I read this book. Interesting. The title comes from how Robison was always yelled at because when he spoke to people he didn’t look at them. People thought he was being devious IIRC but he just didn’t know you were kinda supposed to look at people sometimes when you are having a conversation.
Related thread from several years back: Asperger Syndrome- Legit or Diagnosis du Jour?.
In this post, I described how my son came to be diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome (AS) and how he was doing at 7 years old.
Update: My son is now 11 years old. He still gets services from the school, but no longer has a paraprofessional. He now just sees a special education teacher once a week who specializes in social interaction. However, about three years ago, my son did start to have a lot more problems in school and was additionally diagnosed with ADHD by the child psychiatrist who has been seeing him since he was six years old. After much discussion, we did agree to put my son on Focalin. I have to say that it has been a godsend.
All in all, between the therapy and the medication, my son exhibits very few of the problems that were so evident when he was younger. In kindergarten, he was unable to make it through the school day without a full-time paraprofessional present. He was unable to interact in a socially acceptable manner with the other kids. Now he has many friends and is outwardly “normal.” My wife credits this to our early intervention.
I’ll add that while I have never been diagnosed with AS, it does have a genetic component. As I was growing up, I had a great deal of difficulty dealing with people. I do fine now, but it was all learned behavior, and is still an effort for me. Interestingly, back when I was teaching, I always was far more comfortable in the classroom than one-on-one with a student.
My wife went to an AS seminar once, and the presenter noted that the classic adult with AS is a male engineer who (if married) is married to a nurse. I’m an engineer, and my wife is a nurse. :dubious:
My niece, who is 12, has AS. To even suggest that she doesn’t is a place you just don’t want to go.
Just an hour in her presence makes it clear that she has AS. She obsesses constantly on certain things - like she will ask you repeatedly while you are watching a movie, “is that girl wearing socks or tights? socks or tights? do you think she’s wearing socks or tights? she’s wearing socks, right? or is she wearing tights? what is she wearing, socks or tights? socks, right? i think she’s wearing socks. i don’t know - what do you think? socks or tights?”
Responding to the question will only buy you a few moments peace before she starts it up again.
Changes to routine terrify her, as well as snow, rain, animals. She loves children but she doesn’t always know how to act with them. She gets frustrated as she watches kids her own age mature and grow apart from her - so she continually turns to younger kids as her playmates. She has always been smart (don’t try to play concentration with her - you will lose!) but was limited in her education because no one could get her to focus. She cried often and would ignore you if she was afraid of you. She may warm up to you after repeated exposure to you - but if she doesn’t see you for several weeks, you have to start over again as a stranger.
She’s been at a specialized school for several years now, and the changes in her have been huge. But she’s still not “normal” nor will she ever be. However, she’s happy now - and she is more confident in this strange outer world she has to deal with.
I think the question the OP is really asking is something frustrating to me and others. You get a few people who want to have an excuse for their actions - and then rather than us asknowledging those few as pretenders, we question the whole disease as a whole. Believe me, we all wish my niece was pretending. But she’s not.
OK, that was just eerie.
(Nurse married to engineer type with Asperger’s diagnosed child.)
As I’ve mentioned in another thread, I’m a diagnosed Aspergian.
In my opinion, Asperger’s Syndrome certainly is real. Anyone who doesn’t think it ‘real’ is perhaps expecting it to be something it’s not, and might just misunderstand the term ‘syndrome’ itself.
An individual who presents enough symptoms is said to have AS, but we shouldn’t be surprised at diversity and differences between people with such a diagnosis, as there are many more symptoms than one needs to have in order to be diagnosed.
Self-diagnosis is nothing of the sort, obviously, but I doubt that needs spelling out on the SMDB! Nothing’s muddied the water of understanding of autistic spectrum disorders than this, IMHO. Very few people who understood the crippling potential of Asperger’s Syndrome at its worst would see it as the existential accessory that some kids on the internet seem to. AS message boards are full of self-diagnosed people. D’you think cancer message boards are? I know that’s a callous comparison, but c’mon, you think you have a neurobiological disorder and you HAVEN’T been to the doctor? What do you do when you suspect you have a cavity? Cos that’ll give you MUCH less grief than Asperger’s will.
