I think my father has Asperger's

Post Reply New Topic

Hello everyone! I've been researching a bit about Asperger's Syndrome since a friend of mine suggested that my father may have it, and now I'm pretty sure that he does in fact have it, and that I have some AS traits also.

My dad bailed on me and my mom when I was born and the reason he gave my mom was that he didn't feel that he would be a good dad. Growing up I would see my dad every few years. My mom is a wonderful, strong, warm and loving lady, and I also had her mother (also wonderful) helping to raise me, so I didn't mind my father's absence (well maybe I did mind in my angsty teenage years but I outgrew that, lol). My dad's family meanwhile condemned my dad for bailing on us, and his family have also been unaccepting of the woman who has been his common-law wife about as long as I've been alive. In the past few years my dad has been coming to visit once a year rather than every few years. He doesn't talk to anyone else in his family. I'm pretty sure he doesn't willingly talk to anyone at all besides me when he sees me, and I suppose he and his wife talk. They're not very affectionate with each other but she seems to put up with him with only occasional visible frustration and misery.

I've been trying to solve the mystery of my dad's behavior and I'm pretty sure it's AS. He cannot look someone in the eyes when talking to them (I also have issues with social anxiety and eye contact but not quite so severe). He will talk ENDLESSLY about various random subjects and doesn't seem to notice that we're not having a conversation, just me listening to him talk about things I obviously don't really care about but I try to be polite and make occasional noises to assure him I'm listening. He doesn't really ask me about myself. He goes nowhere without a schedule and a map. MANY maps. He's somewhat of a germaphobe, has some OCD-like traits (I have some traits like this too, but again, not very severe). He does not do anything spontaneously, all is planned and if his plan is thrown off it is not pretty to see. A long-held habit of his has been him drumming on his knees, which seems to be a repetitive movement or tic of the sort that people with AS tend to have. And lastly, I was diagnosed as a child with ADHD, which I've read can be linked to AS... and I am PRETTY sure that I got my ADHD from my dad.

Seeing as how he hasn't really been around for most of my life, I don't really know what his medical situation is or what things he might have besides obvious outward things like his allergies, so this is just what I have observed. It's not like he's going to actually talk to me about this kind of stuff anyway. He was born in the fifties when AS and ADHD weren't even known of, so obviously he wouldn't have been diagnosed when he was young. But after reading about AS, I have finally begun to understand my dad... and I would like to be able to understand him better, maybe even actually be close to my father. I figured this was the best place to come to!

I really appreciate any and all feedback and opinions about this! Thank you guys!

and hi again dee,

i went out to look for that other post you mentioned and found it unresponded and dropping...

but i didn't just want to up your thread,
just letting you know you have largely described my father

there is so much to say about all that, but it is not my present context - backburner? might get to be the freezer - but ask me things specific, i will be attentive...

i think we have things to talk about

good luck again

Robert

He definitely has Aspergian-type traits.

Especially with the maps. And the one-sided conversations. And his obliviousness to your "noises" of "understanding." I know what you mean, though....I do that sometimes with people who go on and on.

Autism, as a diagnosis, existed in the 1950s, but people diagnosed with Asperger's/High-Functioning autism today would not have been diagnosed as autistic back then.

Perhaps, like me, he would have been diagnosed with "brain-injury/damage" (though I was also diagnosed as autistic when I was about 3--in about 1964).

Oblio: Good to hear from you again! And that's interesting that you say that I've largely described your own father... am I correct in assuming that your father has AS?

Kraftiekortie: Thank you for your feedback!

I should also perhaps mention that my dad was the only boy among his five sisters, and my grandfather was particularly hard on my father, from what I've heard. My grandfather expected a lot of him. Expected him to be a doctor, expected him to be more "manly" and such... my grandfather would beat my father as a child. Do you think that perhaps my father does not have AS, but rather that his behavior could possibly be a result of childhood trauma? I'm not really sure.

Your father's childhood trauma must have had some sort of impact upon him.

However, based upon your illustrative presentation of his symptoms, it does seem to me that he would have had these characteristics even without the trauma.

I am inclined to believe that the Aspergian symptoms lead to the trauma, rather than vice versa.

Errrrrrrrr, yes dee, i am convinced. Father had AS, so did brother - neither knew.

But, like "my professor" remarked, the moment a writer (any writer, not talking literature here).., the moment one reads et cetera, is the exact moment the writer ran out of examples. I am convinced "naturally" or "of course", or even "obviously" (more such empty qualifyers intended to show assuredness) means i am not, for i have no proof. Even discarding the "scientifically" agreed level of proof required of a proper diagnostic procedure - as subjective as it is - i have no proof, my evidence would not even stand up in so vague an official public arena as a court of law, simply not enough anecdotal evidence to reach a circumstantial verdict.
But i have my own circumstanzial evidence - interesting, i suddenly think this might turn out to become an instance of deconstruction, which is a literary - philosophical approach of dubious repute. Let's see what happens...

