Is HFA misdiagnosed as Asperger's?

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No defense? What about a punch to the face?

Many AS people look like drooling, glass eyed wax dolls. Their faces show clear signs of brain damage.

Whether or not people like me as a real friend doesn't concern me much. I'm happy with getting attention just for my charismatic ways. If I can find one person I can get along with, I will be more than happy as far as friendship goes. It's, as someone mentioned earlier, not about AS or NT but about having the right personality traits. I am 98% a person, 2% AS. Unlike many who post here and constantly claim they are all about their AS, everything they think and do is AS etc etc...

Basing your entire identity on a diagnosis is pathetic.

I'm sick and tired of trying to respect people I intuitively hate. I despise aspies just by looking at them. I despise their slow, unaware lack of theory of mind. I despise their mental and physical ugliness. I can't pretend I like them just to appear more noble. Until a new diagnosis is created for people like me, I will keep hating them. I'm not like them and I, along with people more like me, deserve a separate diagnosis.

Zoonic, my eyes are glassy and strange but it's cool. They do have that weird look, I'll give them that. Something is strange about the transparent green but I have gotten lots of compliments on it.
I would like to be with people like me that's been my dream. I want to live in a compound in some place like um Montana with all my clones.

In fact, Zoonic, I want to say you picked a cool avatar pic. That picture actually looks somewhat like me. I took a pic of myself once with that expression, with my head down looking up and that avatar reminds me of that pic. I think of it everytime I see it!

I want to find one person I can get along with and aside from that just keep superficial NT friends I meet for a night out once a month. Other than that I'll be with my partner and fix the home, the garden or help him in his work.

The avatar pic is looking straight into the camera/eyes of another person. It's a look that's very perceptive and aware, as well as cynical and critical. That's why I picked it because it represents how I look at the world.

How utterly Socratic. You cannot both state the at-odds juxtaposition that you are "like"/'want to be like' Hitler and advocate that autism be "cured" and 'erased from the face of the Earth' in the same breath -- Hitler WAS a prodigious savant person with autism. Your thesis would be to advocate your own self-destruction. Unless maybe you don't like yourself ? Or you a superlative troll on a troll mission ? What, did you spend years of engaging in the sport of playing with the minds of your psychiatrists in the institution ? Hmmm. Well, you're not boring, and you are a bit of fun. And I like your avatar.

Like to play with categories, too. Social intelligence =/= merely the sub-category of "being considerate." There are a lot more ingredients to social intelligence that that sub-item. You are quite talented with the linguistic exchange -- why aren't you in law school doing something productive with your talents, rather than picking off some with the mental calisthenics ?

By the way, since we are discussing the sub-categories of social intelligence, to what part of ToM do you attribute your ability to "act above other aspies?" Is it primary or secondary ToM, exactly ? I am very detail-oriented when my interest is piqued and I become analytical, so ... I NEED TO KNOW ! !! !

Now, as far as smoozing the neurotypical population, and getting them to fall for the Big Con (whatever it is) predicated on manipulating them thru their EQi, I recall one named Bernard Madeoff employed a similar methodology to haul in a big score. He was in the news recently. Auties and Aspies all know neurotypicals have a certain mental flaw that predisposes them to certain areas of vulnerability -- especially in the areas of their seeming inability in the face of a social intelligence onslaught -- to detect and ferret out the ultimate snow job. And you are correct, they have no defense against it -- because while we sometimes have mind-blindness, they have a certain logic-critical thinking-blindness. As you chronicle also correctly, if you feed the neurotypicals the right mix of social intelligence ingredients, they will predictably respond with positive attention to you -- it is a phenominem as sure as the Sun rising in the East and setting in the West.

Your point is ? See, I think you are very narcissistic. It takes one to know one. But I am not saying there is anything inherently wrong with the trait, in my opinion. It's great for one's self-esteem. I am just not such the attention-seeker that seems to drive you. Why do you need attention ? Is there something lacking in your life ? Or do you just get bored easily ?