IANAD (while we’re doing acronyms), but I think it highly likely that a great number of people who have Asperger’s will find themselves eventually in front of a doctor who can diagnose it, due to the prevalence of comorbidities like clinical depression or OCD. Y’know when you hear about the 57 year old maths professor who’s wife and kids always thought he was a little bit weird, but then he got a diagnosis of Asperger’s? They’re the lucky ones. 
Another point that I rarely see made is that ‘neurotypical’ people (if there are such things!) need to bear in mind that their understanding of Asperger’s Syndrome naturally comes very much from the outside. We often see autistic spectrum disorders, even including classic autism, described in terms of what isn’t happening that we would usually expect to. I’m not talking about any kind of negativity, although it may exist, I’m talking more about what I see as the masses’ general ignorance of all but the surface of the disorders.
The whole social thing - I don’t need to describe it - the ‘People with Asperger’s have a hard time in social situations, and they might come across kinda weird and make faux pas and not look you in the eye, and they might be superinterested in Dinosaurs, and they don’t like change, and they do like routine, and their peas mustn’t touch their carrots.’ That’s the what-everyone-thinks-they-know-about-Aspergers. Asperger’s as I see it is the set of neurological quirks that’s behind all that.
I’ve learned to make conversation. I’m making sense now, right? Do I seem friendly? Sometimes I even pick up girls. I study - I’m even on my way to being a psychologist myself, yadda yadda yadda. I have a life, of sorts, and I might even look you in the eye if I’m feeling confident!
The social stuff, the stuff you think you know about AS (and I know I’m making lots of assumptions) and the stuff that the spotty goth kid with glasses (no offence to SGKWG, but you know what I mean) checks on the ‘Are YOU autistic?!’ website… THAT stuff can all be nurtured away, particularly if the dinosaur kid becomes a paleontologist, or whatever. And maybe then he ends up with that wife and kids.
I think when it comes to it, no one’s really going to argue that someone with echolalia, who seldom makes eye contact, and who rocks back and forth in their chair all day might have this ‘Asperger’s Syndrome’ (for example), so perhaps ‘Is Asperger syndrome real?’ is more a question of ‘Should the bar be set higher?’
Who’s to say? But I do believe that the majority of people are not aware of the level of sensory impairment, or sensory ‘difference’ if you want to be cuter about it, that seems to be present.
I stronly recommend this book (I hope that’s kosher on this board, I believe I’ve seen it done before. My apologies if not.) :
My studies in psychology really lead me to believe that attentional processes may be fundamentally different in people with AS disorders. I have pitiful spacial awareness, and am regularly denied entry into bars because, when sober, I cannot walk in a straight line. Walk me into a room and sit me down, wait 15 seconds then ask me to navigate out the door through which I came in and I won’t be able to do it. I have to learn the room all over again.
I regularly fail to recognise my friends by their faces alone. I semi-dated a girl whose various trousers and shoes were my only clues for at least a month. In fact I thought she was 3 different people before I knew her/their names.
My kid brother recently changed his name, which threw me incredibly. And so on and so on.
My ‘Theory of Mind’ is as good as non existent. To have any idea what someone else might be thinking seems like a superpower to me. I get by with a set of assumptions and best-fit learned scenarios, but I would still argue that there’s a massive qualitative difference between talking to me and talking to a typical geeky guy.
Y’know, maybe I could have summed this all up in one sentence: You’ll rarely meet someone who’s known an Aspergian well who doesn’t think the syndrome exists.
The irony is that I smile more than most people, cos I never smiled as a kid and my mother trained me to. Same goes for eye contact. I’m courteous with turn-taking in conversations, because I’m aware of the need to be. It doesn’t mean I have the innate appreciation of it that an NT person would have, but I understand it all in theory.
The psychologists of the board will probably know the classic Maxi test for theory of mind. The one where Maxi’s mother moves his chocolate and we’re asked to suggest where he might think it is, given that he doesn’t know this. Of course I know the answer, but even I don’t KNOW the answer instinctively, with absolue unshakeable certainty. Somewhere in my mind I can feel myself still checking and double checking who knows what. That’s a weird feeling, and I wish more people could experience it!
Even the geekiest Warhammer dude can’t claim that, can he? Really?
Music is my Rainman thing, and a kind of intuition with numbers and patterns. This ‘attentional processes’ thing of mine might explain how I walked up to a piano aged 5 and just started playing (in Gb for the musos). I hope this doesn’t sound horribly boastful, but I’ve picked up dozens of other instruments and musical idioms almost as though I already knew them, BUT there I am not recognising my mates until they start talking - even then maybe only when what they’re saying reveals their identity!
