong emotional and political elements? Without a lot of feelings at stake?

Guess what. The relationship between autism and psychopathy/personality disorders is just as substantial as the relationship between being a huge fan of Batman and having Adam West’s signature, should these sets of traits be found in any particular individual. The key to understanding and accepting this relationship is by wrapping your head around the concept of autism as a spectrum as I have tried to explain.

Going back to the opening paragraph, is it really a matter of people not understanding that “70 and under” thinking is erroneous, or do people simply employ “70 and under” thinking when doing so serves their agenda?

I think the latter applies in many (but not all) cases. People have no problem acknowledging the “71 and up” crew when trying to associate autism with people like Einstein, et al. Or even just when talking about a relatively benign individual...like, uncle Bob had some Aspie-ish traits, etc. But the second someone tries to associate autism with relatively high-functioning bad behavior...here comes the “70 and under” thinking!

Of course, I also have to believe that, in many individuals, “70 and under” thinking represents true and relatively innocent misunderstanding...misunderstanding which is fostered by those for whom it is merely a matter of rhetorical expediency.

Who might these people be, who flip-flop between conceptions of autism to suit their agenda?

Take a look in the mirror.
http://www.wrongplanet.net/postx172789-15-0.html

It is precisely the “71 and up” crowd (which has a strong showing on Wrong Planet) that utilizes “70 and under” thinking as a rhetorical device.

Think about it. Say I'm a 75, for instance, and fit the profiles of Asperger's and NPD equally, depending on how you interpret my behavior. Unless I am the type of person who enjoys the idea of having NPD, I'd probably prefer the label of Asperger's. So I identify with it...but as soon as someone suggests a relationship between NPD and Asperger’s—BAM, there's the “70 and under” thinking. All of a sudden there are two kinds of people: autistic people, and everyone else. And somehow, the distinction just can't be mistaken! What a coincidence!

A few words on what I think of as “trait splitting”, a related phenomenon.

Trait splitting involves taking an unpleasant trait/behavior/etc. and attempting to dissociate it from autism by creating an autistic “version” of that trait that usually ends up being quite similar to the original trait, but differentiated somehow. Think affective vs. cognitive empathy, autistic inertia vs. laziness, etc. Now, it's not so much that the distinctions made between these things are meaningless as formulated, they simply ignore the spectral nature of autism—the fact that there are countless intermediate steps between “cognitive empathy” and “affective empathy”, and that people to whom these labels apply typically embody some sort of mixture of the two, rather than being a pure example of either polar “ideal”.

Consider also the vast amount of people who are initially “misdiagnosed” with NPD, BPD, etc. before they find their home sweet home in autism.

http://tinyurl.com/d3ruj7x


http://tinyurl.com/d9p3ltv


Again...coincidence?

Either we accept this rather elaborate set of coincidences, or we accept my model, which is both simple and (unless you have an agenda) rather obvious. Again, a large web of coincidence, or the rather obvious alternative. Have you ever heard of Occam's Razor?

Adam Lanza's autism had everything to do with the horrible act he committed. Does this mean all autistic people are on the verge of such an atrocity? No. Does it mean that most autistic people are on the verge of such atrocity? No. Does it mean that people with autism are inherently violent, evil, etc.? No. Nevertheless, it's true...Adam Lanza's autism had EVERYTHING to do with what he did (and that's the second to last time I'll EVER type that name). And it's our responsibility to cope with the complexity of the situation.

Keep in mind that the story of Asperger’s in particular “jibes” with this synthesis of mine very well. It is/was a diagnostic “net” that ended up catching more than the people who developed it bargained for. After all, people have been employing “70 and under” thinking ever since Uta Frith attempted to “soften” the clinical picture of Asperger's in the footnotes to her 1991 translation of of Hans Asperger’s “Die Autistischen Psychopathen im Kindesalter”—again, another coincidence? Are we supposed to assume that in the 1940s, Dr. Asperger wasn't familiar with the concept of psychopathy? Have you ever read the introductory pages of this paper, which Frith omitted? They pretty much make it clear that, when Dr. Asperger said “psychopathy”, he meant it (although now we're served heaping piles of “trait splitting” that involves a distinction between psychopathy and “mind pathology”). Also, have you ever read an early edition of Cleckley's seminal work on psychopathy, The Mask of Sanity? In this widely acclaimed tome, psychopaths are depicted (through actual case studies) not as in-control, cold, calculating, evil people, but individuals who are clearly missing something? Almost emotionally ret*d, if you will?