I also think your avatar is narcissistic. I am surmising your line of thinking is highly associational: avatar "like" Zoonic "like" Hitler ? Hmmm.

My grandfather was an undiagnosed AS type and in his family AS traits run wild, he was also a very succesful lawyer even though he could hardly exchange a light bulb or clean his car himself.

The difference between me and him are that he didn't have any borderline/histrionic/narcissist/antisocial tendencies. He built his entire circle of aquintances from being weird but generous and he came from an upper class household, his father was a sort of mid-rank contracted priest over an entire area, with inherited family wealth for generations. My grandfather went to private school and didn't have to deal with the "ugly world". His parents were cold and distanced and he was never patronized.

I on the other hand came from an academic middle-class family, went to school with lower middle-classes and other academic middle-class children. I lived during the aspie boom in Sweden and I displayed severe cluster B personality disorders from an early age. I'm actually much more perceptive than my grandfather, he was a bit socially clumsy, but I'm limited and have always had everything against me.

My dominant side is my personality and my cluster B, the AS is a quirky trait I can more or less supress completely. I don't even feel I should have the diagnosis AS, I think science needs to come up with an entirely new diagnosis for people like me. We are not just "AS" we have something different, something much more rare.

I don't know what separates different types of ToM. SO I can't answer that. I just know that I can understand what others feel and I can predict how they will react and know why they act a certain way.

As for Madoff, I admire jewish con artists who rob entire companies. In Sweden we had our own Madoff, called Joachim Posener, also a jew who was a smooth talking social genius and emptied a huge company. He went underground and the case is now prescribated, he's a free man with hundreds of millions in his swiss bank account. Just because I admire those who manage to f**k society that way (and not get caught unlike Madoff) doesn't mean I would do it myself. My driving force isn't the thrill of illegaly making myself wealthy.

I'm not in my profound spiritual mood today so soul searching is a little difficult. Today I just feel agressive and simple minded. My spiritual energies are concentrated around my wordly ego and desires. I will always be someone who causes trouble, it's who I am. My personality. I'm rebellious and enjoy creating chaos around me just for the sake of chaos. It's the way I am and I can't really change it without locking my entire personality inside a jar and castrating myself.

Last edited by Zoonic on 21 May 2009, 1:34 pm, edited 6 times in total.

Well, stutterers drool. But I have not seen any drooling Aspies, firsthand. But maybe with somewhat divergent sub-scores on my EQi, I just haven't been around the block enough times to see one. What do I know ?

I used the term drooling to metaphorically describe a facial expression which says "I have problems wiping my own ass", wheter or not the person have those problems or not.

All 4?

I think cluster B disorders can merge and overlap. I'm a little bit of everything but so clearly cluster B in general.

My social "fatigue" can be a histrionic trait. It's bipolar like in how it goes up and down. Sometimes I've been out in society feeling like the king of the world but for several years now I've been living withdrawn. If it was an aspie trait I would have been withdrawn in a more constant, permanent way throughout my life, not going back and forth like a jojo. I think so at least.

What prevents me from making real friends (I had "real" friends but I was also extremely self occupied and got bored) could be antisocial disorder and narcissistic disorder. No one is "good enough" for me I felt all my life, a typical narcissistic trait. Even when I had people who cared for me and gave me endless chances I underrated them and didn't understand what I had until it was gone. I always had my eyes set on "something better". It was childish but I learned to analyze it at least and I'm not going to make the same mistakes again.

My tendency to ruin everything I built up, knock it down like a card house because of sudden emotional outbursts, my submissive (though not destructive) and oversexual tendencies are typical borderline. I also have feelings of omnipotence and fatalist behaviour where I wish I would be caught up in a distaster of some sort or be gunned down in the open street. This is also borderline and cluster B characteristics in general. I have states of mind reminiscent of bipolar disorder, but with shorter intervalls and not as regularly reoccuring. I can feel like a God, usually when I consume alcohol, and like the world starts evolving around me as soon as I have that first glass of wine. I become manic and hyperactive and even more fatalist, like I want to jump from bridges or run in front of trains just for fun.