I usually learn pieces on the first listen, I can play them back for you in any key you like. I’ll do you a Nashville chart for pretty much any song I’ve ever heard, unless it’s REALLY crazy, and I’ve been doing this as long as I remember. When I write academic essays, I have to be ultra careful not to plagarise, because I always remember exactly what my textbooks said. Things just go in one ear/eye… and then stop.
There’s a major emotional/stress component though. What my mind tunes in to seems to be hugely dependent on how anxious I am. If I was anxious in a social situation, I used to find myself counting things like window panes or bricks. Anything that was in a uniform layout. Not even counting them really, just knowing how many there are by accident. (The incidence of this has actually been greatly reduced by anxiety medication.) Does your WoW kid do that?
I guess what comes out of this is that YES, there are undeniable cases of the thing we call Asperger’s Syndrome (if you want to get Zen about it), but we need to remember that it is ONLY a collection of symptoms. You’re not going to be able to do a blood test.
Further, the internet is rife with self-diagnosed ‘Aspies’, whose neurobiological state is anyone’s guess. My guess is ‘misinformed wannabe’ though.
The statistics RE: suicide and Asperger’s are pretty sober reading. The same goes for those who live with their parents well into middle age. For the record, I’ve been seeing psychiatric professionals and psychologists since I was 3 and experienced serious suicidal ideation since I was 9. Sometimes I think the best life one can create for oneself with Asperger’s is nothing more than a good disguise.
Anyway, if anyone read all this it’s a miracle. Maybe I should start one of those ‘Ask the…’ threads, although I know there’s already an Aspergian one.
G’night all! makes eye contact
Thanks, Batboy. As one who is “only” depressive and a bit OCD (both diagnosed and medicated, though I’m an eternal disappointment to my wife because my obsessions and compulsions do not extend to housework) I’m getting that clue some here might wish I’d get.
I’m intrigued by the relationship between AS and OCD and depression. Hell, let’s throw in ADD while we’re at it, since I heard somewhere that it is in the OCD/depression spectrum and I have the attention span of a gnat. Here we have possibly-connected conditions from autism to ADHD to depression, so can I throw schizophrenia into the mix, too? Is there a possibility of a Grand Unified Theory of Mental Illness?
The first time I heard of Asperger’s Syndrome was through Boston Legal, via the character of Jerry Espensen. Does anyone know how well the character is portrayed in terms of an average-functioning Asperger’s patient?
Bill Gates is widely believed to have Aspergers
Which COULD explain much behind Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can’t Get a Date, by Robert X Cringely, but does it really explain them whats somewher in betweens?
robby writes:
> My wife went to an AS seminar once, and the presenter noted that the classic
> adult with AS is a male engineer who (if married) is married to a nurse. I’m an
> engineer, and my wife is a nurse.
Does anyone have any access to medical studies to see if this is really true? I wonder if it’s because the career of engineer is most likely to have Asperger’s among all the major professions. But why would his wife be a nurse? I wonder if it’s because a nurse is most likely to recognize the symptoms and to persuade him to go to a doctor.
Bill Gates is unlikely to have Asperger’s. Albert Einstein and Thomas Jefferson are also rather unlikely to have had Asperger’s. Pretending you can diagnose Asperger’s in people you’ve never met is apparently as common as pretending you can diagnose it in yourself:
http://www.jonathans-stories.com/non-fiction/undiagnosing.html
I don’t have any studies. But the notion is that Aspies tend to be overrepresented at the “schematizing” end of approaches to the world, while nurses will be overrepresented in the opposite extreme, that of “empathizers”. Aspies who marry non-aspies are thought to be attracted to/attractive to their opposites – the strengths of one are complemented by the strengths of the other, or the weaknesses of one may be compensated for by the strengths of the other.
Read the whole thing! Thanks for the insights.
You mentioned learning to smile more and make eye contact. What about speech inflections? Can someone with Asperger’s learn to mimic that? Does musical ability help with that in any way?
I have never heard of such a study. But when my husband and I were speculating on what kind of woman his 21 year-old son (who has Asperger’s) might marry, my very words were, “What that kid needs is a nurse.” I didn’t necessarily mean someone who chose nursing as a profession, but someone with nurse-like qualities. Someone who can handle the vagaries of human behavior, who enjoys being a caregiver but who can also be firm and have a take-charge attitude.
And my husband agreed the moment I said it.
