Asperger's -- The Jewish Syndrome?

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Interesting.


TheSunAlsoRises

I'm PDD-NOS and I have the "Why does s**t always happen to me?" syndrome tho I ain't officially Jewish.

Heh, from the outside at least, Woody Allen looks like someone with autism spectrum characteristics, but I wonder if the profession of movie director is what attractive to people with these traits more than anything else?

The director is very often described as not caring about the actors and only about creating their vision. Look at George Lucas and Quentin Tarantino, they both memorized a ridiculous number of scenes from other movies they liked and used them in their own movies, Lucas re-edits his movies over and over and Tarantino's interest is in a very narrow genre of film.

Most "art house" film directors across cultures, from Japan to France, Sweden to Australia seem to have some autistic traits regardless of ethnic heritage. Do a search for any country and "new wave cinema".

The cool thing is with digital video cameras and editing software so cheap today, this could be a huge untapped area for great films. Lord knows Hollywood ran out of ideas ages ago!

As a Jewish person I was about to attest that there are indeed a nearly disproportionate amount of Jews on the spectrum, especially in more conservative branches where marrying non-Jews is frowned upon, which would lead to a smaller gene pool and give a greater likelihood of producing a child with genetically inherited traits, especially since there are few Jews in the world at this point.

But the initial post was offensive, and confuses correlation with causation. You are not autistic because you have Jewish blood.

I've always joked that Judaism is historically the autism of religion.

@Fogman

Judaism is also a religion that values education, debate skills [indirectly], and ritualistic mannerisms [even among less conservative branches]. As for high IQs I can't say, but having Jewish parents is not so different from having Asian parents. That could certainly give the appearance of a group with higher IQs, even if it's not actually true.

The thing is, Judasim is a religion and culture within itself. It is not an ethnicity as anyone can convert to it.
To imply a religion or ethnicity increases your probability of autism is like saying being black increases the probability of you being stupid (not true!).
If anything like with all things in life it is down to circumstances.

If you come from a bloodline of autistics and they breed like rabbits, chances are there will be a lot of autistic people that share the same values as them. That is not due to ethnicity or belief, but merely circumstance.

I have a Jewish friend who is brilliant and does not have ASD.

Fortunately the link to the article in the OP is broken, so I was spared the rage.

I wish we were many, I'd feel less alone.

However, I sometimes wonder whether the fact that we're a nation of computer programmers and hitech could be due to a bigger proportion of AS people in our (Ashkenazi) population. The amount of "Engineer types" I see around me is overwhelming. So much so, that when women ask to be set up for blind dates, we expressly ask to leave out this type of guy, because they are so many. I call them zombies.

Certainly endogamy (the isolated ghettos in Europe, i.e. Ashkenazis like me, never marrying outside the community), I always believed they could account for this huge amount of square-brained (as I call them) men in our population here (it's usually the men). They're all the same - no sense of humor at all, never smile, monotone, behave like robots, nerdy, no display of emotion at all, expressionless eyes, no sense of aesthetics or of having fun, no body language). This is why I don't go visit our R&D departments at work even if I need to. They make me feel uncomfortable, unwelcome and that it would take a miracle for them to show appreciation to someone. They have a bit of sullen expression. I don't know if this is Asperger's, though, because I have NLD, not Asperger's. And my NLD, and my father and grandmother's autism came from an Eastern Europe Jewish community. My father was the Engineer type.

People often tell me I should write a book, but the only book I'd like to write is on this very topic. Problem is I don't know where to start my research because I feel that there's a lot of purposeful silence around this issue. I have a feeling, because of the way my father and I were raised, that autism may have been a taboo - given the Ashkenazi family-survival tool of NEVER admitting that what one of their children had was HEREDITARY. I suspect this survival tool comes from the close-knit communities in Eastern Europe. I think there has to be a powerful reason why my family so adamantly claimed since the day I was born (and until today) that I'm purposefully mean, selfish and lazy. I think the reason may be they're desperately trying to cover the "genetic flaw" that runs in our family. I'd like to research and write so that my horrible life won't have been in vain, so that other Ashkenazis can know from a young age that they're being immolated for the sake of the survival of the family line.

I wonder if Asperger's, same as big noses and back problems (which are known to be), could be a result of inbreeding / endogamy...

I forgot to mention that another reason might be that, according to what is known nowadays, Neanderthals mostly bred with Humans in the Middle East, where the Jews originally are from.

Oy vey! Actually, interestingly, studies have shown that a number of Jewish communities have Tourette's Syndrome, as this article states. http://www.whonamedit.com/synd.cfm/1549.html However, as this article states, this was largely due to the focus of studies on the Jewish communities, relative to studies done amongst other ethnic groups. http://www.tourette-syndrome.info/tsnf-faq.html#jewish This well known man with Tourette's Syndrome, Brad Cohen, is Jewish. But this girl, Jamie Grace, is not. I think that the same can be said of Asperger Syndrome. P.S. Bye the way, I'm not Jewish either.

Well, none of it is based on research or anything, just my own impressions, so I don't know how much of it could turn out true...

Autism = Egoism
Egoism = Being Jewish
Autism = Being Jewish

Is this the "logic" being employed?