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Poke
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07 May 2010, 8:37 am

From Treatise on Insanity and Other Disorders of the Mind by J. C. Pritchard--he defines "moral insanity" as:

Quote:
...a morbid perversion of the natural feelings, affections, inclinations, temper, habits, moral dispositions, and natural impulses without any remarkable disorder or defect of the intellect or knowing or reasoning faculties and in particular without any insane delusion or hallucination.


See also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_insanity

I had never read this before I came across it this morning. What a compelling early description of Asperger's/Personality Disorders.



cthulukitty
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07 May 2010, 10:22 am

Thanks for the quote. It's really interesting to see such a dated source making a distinction like that. I recently read an article from the 1960s about LSD treatment in "childhood schizophrenia", which is basically Asperger's Syndrome. I've also been reading about the phenomenological overlap between ASDs and schizophreniform personality disorders.

My girlfriend's psychiatrist recently told me that I appear shizoid, probably because the gf complains to him about my emotional detachment. However, the only symptoms I have in common with SPD are a restricted/cold affect and a tendency towards thinking about my inner world. I definitely don't lack the desire to socialize or to have meaningful emotional or sexual relationships.

It seems to me that an awful lot of Aspies end up getting treated for psychiatric symptoms, and that they get totally screwed by misdiagnosis. I'm trying to get myself dx'ed at this point to avoid that whole mess in the event that I do need therapy or drugs at some point.


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Willard
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07 May 2010, 1:27 pm

Seems to me that that description could just as easily be referring to most serial killers, or anyone with a disorder that separates them from the societal norm in terms of deviant behavior (in the sentence just before that quote, he uses the word depraved), but who is capable intellectually of calmly rationalizing those behaviors (or would he consider that an 'insane illusion'?), and who on the surface would not give immediate impression of being noticeably different. That's a pretty wide net. But it also wouldn't apply to AS - we are quite noticeably different, and not necessarily depraved.