No studies so far as I know. The presenter at the seminar was just trying to paint a picture of the typical person with AS by presenting “classic” characteristics of people with AS. Not everybody with AS is an engineer, and they don’t all marry nurses.
The presenter at the seminar simply noted that people with AS are overrepresented in technical fields such as engineering, and that, for whatever reason, people with caretaking tendencies (such as nurses) are more likely to be attracted to a person with AS than others would be.
FWIW, my wife always says that she understands me better than anybody else ever could.
The presenter at the seminar also noted that one of the other classic tendencies of people with AS is a fascination with trains. I loved model trains as a kid, my father collected them, and my grandfather was completely obsessed with everything about trains. Also, not only did I marry a nurse, but so did my father. :dubious:
I think they probably could, yep, to an extent, but I expect it’d be much harder work, and might never ring true. I always wish I could apply what I know in theory about social interaction, but as soon as I’m in a real-life situation, most of my moves go out the window. Probably because they’re just that.
I’ve trained myself on a few things. I try to give non-descriptive, upbeat responses to 'Hi, how are you?'s rather than groaning and scrunching up my nose! I’ve found that it’s better to say ‘Thank you, that’s very kind.’ when someone compliments you, rather than sharing with them how sh*t you think you are (I think I even learned that one here!) but I’m not convinced I’ll ever change the core of the way I communicate, at least not actively, or knowingly. It may evolve though, and probably has.
If I could make an analagy: There’s a self-helpy thing I’ve seen quoted in several psychological studies which goes something like this:
-
Identify something you would like to do but wouldn’t normally feel able to.
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Do it.
… then something else, I’m not sure.
But this thing never addresses the HOW you’re going to do this undoable thing! It’s assumed that the barrier is just the habits of a lifetime, a slovenly reluctance to confront your cognitive dissonance. How d’you quit smoking? You can read all the books you want, but you quit smoking by quitting smoking.
The guy who’s never had any social skills because he hasn’t had the right role models, and KNOWS this but doesn’t care, or cares but finds his caring distasteful, and whose life is built around his social league (as in ‘out of my’) might be able to learn a few jokes, and how to give a compliment, and how to be attentive in conversation, or at least LOOK it, but that isn’t quite the same, or at all the same (IMHO).
I could write you a script in which I was the smoothest dude you’ve ever heard, but it’s never going to happen in real life. I can eavesdrop on some nerd’s conversation and wince whenever he makes a faux pas, knowing EXACTLY what he could have said instead, but if I were in the same situation, suddenly I’d be in the dark.
I’ve got that ‘professor’ thing going on when I speak a lot of the time, and it grates on even me, although I’ve grown into it a bit. There’s something about the whole super-literal nature of Aspergian cognition that can make smalltalk quite difficult too. If you’re not innately tuned to the way meaning can be concealed in conversation, you might miss the fact that ‘How’re you doing?’ isn’t an invitation to be brutally honest about how depressed your feeling, and that ‘Good thanks, you?’ is a better option.
It’s about expectations. Knowing what’s expected of you, and knowing what to expect. It’s difficult for me to accept how much of day-to-day communication is just a weird kind of shorthand. I actually don’t even argue properly! If I disagree with someone I don’t seem to have the instinct to try to wound them emotionally
Put it this way, if you’re at a loss as to the content of what you ought to be saying, it almost doesn’t matter how you say it. If you were talking to someone who had barely any idea what you were thinking, ANYTHING they said to you would probably seem a little odd to start with. We kind of can’t separate these issues. 
RE: The music thing: In the same way that I could mimic the music I’ve heard, I’ve always mimiced people’s voices. When quoting someone in conversation, I’ll very often adopt (something close to) their voice. It’s only lately that I’ve even noticed that everyone doesn’t do it. (I’m 24.) I don’t quite have the ability of summing up conversations to a third party. If I was telling you what a friend and I were talking about earlier, I’d be more likely to reel off our whole conversation verbatim than sum it up. I don’t seem to have the right filters to know what’s relevant to you and what isn’t.
The crazy thing is, and THIS is what I was getting at with my nerdy guy just now, is that I clearly know all this, but that knowledge seems to make no difference out in the field.
My pet theory implicates the prefrontal cortex quite heavily, but IANAN (neurologist)
Maybe compared with MDs engineers with AS are relatively pleasant.