I would guess Deconstruction (Derrida) goes straight back to Freud, with some excursions into Sartre's Existentialism. We all know how... disputed Freud is. Whatever one's opinion, Freud is a fact of (mostly continental-european) culture, and his basic analysis... in that period of time, still an achievement of genius. He should be totally irrelevant to us auties and aspies. My second opinion finishes with a very remarkable general statement, and precisely this confirmed for me how both lucky and wise i had been never to have stopped listening to that voice of skepticism... not even a voice really, a somewhat ironically saddened... almost shaking of the head, no boy, something ain't right... there is no real contact with this guy or woman i had approached in search of... what? well... understanding.

In essence it says, as Mr. Seepers has an autism-spectrum disorder (sic) [pm], no form of "normal" psychotherapy (and this is much wider than merely psychoanalysis) can be indicated, as it will be irrelevant. In the present context, the exact quote is not important. The point is this: even if you do not assume "symptomatic" use of language (and linguistics) as deeply essential to all autism as i do, language IS one the three basic groupings that must be addressed in any diagnosis. This is the diagnostic triad, there is another triad in autism.

Strange, how i find myself unable to reply to your father-thread without addressing stuff i planned for a reply to your linguistics post on the Intro board. That has to do with pervasiveness, amongst other things.

"Allways different, allways the same"
(i think this line belongs to Kafka, finally - allways is not a typo, it's one type of typoid, i am just not sure if i had better spelled "always the same" (there is a difference)

"Assume not to assume your assumptions."
That was my slogan when playing spades, my tactics were so very unusual... my "pard" had to be prepared for (almost) anything including self destruction if it meant losing a hand in a good manner at least kept a game alive, or even win it.
However, i concluded soon enough this applies much wider. And in autism it does so, much more extremely...
"Allways assume never to assume your assumptions."

allways assume never
to assume your assumptions

Using it for a motto, i would indeed consider using the poet's lancet...

How to get back on topic, if i might have seemed to have gone fishing off-track... o father where art thou...

What was my father to me? I have little to no memories of the years before my parents divorced, after my mother decided she had had enough, this was not going anywhere, so she says... hm... and she decided the boys, the children, i have no idea with which words she would have thought of us two, required a "european" upbringing. This was very much against my father's preference, he would have much rather seen her accept an offer to join one of "the americans" (i seem to recall the name would have been Charlie). I find it utterly weird that he even attempted to influence any decision in favour of any other man, after things had finally broken down, but so he said, much later, in one of the very few conversations we ever had. He, from a distance varying from across the country to a continent and a half, was always very critical of the way my mother brought up Peter and me. He of course, later, second wife and more sons and finally the daughter he claimed he had always wanted, could go on and on on how he was a great educater-upbringer parent - not in such wording.

The family myth has it that i am exactly like my father. I know i'm not, but i have no idea when that awareness had dawned on me, it would within the logic of that reasoning exploration mean that the way in which i was not like my father might be ascribed to my mother. And i just don't know when i would have started seeing not so much me in her as recognizing what i would 'owe' her. No doubt there was language, but the way she was always proud of and reported she might even dream in her french... just not me either. She never got past speaking the french she was taught it ought to be spoken, as taught at dutch secondary school??? Even in The Hague, where french has long been the truly official courtly language... sorry mam, that's not my french.

Both my father and Peter, indeed, were... always busy at some handy interest. Peter should have become a geologist but would not have fitted the dutch geologist's Shell framework. He never got close, always rebuilding things for people in his call it extended network, maintaining yet another very old Saab in his unofficial garage-service of lent-out cars, he was the worst hoarder you will... no longer be able to meet. He was ok with his friends, but could not possibly utter a comprehensible sentence in public. And yet again... when doing what he was good at... he was called the professor - coaching, or rather training his students' hockey team (i have coached them, on his behalf, he didn't care to watch their matches. He had shown similar disinterest when considered for a top training job for the ladies team of one of Holland's major clubs (Kampong, Utrecht). You cannot expect to get a contract when you choose not to go see your future team playing an important home match in the deciding stage of the running competition...)

Again... i cannot seem to get to my father. There must be reasons for that. There must be at least some applicable psychoanalysis here, this simply cannot be just my autism.

