Big Bang theory: Does Sheldon have Asperger's?

Cafe Society
1

I went through a few posts on here where it was suggested in passing. This is a show I’ve only really recently gotten in to in the past few weeks, but I really enjoy it. However, this has been something that I’m always wondering in the back of mind. Sheldon’s character bears a striking similarity to someone I know who *has *been diagnosed with Aspergers. There’s at least one columnist who seems to agree with me (link). However, BBT’s head writer says such was not his intention (link). But as someone in the general field of cultural studies, I’ve been trained to completely ignore authorial intent wherever possible ;).

So my question is this: to people who watch this show regularly, do you think that Sheldon has Asperger’s? And if so, does that then make you feel bad/uncomfortable/unsure about laughing at him in a given episode?

2

No, I don’t think he has Asperger’s (you should compare him to the other-Astrid in Fringe, who really is supposed to have Asperger’s or autism) because none of the kids I worked with who are on the autism spectrum were nearly as engaged with others as Sheldon is. A personality disorder, though, is a possibility.

3

He might be on the most mild side of the autism spectrum, IMO.

4

Aspergers all the way. And no, I don’t feel the least bad about laughing at him.

5

That’s funny - I was thinking that he seems far more detached than my daughter and most other kids I know with Asperger’s, so he might have a diagnosis of classical autism (though high-functioning in most ways) rather than Asperger’s.

Is it his Mum who’s a psychiatrist, or is that Leonard?

6

It’s Leonard’s; Sheldon’s mom is a Christian homemaker.

7

It could be that he is supposed to be somewhere on the autistic spectrum, but they’ve taken some artistic license in having him interact with others more than would normally be realistic. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be much of a character in a sitcom, where characters spend most of their time standing around interacting.

Have the show’s producers said anything about this one way or the other?

8

Sheldon has friends, makes eye contact, spontaneously shares his interests and doesn’t seem to have an area of intense interest so, no, he doesn’t have Aspergers.

9

Woah. Some of you have a bizarre idea of what Asperger’s is.

10

The current DSM criteria include:

-severe and sustained impairment in social interaction… check.

-the development of restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior, interests, and activities … check.

-The disturbance must cause clinically significant impairment in social, occupational, or other important areas of functioning. … check.

By current criteria he has Asperger Syndrome. Albeit lately less so. Hang on for DSMV and it will change.

Did they consciously model him as Asperger Syndrome? The writer’s claim not, but the actor thins so.

11

Yup, that all makes sense. I guess he’s turned out Aspergery (that just sounds like a venereal disease) regardless of whether he was intended to be that way at the start.

None of that precludes ever having friends or engaging with others. It just means he’ll find both a lot more difficult, which he obviously does.

12

As someone who actually has been diagnosed with Aspergers (and I seriously doubt I’m the only doper), I can tell you that while it IS a severe challenge to meet new people and make friends, once I am comfortable with someone or have found a common ground with them (as Sheldon has with the gang on the show), that anxiety is gone and I can interact with them nearly as well as any “normal” person. It also helps if those people are familiar with our behaviors and can adapt to us as well. So yes, I would say that Sheldon displays many of the symptoms of AS. Would anyone like me to open up a “ask the guy with AS thread?”

Now, the real question is - does Dwight Schrute have it?

13

I’m on a discussion board with a lady with Aspergers. She brought up Sheldon & Amy both as comically-exaggerated examples.

14

Nope. Sheldon easily added Penny to world. He now depends on her as much as Leonard. Sheldon now has Amy, he even got depressed and got cats when he told her to leave. This is not sustained nor severe social interaction.

Sheldon doesn’t interact, 'cause he never learned how. He had no friends his own age. He easily will bend from his ways. Leornard many times has said to the effect, “tell him it’s a social thing” and Sheldon will interact appropriately. Such as when he couldn’t understand gifts for a birthday party for Leonard but he easily adapted and went with Penny to buy a gift.

Sheldon just never learned social skills. He clearly isn’t lacking them. He just doesn’t understand how they work. If someone explains it to him. He adapts, as show when he gave Howard his spot on the couch.

He has patterns but he will change. Remember he would only go to Big Boy, but he easily changed that and went to the cheesecake factory. Sheldon acts on behaviour patterns because it makes SENSE to him. Every time someone points out a flaw in his logic, he will recognize it IF he wants to. His friends enable him too much in his behaviour.

Again Sheldon WILL adapt if it suits him. He didn’t want to go on a date, but after meeting Amy he changed his mind. He wouldn’t admit it was a date, but he still went. He seems to function well at work.

Sheldon doesn’t have anything wrong with him other than the fact, he was a child genius so all the social skills he should’ve had, he doesn’t have. Sheldon clearly has feelings, guilt, remorse, happiness, sadness, depression, jubilation.

This is why the Sheldon/Penny dynamic was so quick to develop. Sheldon’s social skills were be enabled by a group of “geeks” who have social skills only slightly better than he has. When Penny came, she is the “genius” of social behaviour while lacking intellegence. Sheldon is the genius of intellegence, while lacking proper social skills

The main difference is Sheldon WILL change when it suits him. He CAN change when it suits him. A person with Aspergers will not be able to change.

15

Purely anecdotally, the only reason that my mother watches Big Band Theory is that Sheldon reminds her of the diagnosed Asperger’s student in her third-grade class.

16

This statement is just simply false. People with Asperger Syndrome change and grow too; it is just difficult for them in some ways. For example, reading social circumstances can be memorized as a set of rules and managed, albeit in a somewhat stilted way, while others just learn it without having to consciously think about it.