Jefferson? Brainy but worldly, charming host, midwife of his country TOM JEFFERSON?!?!? See, that sort of distant diagnosing is some of what triggered the OP.
Similarly, in the commercial world such a person might chug along happily for many years in some professional office job where he or she is left alone to do analytical and creative work. But if they get moved or promoted into a different kind of role where they have to manage others, or otherwise track their tasks or projects, they will founder, often miserably, and suddenly find themselves facing resentful peers angry bosses, and eventual discipline and termination. I know this from sad experience, not having Asperger’s, but another condition that shares that aspect of it. In my opinion it might be fairer to say that Aspergers and other high-function disorders are real, but not necessarily disabilities; on the other hand, people having these disorders simply will not be able to perform at tasks they are not suited for, so they will be disabled at such tasks or jobs.
The problem I have with these various syndromes is that you could have identical twins, and make one an engineer and the other a salesman. They have the same traits and way of dealing with the world, but only one has a problem. The engineer won’t going to show up in a clinical setting because his trouble interacting socially is compromising his performance at work; the salesman will. The latter has Asperger’s Syndrome, the former doesn’t… at least as far as official diagnoses are concerned.
I think the folks who “self diagnose” have a more sensible grasp of how mental health should be defined than the folks naming the syndromes.
I don’t.
For what it’s worth, I’ve yet to see anyone who does name the syndromes claim that the lines aren’t fat and somewhat blurry, or that we’re not all on a behavioural continuum. There are some SERIOUS minds working in the field of Autistic Spectrum Disorders. I think they might just not be claiming what you might think they’re claiming.
How do you feel about clinical depression? These days it wouldn’t really cut the mustard* to say that someone who is suicidal is just super-sad. The same kind of sad that you might be.
Likewise, perhaps, maybe someone with Aspergers is something more than just super-socially challenged.
As I’ve said before, I firmly believe that there are fundamental differences in attentional processes and the filtering of stimuli in people on the Autistic Spectrum. That includes Attention Deficit Disorder - I doubt I need to make a case for that one. That can manifest in this set of recognisable social quirks.
Now, maybe the socially challenged guy at your workplace’s brain is different in the exact same way, maybe it isn’t, I don’t know, but I do know that this difference is just one of a heap of symptoms that go together to make this ‘Asperger’s Syndrome’, many of which you might never have heard about.
It’s a little bit like looking a beaten up car and only being concerned with the dodgy paintwork, ignoring the damage that might be under the hood. Pretty loose analagy though, I know.
I can see how a lot of what I’m saying probably comes over as special pleading, but you’ll have to take my word for it that I am, or was, one of the most cynical people when it came to neurological difference that fell short of obvious disability.
We’re talking about something far deeper than just a mild personality difference.
It’s worth bearing in mind that the children who get diagnosed with ASDs are often exhibiting behavioural ‘problems’ which are ‘problems’ to their PARENTS as much as to them. It almost doesn’t matter how much of a problem it is to them.
Your Aspergian engineer may remain diagnosed as much because he’s never posed a problem to anyone else as much as because he hasn’t posed a problem to himself. It’s perfectly possible to be a diagnosable Aspergian (I relly prefer that to ‘Aspie’, I hope no one else with AS is taking offense) with a set of symptoms that doesn’t esPECially predispose one to depression, especially, as you point out, if you find yourself channelled in to an Autismocentric (I made that up) world, like that of engineering.
It’s worth pointing out, although I’m sure you’re aware, that your twins mightn’t both be Autistic automatically!
Anecdotally: I don’t drive because I have such poor spacial awareness, and am so easily overloaded by external stimuli. For these same reasons, and various others, I still live with my mother at 24, barely supporting myself (although I am studying now, as I mentioned before.) How ‘disabled’ am I? I’m not trying to make a big fuss about it. I’ll tell you how disabled I think I am: ‘A little bit.’ Honestly, I am impaired by that which we call Asperger’s Syndrome, and I’d sooner be rid of it, even if it took a lot of my ‘me-ness’ with it. The same isn’t true of a lot of these self-diagnosers. In my opinion they’re often the type who long to be in an in-group, no matter which.
It’s fair to say though, that if you had any ‘syndrome’, but were not at all impaired by it, your case would be quite different from someone who had it and was. That’s a truism really, but it’s more about the term ‘syndrome’ than the syndrome itself.
Is Asperger’s real? Yes. Should we call it something else or change the way it’s diagnosed? Knock yourselves out! 