Borderline and antisocial, mixed with narcissistic is a recipe for social conflict and not fitting in. I am a misfit in an arrogant, bombastic way. I have split personality and which switch on and off. At times I even feel a bit like my AS traits are resurfacing more than usual.

I take it this is some kind of joke?

Would you care to give references to where the studies are that you are drawing your information from?

In my experience, over the last few years, I have come in to contact with rather a large number of people diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, and I haven't seen any that even partially fit your description. (Bar for some occasional drooling... which I do myself, when in the vicinity of a piece of "Death by Chocolate".)

Maybe you have the syndrome confused with some physical ailment? What you describe sounds similar to the symptoms of a stroke victim.

There is a reason why Autism is called a spectrum and the thought that people do not “move” on the spectrum has been abandoned by most highly experience clinicians.

While the “stone age” diagnostic classification from DSM-iv still lock these diagnosis statically, clinically it is quite apparent that with the new and more effective supports and accommodations, along with increased self awareness that many children are “moving up the spectrum” from there original diagnosis.

On the HFA/Aspergers differentials, It was interesting to hear Tony Attwood talk in depth on this subject and to conclude that once HFA children obtain communication skills and other skills equivalent to the Aspergers children that he could find no clinical differentiation between them.

For my view this all goes back to who was making these “diagnostic standards” and the “disease model” which they were trained in and used as the basis. Clinicians who are current in the autism science have come to realize the importance of differentiating between core characteristics (genetics) and maladaptive manifestations which were at the “simplistic” core of the standards and which are very much responsible to the societal misunderstanding of what is its to be Aspergers or to a great extent anywhere else on the spectrum.

I guess what I am trying to say is that while due to lack of supports and accommodation and sometimes less self-adaptive abilities individuals with the same genetics and even similar cognitive abilities can be very different, particularly in the area of maladaptive manifestations.

bookwormde

Sounds like your grandfather's family was the epitomy of diversity. Subject to a generational shift. Cest la vie. Your ancestry and the certain knowledge of % makeup of your DNA has inspired me to pursue getting myself one of those fancy DNA-ancestry test packages crossing the Continents, as well; that way, when I am at my next autie-neurotypical genetically-mixed party, I can come prepared to engage in socially reciprocative intelligent two-way conversation with the facts and exact statistical at the ready of my exact % autie:neurotypical:equine ancestral make-up. I shudder to contemplate the possibility any neurotypical might detect I would not be on their same emotional wavelength. It is a fear, and perhaps the only real fear of which I am capable of feeling.

I may be wrong, but I highly suspect my ancestry DNA test will also be helpful in proving-up my personality-Cluster as residing predominently in the genus equiis. But what do I know, in advance of the certain scientific proof ? I only know I excel at communicating on a rather cortical-striatal level with horses -- der Mr. Ed effekt. Only anecdotal evidence at this juncture, however, since no one has yet studied my past relationships with the horses in my life.

But in terms of whether I prefer to be a dominant savant, or function better in the role of a submissive, it is fairly context-dependent on the particular style of the partner. Like you, I can suppress completely my need for control of the situation, especially with the invocation of some of the higher level novelty aspects of following a prodigious player on an exhiliratingly exciting adventure. But that's the less well-known versatility of my style.

I did catch you on the ToM question, since it's pretty hard to predicate an entire line of argument on a foundation you are eventually forced to concede you don't know much about. One of the perils of getting into Socratic dialog with a savant autie, and I apologize ! I'm soooo sorry !

I don't have a side in the Hitler-Jewish debate -- I am only a neutral observer. It isn't my fight. I am only highly analytic of situations that pique my interest, and I love to test accuracy of profilers and thinkers and some such. Another skill I find that frequently comes up short in the neurotypical, non-savant autie population, to the utter frustration of everyone. It's worse than not getting sex when you want it !

Do you really think you have to explain a metaphor to an autistic savant ?