Baron-Cohen explicitly rejected the idea that psychosis might be to the female brain what autism is to the male one in his book, The Essential Difference. Nevertheless, a paper soon to be published in Personality and Individual Differences (Volume 49, Issue 7, November 2010, Pages 738-742) by Mark Brosnan, Chris Ashwin, Ian Walker, and Joseph Donaghue asks if an "Extreme Female Brain" (EFB) "can be characterized in terms of psychosis?" These authors equally explicitly answer that it can.
The study investigated the relationship between levels of empathizing and systemizing, as well as self-report measures of psychosis, depression and anxiety, in 70 healthy female undergraduates. The findings showed that what Baron-Cohen calls hyper-empathizing was positively correlated with higher psychosis, but was not associated with measures of depression or anxiety. Furthermore, the two psychotic items that correlated most significantly with hyper-empathizing were mania (feeling elated) and paranoia (feeling others are against you). The researchers point out that "these findings are consistent with Crespi and Badcock's theory linking the EFB to psychosis spectrum disorders, and in particular paranoia and ‘positive symptoms'." Indeed, they add that their findings show that hyper-empathizing in a non-clinical female sample is "associated with higher psychosis scores, providing empirical support for the autism-psychosis model and suggesting hyper-empathising may be consistent with a pathological profile of EFB."
They also comment that "Hyper-empathising may constitute a case where people attribute intentionality when it is not there," and add that such people "might attempt to use social-emotional explanations to explain non-social elements of the world around them." This epitomizes what I would call hyper-mentalism because it clearly goes far beyond mere empathizing, and in my book (link is external) I devote the first two chapters to explaining why, despite a strong desire to do so, I was unable to subscribe to Baron-Cohen's view of autism as representing excessive systemizing and defective empathizing.
Joined: 27 Feb 2007 Age: 113 Gender: Male Posts: 604
08 Feb 2015, 11:58 pm
Explain, via social elements to mechanical observations. This is normal.
The male(Traditional), I agree.
Males are not story oriented, whereas the female is almost entirely story oriented. Male: Object manipulation vs. Female - princess trying too write herself into a story.
Females definitely NEED the story: Males don't care.
_________________ Chickens have feathers, Like eggs have shells...being tickled can hurt.
The analogy makes a bit of sense but I also think its possible to go back and forth between the two different modes of thinking.
Someone might be taking on a "masculine" way of thinking at one moment and a "feminine" way of thinking at another moment. They also could be doing this deliberately or not deliberately.
I don't like using the terms "masculine" and "feminine" though because it is a little bit deceptive. The very act of thinking in these terms clouds the ability to judge a situation accurately. Which is the problem with psychoanalysis. You can't judge another person accurately if you cannot even judge your own self accurately. It is impossible to see every single perspective at a single moment in time.
Psychosis and autism are not mutually exclusive, so the idea of them being opposite ends of a spectrum seems quite ludicrous to me.
While I don't really buy into the whole LGBT agenda and do question many of their assumptions, they do have a point when they argue that gender identity is not truly binary. As a consequence of a still poorly understood cocktail of genetic, hormonal and cultural influences, gender identity goes beyond whether or not you have an Y-chromosome and whether or which type of genitals you carry between your legs.
So if psychosis is correlated with femininity and Autism with masculinity, that doesn't imply that they are mutually exclusive. Even the most manly men are not without female hormones. Even the most womanly women are not without male hormones. As such, every man has some female traits and every woman has some male traits.
Also, the degree of feminine traits and masculine traits vary strongly at the individual level. Between very masculine men and very feminine women, there's effeminate queers/queens, "butch" or "tomboy" lesbians, androgynous men, androgynous women and a whole range of strange gender variations that (not surprisingly) appear to be more common among Bi-Polar individuals, Autistic people, people with Cluster B personality disorder, etc.