Please note that I have not linked to a single scholarly paper in this post, yet it contains MUCH more truth than just about any other post made to this thread thus far. I'd like to make a few comments as to why that might be.

Perhaps a full understanding of the situation with this shooting (being carried out by an Aspie) simply MUST involve well-informed and well-considered generalization. Unfortunately, there are, as I see it, three big obstacles here.

1. In the great movement toward human rights over the last century or so, we have largely, in a “throw the baby out with the bathwater” scenario, sacrificed our right to make generalizations about human behavior.

2. We have (since the scientific revolution) developed a tendency to think that a scientific standard of proof is the only one that matters and is appropriately applied in any context whatsoever.

3. Individuals with Asperger’s (who make up most of my audience here, I assume) tend to have serious problems with generalization.

Boy, that’s a potent one-two-three punch, right? The zeitgeist of egalitarianism meets an over-dependence on the scientific method and a hardwired inability to see the proverbial forest for the trees. What we end up with is profoundly muddled thinking. Whether that muddling seems to be an innocent consequence or an intentional distortion seems to depend on the individual in question.

I expect that this post will be met with a great deal of nit-picking. I got this detail wrong, that detail wrong, etc. Someone who truly understands will know that the details aren't important. It's the generalities that (should) rule this conversation.

Finally, I am a diagnosed Aspie. And lots of other things. I am probably a member of the “71 and up” crew, like many people on this site. I acknowledge that my emotional disturbance isn't necessarily harmless, to my immediate family OR to society in general. I accept the vast array of personalities that are rightfully interpreted as autistic, be they good and bad. I want for all autistic individuals to be met with grace, love, and understanding. In turn, I pledge to never deny the nature of my condition and never stand in the way (no matter how well-intentioned my motives are) of a deeper understanding of things like emotional disturbance, psychopathy, personality disorders, etc. Because I know that doing so would only help to facilitate events like the one that took place in Connecticut a few weeks ago.

I really AM Adam Lanza. Better yet, I've crawled out of the cave, seen that lucky old sun, and have taken it upon myself to venture back down here to Wrong Planet on something of an emancipation mission. Please don't reject me (or my ideas) out of hand.



PS) I'd like to institute a new rule. Anyone who presents a scholarly paper on autism that relates in any way to issues of severity, diagnostic specificity, relationship to other diagnostic labels, etc. MUST be able to give a full and detailed account of the author's conception of autism—namely, whether they're pushing “70 and under” thinking or not. Otherwise that paper is utterly meaningless, as there is no way to determine who it applies to.

PPS) If none of this makes any sense to you whatsoever, I'm gonna wager that you're one of the folks for whom "70 and under" thinking is an innocent misunderstanding. Don't give up. Read this post again, ten times if you need to, and do your Aspergian best to keep an open mind.

PPPS) Once you have mastered the concept of autism as a spectrum, you will begin to understand virtually EVERY diagnostic label in the DSM to be spectral in nature, because NONE of them exist apart from the particulars of individual humans, which are never uniform. Yep—believe it or not, this can be the first step toward a deep and meaningful understanding of human nature. If you want it to be.

Last edited by Poke on 29 Dec 2012, 10:43 am, edited 2 times in total.

The study from the New York Times was done in the year 2000. At that time the stereotype was that only white men committed rampage killings which from the "Mother Jones" time line below has extended past that time. With a search into the past the New York Times found that there were significant exceptions to that stereotype. The under 25 demographic is an expanding trend since the late 90's, and particularly since 2006.

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/201 ... map?page=2

The New York Times study in the text of the article linked did not suggest that those precipitating factors caused people to suddenly snap, they suggested that the actions were planned carefully over a period of time after those precipitating factors occurred. The profile you provided was specific to school shooters, not the general category that the New York Times and Mother Jones pursued of rampage killings, but even so the profiles are similar. The secret service did not identify any mental disorder associated with school shootings in it's report.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/ ... 6236.shtml

I heard the story about the individual bludgeoning his grandmother to death with a sledgehammer before I saw his picture; that likely changed my perception of his face, as opposed to a scenario of a story that he saved children from drowning in young adulthood. I wasn't anticipating anything good in that face.