He was born in the then Dutch Indies (still dutch, therefore colonial parentage). The family returned to The Hague in the early 1930s, only really to find that they were not even second class citizens in their own country and then even the official capital of Netherland, and they came from being the colonial upper class... even if not the top, relative numbers place you in the ex-pat elite automatically. He was also intelligent, very intelligent. Thus, he was no doubt very alone, and his sister, my aunt Jeantje, well... even when genetically determined and passed on, there is no guarantee the distribution of iq-pointable traits will show any signs of fairness, evenness, balance. Not within one person, not within a group of siblings... enough said.
His father, "opa Fer" is very interesting indeed, and from the utter gentleness he is described with... well, there is a type of just happy go lucky unbothered aspiness that brings him to our story, but the man, active in commercial shipping i have no idea at what level, would have been no competition whatsoever for his wife. I think the true, call it 'dark' center in that side of the family comes from "oma Mien". Yes, my father must have been very alone indeed, even if he weren't aspie. And then back to the new old country, find yourself in as lowly as lower middle class a sort of housing plan of modest flats... just back from the Indonesian jungle...

After the war... well, more biographical damage to be noted first: my father, by the later stages of the German occupation, found himself confined in 'Kamp Amersfoort' - in fact by then a more or less by the Germans abandoned camp of determent, not so much a half-way place for Jews to be put onward toward their final solution, as an ordinary prison camp, with a lack of 'proper' even if it had to be Nazi management.
People in power, when not under strictly disciplined control..., well, to be honest, isn't the banking crisis once again the bloody evil same? Just for instance? I think it was diphteria that saved my father from actual torture. But i am quite sure he heard. He never spoke of these things. NEVER.
O, dammit... i... spellcheck says "i am a red line" ... i thought it was difteria in dutch... and thus i remembered...

or was it typhoid... that would suit me much better, but that is an entirely different subject... ;]] grrrrr
short break... need a leg stretched anyway, and then one... [...] O shoot... one aspiration short: diphtheria... MEH

oops - i HATE CapsLock with abandon.

Kamp Amersfoort, for those with an interest, and thus the area, is almost always present in the background of the work of the painter&c and poet Armando, and he "lives" the area as a "guilty landscape". This was a small but a killing field.
Another thing my father never received full treatment of, was Orwell's 1984. He could not handle the rat-scene, i don't know how it is related. Meh, i love The Stranglers, IV Rattus Norvegicus, lol.
(I wondered how it looks, following 'lol' with a full stop - i am not convinced :[[)

After the war, he took Medicine, never to become a proper GP (well, he didn't, even if it were intended) but he took Tropical Medicine to boot, as he wanted to go back to the tropics... even if the Dutch Indies were no longer available. So yes GP, but way different. O, and GP medicine was not yet what it was today. In fact, the generation before, students in the 1920s, just starting their careers in the 30s - most of my favourite writers are from this period of the Interbellum, and they count a huge relative number of GPs indeed. General medicine might involve anything then, still, and that included amateur psychology and philosophy. It was to people like that much more of a general study of man, of humanity, than proper medicine.
He was a useless GP in fact. Think Greg House, MD. My mother once was furious once when in the weekend (folks, this isn't comfy Whereyouare, this is the worst of Africa, weekend? what weekend?) or was it after "what hours", when he refused to travel out to collect a poor negro with a broken leg miles out into the bush out there, or was it the plantation in Kongo, or later the mining Co. in Liberia? It would have to be the next day.
I honestly don't think there was something truly historical on live television. And the americans across the lane, our nearest neighbours, had hardly got to grips with the twist... See you later, alligator.

I do apologize for using the "negro" there. I am uncertain. Usage of the words denoting some "black" race renders me almost desperate at times. I have rarely seen a black person, actually - usually they are very slim, very tall, and they have fled Somalia. Even then, most really are brown... I guess this will suffice, here. I am taking way to much room in your thread, dee, i hope you don't mind me abbreviating your name - i like the term-of-endearment-sort-of quality of such shortenings. But then again, that might come across as somewhat assuming ;]]

My father does, did look an awful lot, then... like what'shisnameagaingrrrr Tom Selleck. I always hated moustaches and it will not happen, simple. Three men and a baby. The departure scene. Tears to my eyes. It simply has to be a reminder, i have no "living" memories i miss that soooooooooooooooo incredibly much (in my creativity, in my subject matter, in my relating with, my connecting with me, my sources of inspiration - there are... none) {and that too now brings tears to boot} it simply has to bring me back to my mother going out of africa, away from him...