Joined: 27 Feb 2007 Age: 113 Gender: Male Posts: 604
09 Feb 2015, 11:22 am
I wouldn't account for major human states via hormone levels. (Too much)
Hormone production goes in concert with the environment that you live in. ie. you don't become a particular type of person b/c of hormones, your hormone levels become a part of you, dependent on what you strived for in life. (Yes trans gender, sadly you were restricted in the ones that you wanted).
Psychosis (or the presentation of it), by definition requires story. Autism, is lack/disregard.
There is something social/society/mobs do that Autistic don't: Apply themselves and justify their lives as being apart of a story. Psychosis is a result of a person missing out, and retaliating, Autism is just a non awareness that, that is what society is doing.
In the latter case: I am that Autistic., in the Psychosis case...I still say no thankyou, I have more interesting things todo, car games is one thing, but anything beyond a wholesome chess game with some-one I like, or the story of being the guy that reaches the other side of the universe...the rest is crap. Thankyou.
Being male: yes, the story of finding a partner (or thousands of them)...hmm: I can do that with a computer now (or a vacuum cleaner).
_________________ Chickens have feathers, Like eggs have shells...being tickled can hurt.
Joined: 10 May 2005 Age: 40 Gender: Female Posts: 7,245
09 Feb 2015, 12:26 pm
Elryssia,
I think it's way more complicated than that. For example, patients with schizophrenia often see the world around them as being radically devoid of meaning and fragmented. My diagnosis is schizotypal disorder (on that same spectrum), and I have trouble with noticing objects as I'm often just surrounded by shapes and colors.
And yet, at times I may feel sorry for an object I must discard...
_________________ "You have a responsibility to consider all sides of a problem and a responsibility to make a judgment and a responsibility to care for all involved." --Ian Danskin
I think it's way more complicated than that. For example, patients with schizophrenia often see the world around them as being radically devoid of meaning and fragmented.
Educated, rational people also see the world around them as being radically devoid of meaning and fragmented.
Those who don't see the world around them as being radically devoid of meaning and fragmented are the ones who are deluded.
Joined: 10 May 2005 Age: 40 Gender: Female Posts: 7,245
09 Feb 2015, 2:36 pm
aspiesavant,
This paper says otherwise:
Quote:
But despite some significant similarities, changes in schizophrenic subjectivity appear to be more pervasive and profound, involving experiences of fragmentation, meaninglessess, and ineffable strangeness that are rare or absent in the affective disorders.
While patients with mania and melancholia are trapped within their point of view, unable to escape from its affective coloring and adopt a more objective perspective, schizophrenia patients seem at times almost to lose the sense of having any subjective center at all. This can be coordinated with a perception of the world as flat, geometrically oriented, meaningless, and at times bizarre and uncanny.
_________________ "You have a responsibility to consider all sides of a problem and a responsibility to make a judgment and a responsibility to care for all involved." --Ian Danskin
My best friend is a schizophrenic. He's also one of the most rational, most intelligent and most educated people I know. And besides his bizarre psychotic fits, his cognitive style reminds me a lot of my own and that of other hyper-logical Aspies.
Another example of a hyper-rational schizophrenic would be John Nash: a mathematician who won the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences for his pioneer research in the field of game theory.
Anyway, the lack of subjectivity (hyper-rationality) is an Autistic trait that I consider anything but negative.
beneficii wrote:
But despite some significant similarities, changes in schizophrenic subjectivity appear to be more pervasive and profound, involving experiences of fragmentation, meaninglessess, and ineffable strangeness that are rare or absent in the affective disorders.
beneficii wrote:
While patients with mania and melancholia are trapped within their point of view, unable to escape from its affective coloring and adopt a more objective perspective, schizophrenia patients seem at times almost to lose the sense of having any subjective center at all. This can be coordinated with a perception of the world as flat, geometrically oriented, meaningless, and at times bizarre and uncanny.
That sounds like a good description of extreme intelligence and great insight rather than a description of schizophrenia.
It requires a peculiar type of insanity for this crazy world we live in to appear sane and anything but bleak. If the author of that paper can't relate to that perception, he's clearly intellectually inferior to the person he's describing.