However, in the case of both Holmes and Lanza, they were both pictured and identified as harmless grinning youth, before any picture that could reasonably forecast their futures in later adulthood were released. Not so for Cho, who was described as emotionally detached from others from childhood. No smiling pictures for Cho, but by this point five years has past and Cho is only a distant memory in the mind for most of the general public with no official assessment made for Asperger's, found in a Wiki search, for anyone trying to refresh their memory on that individual case.

I'm not sure how any of this could significantly affect ABA therapy as an early childhood intervention, which by the way aversive ABA therapies are rarely used anymore in the US as part of that therapy. This issue has been specific to Asperger's syndrome in adults in the media, related to Cho and Lanza, in the US, in a subgroup of the spectrum where ABA is not usually a consideration for treatment.

I don't think anyone of note in the media other than Scarborough made any speculation about Holmes and Aspergers, which seemed biased by his concern for his son diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, and his previously stated speculation that Cho was on the spectrum. He's more likely to see Asperger's in young men, as a journalist, than those that have no idea what the condition is, however that is a potentially harmful bias as a journalist. But, his concerns specific to the support for mental health issues in young adult males, are more substantially supported per the case of Lanza, in the national conversation at this point.

I am convinced at this point that the overall media coverage per the copy cat factor may be a major factor precipitating a psychological trigger for some of these events that may already be planned among these young people as Cho referenced the Columbine Killings in his motivations for his crime, and it may not fully be a coincidence that the Lanza incident happened only a couple of weeks after an individual reporting a self-diagnosis of Asperger's killed his father in a school shooting, with Asperger's as the focus for his personal motive.

I think there is also a strong potential that this also played a role in the next two "unrelated" events that happened in the weeks after the Lanza incident.

There appears to be a new trend for rampage killings of an under the age of 25 demographic since 1998, that can be identified in the "Mother Jones Article", that has escalated in the last 6 years. There was only one reported rampage killing involving a middle age adult in the middle of a time frame between 1949 to 1964. Legally purchased Semi-automatic weapons have been the weapon of choice since the mid 60's. The information explosion in the last 20 years provides people alternate activities to crime, but it also provides the greater opportunity for obsession with violence and all things associated with the darker side of human nature. That is not a good place for some with the potential for paranoid psychosis to surround themselves in.

But, unfortunately there is often no predictive factor of that issue earlier in life for many individuals. Particularly for an individual diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, where it is not an expected event, but a documented one in rare subgroups of individuals with Asperger's syndome, nor those that have yet to exhibit symptoms of schizophrenia.

The early twenties are almost always when the first psychotic breaks are indicated for either those young adult males with schizophrenia or Asperger's syndrome. What results from psychosis does not just come out of thin air, it is influenced by what a person is exposed to in life. All bets are off in trying to figure it out from an outside perspective, unless it is documented by the person experiencing it. Cho, Loughner, Krumm, and Brevik all provided at least some documentation with all of these individuals describing revenge on described people or ideological targets, without a fully rational described basis for the actions they took. All there is for Lanza, at this point that I am aware of is a report by someone that knew Lanza that remains unnamed, that Lanza was very angry that his mother was working to have him committed.

Whether or not psychosis was involved there was not likely anyway to predict future violent behavior in a 17 year old Loughner, Holmes, Christopher Krumm, or Lanza as none of these individuals were described with any issues associated with aggression at this point in their lives or before.

Cho and Brevik are both described as having violent childhoods, with Brevik experiencing sexual abuse, but no record of diagnoses or suspicions reported of autism spectrum disorders in either of these individuals as an adolescent. Brevik was described by two court appointed psychiatrists providing testimony as having paranoid psychosis; one identifying it as part of Paranoid Schizophrenia and one identifying it among several personality disorders and Asperger's that in part kept him from the potential of a plea of insanity to avoid prison, that he did not seem to be interested in.

I don't see any potential conspiracies, but there seems to be the continued notion among some in various areas of the internet that it is impossible for a schizophrenic with psychotic breaks to institute complex planned violence, or the potential of psychosis for an individual previously properly diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. It is the exception, not the rule, but never the less, not outside the realm of possibility or concern.

