Poll: Is Aspergers the same thing as ASD/HFA?

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There's been a couple of discussions on this before but nothing recent. Logistics aside, i.e. that of official diagnostic term and the benefits of receiving an ASD diagnosis, where do people with Aspergers stand on how Aspergers was eliminated from the DSM?

I personally as someone with Aspergers am outraged because I wholeheartedly believe that Aspergers and ASD are two entirely separate disorders. I find that even when talking to individuals with HFA I do not have much in common with them and they cannot relate to me. Just as I know I do not process social information in the way an NT does, I know I do not process it in the same way as someone with HFA does.

Where do others with Aspergers stand on this issue?

I am in agreement with The DSM's merging of the diagnoses. The key point I see is that it's a spectrum. Those called HFA likely just internalize the affects more, but that does not mean they struggle less. I can often relate just as easily to someone who is "lower functioning" than myself, as I can to someone with my own functionally, and as I can to someone who is "higher functioning." We're all individuals with many differences, but we all share similar underlying difficulties that come with ASD.

Asperger’s and HFA, to me, represent two different “colors” of the Autistic Spectrum.

No they aren't the same. I asked my Neuropsychologist during my assessment report meeting, and she said there are differences. I'm Level 2 ASD so I didn't ask for the details of how Aspergers differs from HFA, but it does.

My daughter is considered HFA but I don't see any of the stereotypical characteristics of Aspergers in her personality.

It would have been impossible for me to be diagnosed with Asperger’s under the DSM-IV or ICD 8 through 10.

These labels are largely meaningless as it's possible to move from LFA to HFA and HFA to Aspie over the course of one's life. Plenty of examples in the literature and on threads created by members on WP.

Conversely there are people who are Aspie but who become less functional over time.

I've posted on how my daughter went from Low functioning as a child to a now relatively high functioning 15 yr old. My grandparents and siblings call her an Aspie but I avoid such labels as her social skills still need lots of development.

^ Good point, I've heard of some people who have moved along the scale.

Asperger's is an autistic spectrum disorder and high functioning autism.

They used to be separate and then not too long later AS was a form of autism and back when I was diagnosed, it wasn't autism but it was a form of it.

It's like how we have different labels for those who are on the schizophrenic spectrum but not all of them are a schizophrenic. They either have schizo effective or schizoid personality disorder or schizo typical personality disorder or paranoid personality disorder and so on.


But we don't do that with autism anymore and it's now all autism and now we have social communication disorder which they say isn't autism. It's not even on the spectrum either.

I think this is one of the challenges for the so called neurodiversity movement in the autism community is the supposed alliance between people who are able to function quite well Vs those who struggle to be accepted by NTs.

I have only come across a couple of members on this forum who actively spend time with people "lower functioning" than themselves but they are both paid for their services which (in my view) doesn't count.

Of course there is nothing wrong with slotting yourself into this "sliding scale", its not much different to measuring your weight or height except the latter is objectively measurable.