Simon Baron-Cohen: Aspergers Less Empathetic than Psycopaths

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While I am unsure of what all you were getting at in the bulk of your post, I will give you an AMEN on this part of your conclusion.

I think my 13 years of work designing nuclear reactors, and my 24 years of teaching at 4 different universities (17 as a PhD professor of Mechanical Engineering) testify to that.

In spite of the abuse by bullies in primary and secondary schools and others in the workplace years later, I survived and thrived. Only as I was nearing retirement age did I finally hear about Asperger's Syndrome and finally find out why the social aspects of my life were so rugged.

As I have said elsewhere about my Aspergers, I would not trade my gifts for a cure. I have benefited in ways that I value from some of the positives that Asperger's brings, and those that were a burden were largely so as a result of the ignorance of neurotypicals, (who had no empathy for where I was coming from). I do wish I could have avoided the embarrassments resulting from not realizing when I was accidentally annoying others, but neurotypicals do many things that are annoying to me, (e.g. go drive on the highway with a bunch of neurotypicals).

My comments in this post are beliefs and impressions based on my six decades of experience being autistic and several decades as a speech language pathologist working with autistics, many of them the so called "low functioning" - who often who became my mentors.

I figured it out in my 40s. In my day, we were either institutionalized or had to hack it ITRW with no assistance. But I had a close to ideal* autistic childhood. I have always loved my brain and had little use for mainstream culture. I sadly believe that making the DSM the gatekeeper for IDEA has further dis-abled those born post 1972. We are not a pathology.

Those of us who have barriers to personal independence such as extreme sensory issues and/or dyspraxia (i.e. ideomotor, conceptual, or constructional as well as speech/oral motor dyspraxia: the so called "low fxing") demonstrate good cognition and unique ways of thinking once communication is appropriately accommodated. Oddly, sensoripraxia is rarely addressed in treatment due to the priority of controlling behavior in sensory aversive environments and forcing conformity to mainstream culture on the child.



You are a success; what's to cure? The socio-communication delays are simply delays - that resolve with enhanced immersion in language rich environments (for me: literature), but also buffers our ability to conform to the dominant culture at susceptible developmental stages, protecting our way of thinking as we develop. Our narrow, intense interests are truly a gift. Sadly, many of us feel bad about ourselves instead of reveling in our out of the box thinking style.

NTs are frequently ignorant and cruel, but often are simply naive helpers. They believe the more we conform to the dominant culture, the better for us. All marginalized cultures have dealt with this. It is worth studying the ways they have maintained or regained their unique identity. NTs are all about conforming to the dominant culture. We provide the needed balance of nonconformist thinking sparking ideas and creating art. This is not being nurtured for many of our youth, and they don't have the personal space to develop it individually in today's over-supervised culture. Depression in autistic teens and young adults is rampant, and this worries me.

I find all marginalized cultures have wisdom for us, but I have been especially interested in studying Deaf culture. They owned their "disability" by recognizing its gifts, developed a language, established a university, and formed a strong bond of community. The GLBT advocates not only developed a strong bond of community, but had their "pathology" removed from the DSM. African Americans/blacks fine tuned civil disobedience and experimented with violence - good lessons. Feminists have worked for a millennium for gender equality, but bashing them is still PC. Food for thought.



NTs are the file that shapes us, who don't break under their constant grinding, to become successful autistic thinkers and advocates. Forgive the bastards, but reject their lies that made you feel bad about yourself. You triumphed!

Let us take an anthropological look at the dominant NT culture: Statistically speaking, men are not empathetic with women, nor women with men; neither are blacks/whites; rich/poor, liberal/conservative, etc. So many groups are polarized by lack of empathy for each other. Then these "autism experts", who can only exhibit empathy within their small subculture, point their crooked "autism expert" fingers at us and tell the world we have reduced cognitive capacity for empathy.

Which one of those "autism experts" have shown us any empathy through the decades since Autism's First Child? Initially they forced "refrigerator moms" to institutionalize their small children to facilities where the abuse was unimaginable. Next they used abusive ABA tactics to inflict harm on a generation of us (and continue to with impunity at the Judge Rotenberg Educational Center). Now, parents who murder their autistic children are given sympathy and we are announced to be cognitively incapable of empathy (and so much more).

The following statement is supported by the Nicaraguan Sign Language study: This whole empathy thing is anti-autistic propaganda. It is BS.

Do not believe their lies.


(*my family is autistic and a founding family of my hometown so our eccentricity was tolerated; in what is now considered child abuse, I had freedom from adult supervision so could fulfill my sensory needs and simply be myself; my hometown was a liberal midwestern haven with a large, progressive university - the absent-minded nobel prize-winning professor stereotype was my reality; and I was a fighter who the biggest male bullies didn't mess with and if I was targeted by the girls, it went over my head).

f**k you, Simon, f**k you.

He is just one of many. Some one sent me this report from the UK's National Autistic Society, pathological demand avoidance syndrome.

They report another negative spin on autism. "PDA is increasingly recognised as part of the autism spectrum." "It is a lifelong disability" of kids sick of being told what to do.

Another "autism expert" "proving" we are a pathology.

I feel that these researchers should be tried as accomplices of of parent killers of autistic children. ASAN is requesting support for prosecution of a recent killing. Generally, the parents receive sympathy for not being able to cope with their little problems.

This is outrageously tragic.

I know of no organize advocates to address the negative spin researchers are putting autism.

So I am back to the matter of the "Homer Simpson" line on the matter. the statement "Just because I don't care doesn't mean I don't understand" That is the sociopath: Very astute about what is going on in a social situation, but simply ice cold self interest with out giving a rip for anyone else unless there is something in it for him/her.

I don't see anything wrong with that article, it's a pretty unbiased summary of the current scientific understanding of PDA. That's a far cry from writing a book essentially saying autistic people ought to be pure evil, only they are too stupid to be. Have I ever told you I really, really, really dislike SBC?

If I thought that somebody, or worse a whole group of somebodies spread out all over the free world nobody knows exactly where at, were worse off than Ted Bundy and Jeffery Dahmer, I'd probably just not say anything about them at all. It makes you wonder who it really is that just ain't right in the head. My money is on the guy who is publishing his trash talk about folks he think could easily turn serial killer, cause I haven't seen any aspies going out of their way to provoke large groups of people who they suspect are dangerous.

As big a set of brass ones as I have, I wouldn't be saying a word to nobody about my thoughts on that topic. LOL

I'm just sayin......