And finally of note in the secret service assessment of school shootings, a third were noted as loners, a quarter were reported as a member of a fringe social group in school, but 41% where reported in mainstream school social groups and activities. And only 12% had no close friends. Being bullied was reported as a major causal factor with revenge cited as major motivating factor, with almost all planned events of violence shared with friends. But, again, none of these issues are specific to people on the spectrum, or reported as such in the secret service assessment.

http://www2.ed.gov/admins/lead/safety/p ... report.pdf

Quote taken from the following post http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp5110442.html#5110442

The rest is in response to Poke's post here in this thread: http://www.wrongplanet.net/postp5121246 ... t=#5121246

From an entirely personal perspective, and construct all your own, you've managed to, for all practical purposes, paint the vast majority of users on this site as lower in intellect, emotional intelligence, and understanding of Autism than yourself.

If that isn't enough, you've proclaimed yourself our "emancipator."

Additionally, you want to rewrite the rules for anyone presenting evidence to the contrary of your message to include an utterly impossible task before said evidence should be accepted.



So you want us to prove to you what the motivations of the researchers are. And as if that's not impossible enough, you want us to prove to you whether they are pushing a way of thinking, the construct of which you admittedly invented yourself.

You want us to believe that most of us do not understand the complexities and nuances inherent in Autism being a spectrum. You want us to believe that most of us do not realize that the concept of spectrums could mean that many other disabilities could posses spectrum characteristics that may overlap the Autistic spectrum in any number of ways known and unknown to us.

It seems to me that if anyone has come here with preconceived ideas (and many of us have, this is true), you have most definitely done so.

What disappoints me is that you seem to have come to most of your conclusions about us, based on a construct all your own, and now expect the rest of us to toss out whatever paradigms we have, and adopt yours. It disappoints me mainly because of the obvious level of effort you went to, to invent your construct, which indicates that you could have spent at least some of that effort thinking about how the way you view us just might be taken offensively.

What's offensive about it all is not your use of the terminologies (retardation etc.), but your apparent assumption that most of us have never read, studied, or thought in depth about autism as much as you have.

Yet you expect us to believe that Adam Lanza's autism had everything to do with the fact that he killed so many children. Adam Lanza, a man whom you have most likely never even met, spoken to, or probably ever even bumped into casually.



Are you now? I realize you are speaking metaphorically here, but I have to say this is a most arrogent statement to make about someone you've never known. Come to think of it, it's pretty arrogent even if you did know him. From everything I've read, even those that did know him, didn't know him very well, because he never let them in.



I'll speak only for myself here, and let others speak for themselves. I never asked to be freed. I already am free. Please do not presume to know what, if anything, I supposedly need to be freed from.



Agreed. I took your ideas in hand long enough to realize they are of no value to me. Thanks, but no thanks.

I've done quite well until now without them, and will continue to. I may not be able to intuit study researchers motivations, but I've intuited enough of your ideas to know I want nothing more to hear of them.

Seems you have no evidence to support your claims other than your own constructs, ideas and opinions.

'nuff said.

Discussion of mental illness of any kind in relation to violence is a complete waste of time.

The best predictor for violence is substance abuse. The small group of schizophrenics who seem to be more likely to engage in violence also tend to be substance abusers, and their tendency toward violence is no greater than that of people who are not mentally ill but also abuse substances.

Going around and around on this is pointless.

It may not be overtly aversive but it is still behavior modification, and this is always going to have an element of control. Even the word "intervention" implies interference. (Once again I refer anyone interested to Michelle Dawson's work on ABA methods.)

However, the main thing I'm curious about is how an increased concern about untreated autism leading to violence would not "significantly affect ABA therapy as an early childhood intervention"? I'm curious to hear the arguments against, because so far I haven't.


One isn't enough? My point was that it happened consistently with each incident of violence from Cho to Lanza, one "expert" made the link, received an outcry from autists spokespeople, made an apology. It's a pattern and where patterns are, so is design.

I invite anyone interested to read the full post at my blog, here: http://auticulture.wordpress.com/2012/1 ... /#comments


I think so too. I also think some of these events may have even been orchestrated for this purpose, and that many of the "suspects" weren't solely responsible (or even at all); but that's whole other can o' worms.

One thing I'll say tho: doesn't the title of this thread alone prove that the media and the public are connecting violence with autism?

If we are (mostly) in agreement that there is no actual (significant) connection, then the question (the one that interests me) remains unanswered: how and why is this association getting stronger?

People are innately afraid and mistrustful of the quiet loners, and you can't really get more of a quiet loner than someone with an ASD (not always the case, but far, far more common than the normal population).

