"The Autisms"

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Clearly the understanding of autism is still emerging. Although the DSM-5 lumps us all together, the leading researchers and thinkers in the area are now considering that people who share the diagnosis of autism are such a heterogeneous group of people that there may be a number of different subtypes up autism yet to be described and understood. The book below is a good example of this kind of thinking. It’s called “The Autisms” for that very reason.

I like the term “Autisms” as it reflects the reality that autism isn’t one thing. How do other members feel about that term?

The narrative is that it's a spectrum. I think that's true, but there are different category ranges along the spectrum. Since most NTs still equate AUTISM with the classical segment of the spectrum, the term can be problematic for "higher-functioning" autists. "You can't be autistic, because you can walk and talk and chew bubble gum!" Some higher-functioning autistics may not even realize the reason for their problems as they, too, think AUTISM means the classical kind.

It's like there was this big push to lump it all together. But it didn't change how the blanket term AUTISM is commonly understood by NTs. Now, people are saying, "Maybe we should categorize."

This website if full of people not realizing they were autistic because they didn't know there were different types or categories along the spectrum. Hence, there are indeed different "autisms."

To understand how autism entered the medical books you have to understand two things:

1. When Autism was first identified in the 1940’s the world was a different place. Computers were limited crude number crunchers and the size of a room, planes had propellers and you had steam trains. Biological Brain science was practically non existent.

2. Scientists hate not knowing what something is so they have to give it a name or”parking space” so they can label it & go back to it in the future when the technology allows them too.

This is the same with all science especially medical and physics.

So number 1 leads to number 2.

One day when the technology allows autism will be officially broken up into its various groups each with their own potential therapeutic treatment pathways.

The spectrum must also mean complete diversity like no individual the same. Since two people on the spectrum are diagnosed by up to entirely different traits that qualify for the diagnosis.

In my opinion, "The Autisms" is synonymous with "Autism Spectrum Disorders" or "ASDs".

Also in my opinion, science still has a long way to go toward understanding ASDs in much the same way that it still has a lot to understand about Germ Theory -- the basic forms of germ theory were first proposed in the late Middle Ages by physicians, including Ibn Sina in the year 1025 A.D.  Here it is almost 1000 years later, and science still has not found a cure for the common cold.

That's why I still use the term aspergers or aspie. Yes, it is part of autism and is not its own diagnosis anymore, but it communicates pretty clearly a difference between myself and, say, someone who had severe verbal delays or other more severe symptoms. I didn't think I could be autistic actually until diving into the videos of autistic YouTubers who presented totally different to how I understood it. Is the model you're describing here really fundamentally different from autism as a spectrum like we have now? Are they suggesting that these may be fundamentally unique neurotypes?

Let's hope that it doesn't take 1000 years for science to work out the nuances of all the different autisms

These are just subtypes of autism: they are contained within the autism diagnostic criteria, but show some groupings within that population. That does not mean that autism is a random diagnostic criteria, just variation exists and that variation is expressed in definable ways. Kind of like human beings. There are different human beings, we come in all shapes and sizes, and we can give sub-classifications based on characteristics of different variables. That does not mean the definition of human is random, it just recognizes different patterns within the population.

Frankly the connotations of the ASD diagnosis are a disaster for the community and larger society. Grouping things together does exactly that; group them. When thousands of people with Asperger's or HFA diagnosis woke up one morning to being 'autists' in the same group as people with lower-functioning diagnosis, it groups us all as the same, even when, factually, that isn't the case. Some people need more help than others. Autism affects everyone differently. Some severely, cripplingly, others it still affects us but it's not removing our abilities to function. It's this latter group who largely pushes the 'nuerodiversity' model, sadly often at the expense of the first group, because the first group can't self-advocate like we can.

That's why the words "treatment" and "cure" have become buzzwords on this forum and in self-advocacy groups; because you associate it as trying to cure who you are or your personality. But what we continuously forget is the high-functioning/aspie group is very, very overrepresented; We have our voices and can formulate them online and offline to self-advocate. Lower functioning people usually can't do that. My brother's very low functioning, I would argue he wants cured or treated if such options exist, but the fact we share a diagnosis (I was diagnosed Asperger's and rolled into the ASD diagnosis) does both of us a disservice; I don't need cured, but I don't want to advocate on his behalf that he shouldn't be entitled to some treatment if he wants it.

Aspies may be overrepresented in advocacy, but that's also because there are greater number of them compared those with classic autism. Adults aspies and females are still under-represented in research, although that has started to change in the last few years.