I cannot remember ever missing him, i would never have realized i did. My behaviour, some closer people have observed i did, repeatedly. So did my mother, but her i guess maybe more in parroting a woman friend of hers from the The Hague years, i.e. their early marriage years, in, weirdly, a not altogether infamous "volkswijk" (poor folk 'hood) right in the center called the Mallemolen (could be FunnyMill), which i consider a very funny name for the place where i was born... but that will be elsewhere...

And yes, it needs some work, but i am quite good at the local dialect, "plat Haags" is about as ugly and amusing and low a dutch dialect as you can get. The sound of a proud people, and a nation of football hooligans... oops, sorry lads. "Hoog Haegsch" (sic, note the different spelling) is as pretentious is uppity class can possibly get, it's like living in a menagerie of pretentious, poche (is that spelled right... nope, lol, it's Posh Spice so) posh swarm of Hyacinth Buckets. I am happy to report i am less fluent in that. The lower variant may well have been my first language, mixed with whatever it was my parents and visiting or visited extended family brought to my ears.

Anyway, later, remarried and all, he returned to Netherland, went back to the Leiden uni to specialize for eye surgery. As suggested... brilliant surgeon, of some repute too, but no interest in the human patient, and impossible to work with... Folks, if you don't know you have autism, you think it's all normal, and certainly not your problem. At this level of functioning, it's not the autism that screws you up, if you know it really all translates into lists of practical problems, only very few with no solution at all - it's the not knowing... the not understanding...

Simple: ethically, morally - i should never have been born. A man with that intelligence, and knowledge (he was a walking encyclopaedia, and yes he had this savant visual recall, such a man has the moral duty, and ethical ... charge maybe even, of self-awareness. He really should have known he would not be suitable for marriage, not as a husband, not as a mate, not as a friend, not as a father. I am assumed to be so identical to him... well, if so, i have done so much, so endlessly much better than him - i did not marry, i had no children - i never adjudged myself "mature" enough, neither can i picture myself physically defending my children when forced to fight other parents....
But folks, don't get me wrong - that was... that was before realized...
And now that i know... i know i would make such a wonderful father... i don't know if i would even want children, but if any partner would want... i would love her to. And yes, with my self-awareness and flexibility... i just know i need not remain as i am. The knowing makes all the difference.

So much more to tell, but i feel this is a good place to at least interrupt what already took way too much attention from your thread, dee

I will respond to your Linguistics thread to, not now, but so many thanks for your compliment...
Honest!! It does help

Aspiciously yours, 13

{hehehehe}

It's possible. ASDs are highly heritable, so if you have AS and your mom doesn't (you haven't mentioned any AS traits for her, so I'm assuming here), then your dad might have been the one to pass it down to you.

Leaving their spouse is, of course, something that anyone with any type of neurology may do. People with AS find it harder to deal with change and so may be more reluctant to do so, but that doesn't mean we never do.

Allergies and fear of germs aren't AS traits, but the others you mentioned are pretty classic. Whether he's diagnosable or not, I don't know, but the tendency to have one-sided conversations, reluctance to make eye contact, tendency to want to plan everything carefully (the schedules and maps), and the repetitive movements are all AS traits.

Do you want to reconnect with your father? I couldn't tell either way from your post, but he *is* related to you and seems to have stayed in contact.

You probably know this better than most people, but with AS, communication is easiest when things stay concrete. He probably wouldn't have a clue he's lecturing; he probably talks about things he enjoys thinking about. If you have the same tendency, you probably do it yourself and only later realize the other person wasn't interested. So, if you want to know something about him, ask directly. All those rules you learned for dealing with NTs and their wanting to be vague and imply things instead of being direct? You can dump them. Be civil, but be direct. It will be easier for everyone concerned.

Hi dee

apologies for more, but i just realized how to tackle that subject of my father. Two famous books.

My professor of Theory of Literature meant a lot to me in some ways. He wrote one of his more important studies on Robert Pirsig's Zen; or The Art of Motor Cycle Maintenance.
I could never read the book without thinking this is me, and that one, whose motor cycle i am on, the one who i see nothing of but the back, the one who is ALWAYS talking about something i should learn and see, the one who is always right, the one who simply does not see that i can not see other than his back - that is my father. In fact, my brother was also VERY much of that motor maintenance philosophizing type. His were Saab cars, old ones...

Then an observation from this blond Adonis type gay fellow geology student, in love with my brother... I guess he was there when the once or twice in his life my father might have visited my brother, or were they on their way south and passing his place... Anyway... Paul Theroux, The Mosquito Coast. He observed my father was simply totally like that guy, completely absorbed in his own world, and at a measure of war with all the rest.

Such people have very little awareness of the own flawed part in things happening around them.
I have never had time for people unable to at least problematize themselves. I stop listening.
It's sad, this alexithymia. Very very sad.