I’m reading The Rosie Project (a novel in which the main character has undiagnoed Asperger Syndrome, which I guess is now called Autism Spectrum Disorder, but wasn’t when the book came out). I’m enjoying the book, but some of the reviews posted on Goodreads are essentially saying that the book is demeaning to people who have Asperger’s. I was just wondering if anyone on this board has Asperger’s (or knows someone who does) , read the book (or knows someone who did), and has an opinion on the matter. Thanks!
I think they’ve switched ASD back to Asperger’s, just to make things even more confusing.
I haven’t read it, which isn’t very helpful, but I’ll take a look for it right now. My son has this diagnosis.
I don’t think “they” can get it straight. But as it was explained to me when I was diagnosed in 2016, Asperger’s was a separate condition that they decided should be included in the autism spectrum, and some of them have decided Asperger’s no longer exists and should be called high functioning autism. Other thems have decided it should be called autism 1. Even still other thems have decided it still exists. I don’t know. My diagnosis was written as Aspergers-ASD which confuses me because apparently Asperger’s was removed from the DSMV.
I am in eight different autism support groups as a parent of an autistic daughter and for myself. I have never heard of this book even once. If it’s anything like the show The Good Doctor it’s mildly amusing but chock full of autism stereotypes. That tends to annoy some autistic folks.
I think that’s the problem with a spectrum. It’s hard to know where to bucket things. I find shows like The Good Doctor hard to watch. They don’t get everything right, but the parts they get right are like punches to the gut.
Rushgeekgirl I’m glad you got a diagnosis. I hope it helped you.
Looking at the book so far, I think that it’s stereotyped. I’ll keep reading. I’m not sure I see demeaning yet, so much as uninformed.
Asperger’s Syndrome was largely distinguished from the autism spectum by virtue that Asperger’s patients fell into the normal range of intelligence but still displaying developmental problems in social behavior and a tendency toward hyperfucos on repetitive tasks. There is also some evidence for crossover between ASD/Aspergers and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) in hyperfocus and an inability to manage obsessive attentional behaviors. The classification of Aspeger’s within the autistic spectrum seems entirely appropriate given the concordance of behaviors, whether or not they are regarded as being pathological (which, historically many potential diagnoses of Asperger’s would not have been), and to be frank, psychology is far more philosophy than science despite attempts to put it on a quatitative basis.
I have not read the book in question but it is understandable that any attempt to distill a behavior or syndrome to a set of characteristic behaviors is going to gloss over the nuances of individual experience. And people on the autism spectrum are particularly prone to being misunderstood in portrayal and interpretation given that the essential disconnect is in social communication, the standard meme being that autistics are inherently logical and emotionless even though that isn’t fundamentally true. People, even those with evident pathologies, do not fit into neat buckets of behavior and experience.
Stranger