No, the diagnosis of Asperger Syndrome does not require an inability to change routines or an absolute lack of social skills. It requires that these skills be significantly impaired. Impairment is not an absolute beast. If you do not see Sheldon as being socially impaired and relatively rigid in his interests and routines then you have watched a different show than I have.

And while Sheldon did actually have age matched peers, a lack of a peer group does not cause the sort of social dysfunction that Sheldon is characterized to have.

Now one could argue that Sheldon had age matched peers but that his extreme giftedness resulted in his functional isolation as he did not fit in with his peer group. I would however argue against that. If Sheldon had not been specifically dysfunctional in social skills and been interested in social interaction then, as a highly gifted individual he could have conversed readily about football, and a host of other subjects that his peers were interested in, while also exploring non-Euclidian geometry. He did not. I have known some highly gifted individuals, grew up with two individuals in particular. They were NOT socially dysfunctional even though they were intellectually on a different plane than the rest of us.

Of course Sheldon is actually a fictional character and is not a completely accurate portrayal of an individual with Asperger. And as the show has gone on the writers have gone more to the eccentric than the Asperger for the non-diagnostic aspects of his character. I think that those who are, know, or work with Asperger Syndrome individuals would have appreciated some details like sensory hypersensitivities, especially to smell and taste and noise. And perhaps give a hint of the fact that those who have social dysfunction are often upset over their difficulty in reading social cues. Instead they’ve let the character become more of a cartoon. The show is a bit less smart for it.

17

No, it’s just horribly overly diagnosed. There is no “somewhat Asperger’s.” You either have it or you don’t. It’s a quite specific manifestation of autism.

My own impression is that Sheldon would technically fit the DSM IV requirements, but does so in a very atypical way. The people giving reasons he does not have Asperger’s are pointing out the more common manifestations. It’s not just a disorder of having social deficits.

Sheldon doesn’t seem like someone who doesn’t have the ability to learn social skills, but someone who chooses not to, because, to him, it’s just not that important. And that this is not part of the DSM IV makes me not consider it very valid, since someone with a personality disorder could also fit the requirements given.

Of course, a better answer is that the writers just cherry picked Asperger’s symptoms. It would make sense, since they are on record as saying that Sheldon was not conceived to have the disorder.

And asking someone with Asperger’s to identify someone else who has it is a losing proposition. There’s a reason why people with Asperger’s are not asked to fill out their own evaluations–they typically lack the insight to be able to do so. And they (and their loved ones) often try to shoehorn others into their condition.

18

And we are given no indication that that sort of social training was done for Sheldon. In fact, the official answer is that he was never diagnosed with anything (See my link above.) so we know he doesn’t have that type of training. I think a lot of people’s idea of what Asperger’s is comes from people who are already being treated.

I have never met anyone with Asperger’s who is as socially well adjusted as Sheldon. Again, it really just seems that he chooses not to engage in social activities that we would expect him to.

Oh, and I can’t discuss football with anyone–because I think it’s a silly sport.

19

I have a brother with asperger’s and one reason he likes the show is that Sheldon seems to have it, or at least is very similar to someone who does.

Also the way he is around other people is like what fusoya said. My brother’s social interaction isn’t really impaired when he’s with a group of friends with which he’s comfortable.

My brother’s also adaptable. I didn’t know he had asperger’s until he was a teenager, and even then I often would forget. I thought he was just stubborn about some things so I’ve gotten pretty good at twisting his arm into doing something outside his comfort zone, and once he does he seems to do well.

20

BigT, I was not referring to a social skills training group, but rather something that many with Asperger Syndrome, and high functioning autism in general, learn to do on their own.

It is also not at all true that Asperger Syndrome, or autism in general, is something “you either have … or you don’t.” It is part of a spectrum of autistic disorders that may have clusterings but which have no sharp discontinuity with the so-called normal population (which includes those who fit what has been called “the broad autistic phenotype”). The problem is that deciding what is “severe”, “restrictive”, and “clinically significant” are subjective fuzzy edged things, and have to be.

For both these points you may want read this chapter written by Lorna Wing (a great among the greats of autism research) in which she discussed the continuum and how some high functioning individuals behave and function. For Sheldon see group 3 on pg 93: those who will “make active social approaches, but in an odd and one sided fashion”, and group 4 about those who seem like they “have acquired a superficial knowledge of social behavior through intellectual learning rather than intuition.” Also read the next section and note how the character has difficulty understanding what is going on in others’ minds and when he does it is as more of an intellectual understanding than actually having any empathy.

While the writers may have just cherry picked some Asperger features, the actor Jim Parson’s plays it as a very high IQ individual with Asperger Syndrome. What is not so accurate is that Asperger does not mean genius. Usually the high IQ in one area comes at the expense of a lower ability in other areas. Sheldon is a bit too broadly gifted. Indeed an individual with Asperger who is as gifted as Sheldon is portrayed to be would be able to use that intellectual functioning to help offset their handicap and would find a place in the world where his/her social dysfunction was tolerated. Most individuals with that degree of Asperger Syndrome do not have that level of IQ to call upon and indeed do not therefore do as well. As the linked chapter puts it at the end: “Those in the autistic continuum are likely to less well than their IQ peers who do not have social impairment.” (pg 104) Sheldon would be a more successful academic without having Asperger Syndrome. And God forbid he and Amy do have children - they would be at a high risk to give birth to a severely autistic child who they would have little ability to parent well.