Woody Harrelson describes the insanity of the world we live in quite well in this poem:
Transcript:
Quote:
THOUGHTS FROM WITHIN
I sometimes feel like an alien creature for which there is no earthly explanation Sure I have human form walking erect and opposing digits, but my mind is upside down. I feel like a run-on sentence in a punctuation crazy world. and I see the world around me like a mad collective dream.
An endless stream of people move like ants from the freeway cell phones, pc's, and digital displays "In Money We Trust," we'll find happiness the prevailing attitude; like a genetically modified irradiated Big Mac is somehow symbolic of food.
Morality is legislated prisons over-populated religion is incorporated the profit-motive has permeated all activity we pay our government to let us park on the street And war is the biggest money-maker of all we all know missile envy only comes from being small.
Politicians and prostitutes are comfortable together I wonder if they talk about the strange change in the weather. This government was founded by, of, and for the people but everybody feels it like a giant open sore they don't represent us anymore And blaming the President for the country's woes is like yelling at a puppet for the way it sings Who's the man behind the curtain pulling the strings?
A billion people sitting watching their TV in the room that they call living but as for me I see living as loving and since there is no loving room I sit on the grass under a tree dreaming of the way things used to be Pre-Industrial Revolution which of course is before the rivers and oceans, and skies were polluted before Parkinson's, and mad cows and all the convoluted cacophony of bad ideas like skyscrapers, and tree paper, and earth rapers like Monsanto and Dupont had their way as they continue to today.
This was Pre-us back when the buffalo roamed and the Indian's home was the forest, and God was nature and heaven was here and now Can you imagine clean water, food, and air living in community with animals and people who care?
Do you dare to feel responsible for every dollar you lay down are you going to make the rich man richer or are you going to stand your ground You say you want a revolution a communal evolution to be a part of the solution maybe I'll be seeing you around
But despite some significant similarities, changes in schizophrenic subjectivity appear to be more pervasive and profound, involving experiences of fragmentation, meaninglessess, and ineffable strangeness that are rare or absent in the affective disorders.
While patients with mania and melancholia are trapped within their point of view, unable to escape from its affective coloring and adopt a more objective perspective, schizophrenia patients seem at times almost to lose the sense of having any subjective center at all. This can be coordinated with a perception of the world as flat, geometrically oriented, meaningless, and at times bizarre and uncanny.
I think I have co-occurring autism and schizotypal personality disorder, and I relate to this. I feel I don't have a consistent sense of self, leading me to adopt an impersonal perspective. This leads to me being paradoxically unusually rational and irrational, as that perspective also makes me not see any reason to not consider certain kinds of ideas. Sometimes the fact I am so open-minded makes the world seem strange.
To aspiesavant, about that "Nobody is Smarter than You."
Is that a hypnosis video? I'm actually interested in such a thing. But if it is I think you should put a disclaimer by it. People will get mad if they unwittingly get hypnotized. I'm not sure it's even ethical.
I remember when I was in a detox center, they showed us a hypnosis video on why drugs were bad. It was a wonderful video. What was unwonderful was how they didn't preface it by saying exactly what it was. I got really angry when I later realized what it was and that I was duped. If they had told me what it was straight off, I would have been fine.
So I do appreciate the video but I think those types of videos need a disclaimer.
Joined: 13 Jan 2011 Age: 34 Gender: Female Posts: 3,971
08 Mar 2015, 9:02 pm
heavenlyabyss wrote:
I remember when I was in a detox center, they showed us a hypnosis video on why drugs were bad. It was a wonderful video. What was unwonderful was how they didn't preface it by saying exactly what it was. I got really angry when I later realized what it was and that I was duped. If they had told me what it was straight off, I would have been fine.
I doubt a video is actually capable of hypnotizing someone. In order to hypnotize someone, you have to build rapport with them, and they have to be one of a very small segment of the population who are actually hypnotizable. (Around 95% of people just plain can't be hypnotized, because they're not highly suggestible.)
There are a lot of myths about hypnosis, most of them overstating how easy and effective it is.
08 Feb 2015, 5:27 pm
