Famous people with Aspergers Syndrome

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I have once heard that bad famous people: Adolf Hitler, Osama Bin Laden, Josef Stalin,Chairman Mao all had Aspergers.
Good famous people with Aspergers include: Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln, Van Gough, Beethoven, Thomas Edison, Benjamin Franklin, Leonardo Da Vinci, Hans Asperger, Albert Einsten, Isaac Newton, Winston Churchill, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckenberg.

Most of these are posthumous diagnoses because Aspergers was not recognised until the 1980s.

Being obsessive compulsive, odd, weird, eccentric, dedicated and paranoid are just a some of the traits of Aspergers syndrome. So there could of been a lot of famous people with Aspergers Syndrome.

Included in the list are world leaders/politicians, terrorists, inventors and scientists.

Last edited by Dark_Lord_2008 on 06 May 2011, 9:52 pm, edited 2 times in total.

About Osama Bin Laden i don't know much, i only have seen him in videos, and he was always in pose. I don't know about his personality. I can't give my suspicions.
About Hitler i understood this avter having read his biography. I was pretty surprised. That Hitler that has killed million of people.
About Staling i must read his biography, he may be or may not be.
I have instead strong doubt about da Vinci.

They say Mozart and i doubt strongly
I'm pretty sure about Beethoven

From heavy metal world, i have some suspect that Alexi Laiho from Children of Bodom can have Asperger's

Others I could believe are Isacc Newton and, believe it or not, JRR Tolkien.

I really don't think Bin Laden or Mozart, but I can believe most of the others.

This is a touchy subject for some people on this forum who almost seem to take offense at these so-called "armchair diagnoses." In one of my early posts I put forth a theory that Aspies "run the world." Facebook was created by Zuckerberg, who is almost certainly ASD. Facebook was a vital component of the revolutions which brought down the governments of Egypt and Tunisia. This post, which also stated that almost all the technology we use was likely developed by people with ASD, was met with downright hostility. See my post history for this discussion I am referring to.

Who would I say has Asperger's?

Woody Allen, the guy who created Pokemon, Zuckerberg who created Facebook, and of course all the usual suspects. But to my knowledge only Temple Grandin has come forth with a confirmed diagnosis. Some people on here are not fans of Dr. Grandin.

Bin Laden, Stalin, etc. were sociopaths whether they had ASD or not. ASD is not sociopathy.

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I'm pretty sure it wasn't Woody Allen who invented Pokemon - was probably some Japanese guy.

Anyone care to suggest why it's so much easier to diagnose people who are long-dead, or who we've only seen briefly on youtube, than actual living ones?

I can see that, though the drinking probably covers that up quite a bit......but yeah I was watching an interveiw with him and he said if he was not in a band he would probably be homeless because playing guitar is pretty much his life.

I also think its possible that Syd Barret may have had aspergers.....and I am not just saying this because I want to be simular to one of my favorite musicians. But yeah I am actually reading a biography thing about him and it seems very possible. I mean basically in the area he grew up the abnormal was normal so no one really thought of him as too unusual. and it also talks about how he would pretty much 'have a go' at whatever he was intrested in at the time.....so it seems like he had special intrests and such. But yeah in short it looks to me like he got intrested in music and playing guitar so that's what he did because he enjoyed it not to become famous.......so of course when the fame kind of hit he had a hard time dealing with that(maybe sensory overload problems).

But yeah I can't say for sure, I just think it's intresting to think about...also its a little more intresting then just assuming he did too much LSD and that explains everything.

I meant Woody Allen AND the guy who created Pokemon...

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Sociopath and Aspergers have similar characteristics. Both lack empathy/feelings towards other people, they both do not really like other people, both portray anti-social personality traits, both are self centred and can be trouble makers.

A Sociopath has superficial charm and knows how to manipulate people by faking emotions to get their own way. Aspergers find it hard to express any emotions/feeling at all and lack empathy towards other people.

Famous people of past and present can be wrongly identified has having Aspergers but they may actually have sociopath tendencies. Sociopath is a condition obtained through an individual's environmental conditioning/circumstances. Sociopath is very similar to psychopath another anti-social personality disorder considered the most dangerous.

Aspergers seems more harmless and naive than a sociopath who can be more dangerous , evil and manipulative just like Hitler or Stalin two pin up sociopath/psychopaths.

Isaac Newton! >< That's who I was thinking about when asked a question on a test. I couldn't stop thinking about some other unrelated dude. xD

EDIT: More on topic, I have seen people react with hostility to the idea that "Aspies rule the world." That can be offensive, but I don't think everyone in a leadership position has Asperger's, so even if they're a good influence on the planet, there's a chance not just Aspergians make an influence. I'm personally just neutral.

I have my doubts that Hitler had Asperger's. Osama Bin Laden, I don't really think so for him either.

My uneducated take on it is, sociopaths derive pleasure out of inflicting pain on others. People with autism can be so self-absorbed it may seem like they don't care about other people (and they probably don't much of the time) and will certainly take advantage of other people in order to serve their agenda, sometimes ruthlessly, but unless they are also sociopaths they will stop far short of inflicting what they know is emotional or physical cruelty.

Someone said in another post on this topic, another primary difference, is that sociopaths are neurotypicals, and therefore interested in other people. We're all about ourselves and are neutral, but for those who are close to us, this neutrality can seem very cold-hearted. That's an interesting way of looking at it too.

I think pretty much everybody uses other people at some point and that's far removed from actual sociopathy.

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Well i suppose I must not have aspergers then because I am not all about myself.......in fact i have been trying to get out of the habit of always putting everyone else before without giving a crap about myself. but then again it is difficult to generalize mental issues as there is variation on what symptoms people express more obviously.

To be honest, I wouldn't really care if people like Hitler or Stalin did, indeed, have Asperger's. Even if they did, at least people like Mozart and Newton would be able to counterbalance them.

There are good people and bad people within every single "classification" (if you will) of people.

I think Keanu Reeves has aspergers

I think it's pretty pointless trying to say who may have Asperger's or who in the past may have had Asperger's.
Sorry but I also find it a little annoying if I'm frank. I can understand why NT's may decide certain people who are 'shy' or 'eccentric' may be on the spectrum, but it's somewhat worrying when I see it from other people who are on the spectrum doing this because I think AS/ASD are very distinct, we know more than anyone what it is to be on the spectrum, a person being a little odd or socially awkward really doesn't qualify someone as being AS/ASD. I like aspie-spotting, but don't see the point in getting caught-up over whether-or-not Hitler had AS.

Looking at famous people with Asperger's -
Travis Meeks, Dan Aykroyd, Ladyhawke, Daryl Hannah, Craig Nicholls, Gary Numan, Satoshi Tajiri, etc - all very clearly show aspie traits, they're not just OCD, odd, weird, eccentric, dedicated or paranoid.