The Opposite of Autism

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Psychiatric diagnosis is rarely scientific. I think the study of people lacking a conscience is far more useful than adding on a bunch of criteria that only certain people lacking a conscience meet, and that in fact people with a conscience could be misdiagnosed with (which is a serious thing). What Martha Stout said makes far more sense (as in, integrates with reality better) than most psychiatric "science" does. I don't think, in fact, that discussion of sociopathy should be a psychiatric thing because it's more a moral issue than a psychiatric one, and psychiatry has a bad habit of crossing that boundary.

Psychopathy and sociopathy are terms of art in the fields of forensic psychology, psychiatry, personality psychology, and sociology. They attempt to define, explain, and predict using the tools of the field. Outside the social sciences (and to a lesser extent, some branches of philosophy dealing with human relations), the concept doesn't make sense. For example, in religious and moralizing contexts, one refers to wicked or evil men and women. In Christianity, such people are seen as transgressing God's law, and what counts as evil in this context could defer greatly from what we consider illegal or wrong in other contexts. For example, many fundamentalist Christians (and Muslims) consider atheism to be a great evil and atheists to be inherently evil for this reason. That is why psychopathy has a specific meaning in the social sciences: so that, when we communicate, we're talking about the same thing. I can't honestly say someone is a psychopath because I dislike them or their life choices; a person wanting to establish that another person is psychopathic would instead have to show strong evidence for a collection of specific behavioral patterns (add to that, since psychopathy is a diagnosis with negative valuations attached, publicly calling someone a psychopath can be grounds for a defamation lawsuit).

I haven't. I will admit that there is at least a logical possibility that an autistic spectrum disorder and a psychopathic or sociopathic personality could be present in the same individual, but I do have trouble imagining what such a person would be like. I certainly can't see such a person fitting the profile of either the prototypical psychopath or the prototypical aspie. I can imagine an aspie who is mean spirited and cruel, but this is not definitive of psychopathy.

I imagine you would find it hard to imagine, because you frequently list a lot of characteristics in autistic people that are far from universal, and you hold to an extremely rigid definition of sociopathy that is not necessarily the reality of it. All it looks like is an autistic person who doesn't care about right and wrong. Your comment about mean-spirited and cruel is very far off the mark, it's more like extreme selfishness and a total disregard for right and wrong, and by total disregard I mean not experiencing at all the friction that the rest of us feel when we do something we know is wrong. The rest of what the person would look like would depend on their skill set (which varies from person to person obviously), their other personality traits, and their desires in life.

I used to know a person who at least said she had AS, who bragged about torturing animals when she was a child. She had no remorse at all even though she knew that this was wrong. She just thought it was funny. She also enjoyed harming other autistic people (I was not included in this). She in general fit the exact almost textbook stereotype of a sociopath with the exception that she came across as abrasive rather than charming because her social skills were not great. She was not just 'mean-spirited and cruel' the way a bully would be, but completely disregarding of right and wrong, there's a difference. But I've also known one who was not autistic, whose version of superficial charm something that I bet some autistic people could pull off even with limited social skills. (He didn't have a slick or suave manner, he had instead a deliberately cultivated aura of social awkwardness pulled off in a slightly childlike manner that NTs seemed to find endearing and disarming.)

There are a lot of people that I haven't liked or that have mistreated me in my life and most of them are not sociopaths, and the people I'm describing here mostly harmed other people rather than me. I use the term to mean specifically people who lack a conscience (rather than people who do things against their conscience, which is what most mean people are), and that is actually an acceptable definition of the term. (For instance, from a government website, "an individual with no superego or conscience; because of this deficit, the person often engages in extensive antisocial behavior.")

Easy one to answer:
Neurotypical (personality disorder) is opposite to autism. Nothing else is. Every other popular DSM-disorder is comorbid to autism (for instance schizotypal, ADHD, Dyslexia, Dyscalcula, Hyperlexia, Dyspraxia, Tourette, Bipolar, Social phobia).

NTD? Is there such a thing?