Quiet loner shoots up a place
+
quiet loners often have an ASD (or some other social disorder, such as a Schizophrenic Spectrum Disorder)
=
there we are

Violent criminal acts are reported at higher rates among individuals diagnosed with Schizophrenia, psychosis, and substance abuse, and also reported higher among individuals diagnosed with Aspergers, psychosis, and substance abuse, in the two most recent research studies done in this area linked below; however to date the substance abuse associated along with psychosis seems to be the mitigating factor of both disorders, similar to what is seen in the general population among those with substance abuse without Schizophrenia, psychosis or Asperger's syndrome.


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1870 ... t=Abstract



http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19668362



The greater interest in these unusual crimes of violence have been attempted as explained by aspects of autistic traits, by experts in the area of criminal forensics, in the Web MD article, linked below, but unfortunately when the general public reads these very popular "Web MD articles, they don't get the details of the recent studies done above.

While in general the mainstream media has done a good job of relating the issue as not one associated with planned violence and Autism as the Web MD article link below also details, the other issues associated with unusual crimes of violence are not as clearly refuted, per rare cases, in the Web MD source.

The experts in these very popular internet medical sources of information, do not appear to be providing the same answers as the mainstream media, but these popular medical internet sites are not as sensitive to public criticism as mainstream media sources.

Terms like Aspergers, Psychosis, Schizophrenia, and Autism stick with the general public better than any general potential for substance abuse, that appears to be the major source of criminal violence among those with or without disorders. It is no wonder that the law enforcement war on drugs in response to the crack wars, and the effective end of the crack wars of the 80's, is a major factor continuing the phenomenon of a steady decline of homicides, other violent crime, and crime in general, in the US, since the early 90's.

If there is any increase of public perception of stigma associated with Autism and violence, or a perceived need for an increase in unwarranted behavioral therapies among those with Autistic Disorder, it is for the most part a media generated misconception, I think.

Terms like Aspergers, Psychosis, Schizophrenia, and Autism are hot topics of media interest and public curiosity that drives the readership and viewing habits of audiences. In addition, the internet and sites like Web MD, have turned the country into a virtual army of amateur physicians not unlike all the crime shows that have turned the country into a virtual army of amateur forensic crime specialists.

Real life events, provide the general public the opportunity to exercise their virtual media education in the last several decades starting with Marcus Welby MD and Perry Mason and now prevalent in many media sources, on these topics of forensic crime and general medical interest.

All these unwarranted concerns and potential copy cat incidences are associated with media and culture, I think. There is no way to avoid it that I can see, unless the media suddenly disappears, which is not going to happen as long as there are batteries and electricity..

The key issue, I think though, is human reasoning and the decision making process is understood in scientific research as determined by emotion, in most cases, not necessarily by logic or facts. Otherwise, the correction factor would not be an element of concern, as it is emotion that can seal the fate of memory and the decision making process for the future.

As long as sites like the Web MD one below continue as a result of a quick internet search on Asperger's and violence, there is going to be the perception among some not only of a rare association, but a direct causal factor perceived among some in these horrific incidences that gain the attention of the entire country. Almost no one is going to go to the trouble to pull up the research linked and quoted above, at least not in the general population.

http://www.webmd.com/brain/autism/news/ ... s-violence

I am of the opinion that the culture of electronic media creates all kinds of mythical conspiracies in the public psyche, however no one in particular is necessarily in charge of them or substantially impacting what eventually results in the public psyche. There is a mass effect of social contagion in the public psyche that continues to grow in power and uncertainty of chaotic effect, driven by this new enhanced cultural phenomenon. Pioneered by folks like Zuckerberg in the ultimate unwitting "revenge of the nerds" and "electronic cosmic consciousness".

The escalation of events like the ones in the last six years associated with these horrible crimes, in my opinion, illustrate just a tiny effect of the overall growing chaotic effect of this new cultural phenomenon. In some ways it would almost be comforting to think someone was in control, even the government, but in my experience working for the government for over 2 decades, I don't see that as anywhere close to possible. Someone in charge is more likely to be reading a book about goats to some school age children, like G.W. after 9/11..

Also of note after looking at your link now that you provided in your quote in my last post, the webmd quoted expert is the same individual that authored the research in Sweden, in 2006 associated with Asperger's syndrome and violence, that you referenced on your website