Best,
Idaho Aspie
www.AllThingsAspergers.com

I thought this was serious for a second and then I tried to pronounce "msitua", realised what it was, and loled. But that's not the opposite, it's the edargorter.

Williams syndrome

Wow, this is so insightful and accurate. I did a compare/contrast in another thread that described it from a cognitive function perspective rather than a trait perspective. From a functional perspective, in my opinion, Aspergers and sociopaths have similar areas of social dysfunction, but opposite forms of those dysfunctions. I wrote that I think that sociopaths have the ability to skillfully interpret, relate and manipulate via social interaction whereas they lacked an ability to emotionally identify with others. This contrasts with Asperger people who, in my opinion, quite often emotionally identify with others but lack an ability to skillfully interpret, relate and manipulate via social interaction. So sociopaths have glib social skills but lack meaningful personal insights and personally meaningful lives but Aspergers have richly meaningful inner lives but are frustrated socially, unable to have sustained meaningful relationships.

In terms of DSM, I think that the psychiatric profession has yet to be articulate. Psychiatry is seriously incoherent when it comes to defining multiple personality disorder, sociopathy and other clear problems, and the diagnostic profiles are internally inconsistent. In my opinion, and I am not a professional, sociopathy is on an identity disorder spectrum because sociopaths lack the ability to identify with others and this deficit is organic to the development of their pervasive behavior abnormalities.

I doubt. As I knows, WS is about having a strong tendency to social interact, not about having big social skills.

WS is more the opposite of Schizoid Personality Disorder (low desire to socialize, at least, with real people in the real world) than of Autism (inability to socialize).

Hello there

I just found this thread by googling around on "opposites to Autism" as basically that’s what I feel I have, so I hope this one is still active. I have only just thought of searching for this, although I have been aware of my "condition" all my life, slowly working it all out and how I deal with it. In essence, I see my life as an exercise in survival, just trying to get through day by day by avoiding the sort of situations that I know can cause me acute stress and anxiety. The main nature of this condition is acute sensitivity to people and indeed to all social situations. From my observations and checking with other people, I have come to realise that this extends well beyond what the vast majority of people mean when they say that they can "feel a bit sensitive". I not only have my own extreme sensitivity (I continuously register and actively analyse every nuance of speech, movement, gesture, interaction) but I also am continuously sensing/feeling/interpreting their sensitivities at the same time.
I know a bit about Autism, though obviously not as much as people here, and I do have some "classic" aspects that fit it (I will certainly check and re-check all the words, meanings and grammar of this post many times before hesitatingly and almost reluctantly clicking on Submit!). So maybe its not a linear spectrum but one of those spreads that curves back on itself, e.g. as in left to right politics extreme left and right can be similar in totalitarian ways??
Anyway, before I go any further, I am aware that this might not be deemed wholly appropriate for this particular website but do let me know if you want to continue the discussion, I can definitely provide my personal perspective on what I feel is a clearly defined "opposite to Autism". Also by all means point me to somewhere else that might be better suited to me.
Thanks in advance for your consideration - and please do try to be appreciative that for me any response is laden with so much personal reaction!

Schizophrenia. I've read that in a newspaper article.

Alpha males.

Only for males though, the things that come to my mind when i think of alpha females are not the opposite of female aspies.

James Bond

Weird, but they are our mirror image. They are overly talkative, like people right away, love music so much that when someone is playing they will play along, so start dancing. Very spontaneous, and uninhibiting around strangers. They can do something like sing opera in thrity different languages, but can't make change.
Fascinating creatures .....

My nephew has Williams Syndrome. Yes, William Syndrome people are very social, they have no social fears. They just go up to any stranger and start talking to them, often getting themselves in trouble. My nephew cannot not grasp mathematics, period. His verbal skill are way below average, but because he is social, its hard to detect not only that his verbal skills are deficient, but that he's even severely mentally disabled. Most children with Down's Syndrome probably score higher than he on intelligence tests. The one area where he has average ability is in music. While he's not a musical genius, he can play in an orchestra, band or sing in a choir with people his own age.