Psychosis and autism

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I have been interested recently in the relationship and distinction between autism and psychotic conditions (schizophrenia and paranoia). I don’t want to, nor I can give reliable information on this matters. I am not a psychiatrist, though my personal experience (numberless) with psychiatrists has been so disastrous that I would have problems to rely on their assumed expertise.
Anyway only a few observations of what I have learned. Autism and psychosis (A and P) have some thing in common in that they are both attributed to genetic factors. P have their overt onset and diagnosability at a later age than severe cases of autism. P involve deliriums, hallucinations and erroneous perceptions or reality.
The epidemiological indexes are very difficult to evaluate. P affects 1 % of the population (according to official statistics). A affects 1 in 150 according to US statistics, 1% according to UK official data. But these must be taken with much caution at least for one reason: P has a high level of visibility. A can never be diagnosed in the life time of people, who may “pass” as eccentric, weird, loners etc. without any serious effort to establish the causes of this conditions. Up to now, moreover, there has been a large diffusion in the western culture or a tendency to make use of the term “neurosis” which is very lax and may cover disparate conditions including HF autism etc., together with many maladjustments due to a multitude of factors.
Here one can attribute a perverse effect of the Freudian and postfreudian culture, which, though totally discredited scientifically has still large diffusion in literary and journalistic culture.
There is also a strong resistance coming for power centers. Attributing crimes to autistic lack of empathy would put in jeopardy the punitive system of courts. It is alredy doing that, more seriously than the attribution of "deviance" to nurtural factors.

I have been informed through a brilliant professor and several books that a lot of autistic/AS people can get psychotic episodes. In other words they are not schizophrenic or psychotic but occasionally get paranoia or something like that. I have suffered brief paranoia once... it was horrible.

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I have HFA, ADHD, OCD & Tourette syndrome. I love animals, especially my bunnies and hamster. I skate in a roller derby team (but I'll try not to bite )

Yes, but NTs can get paranoid episodes and other minor psychotic symptoms, too. For example, it's completely normal if you are grieving somebody to see them where you used to see them when they were alive. Many bereaved spouses report seeing the deceased person sleeping on their usual side of the bed, for example; usually those sightings are out of the corner of the eye, and brief; but they are defined as normal. Most people have also heard voices that weren't there; it's just not persistent--a couple of words, once or twice a lifetime. And there are the superstitions, which compel people to do odd things "just in case", which are very mild versions of delusions.

BTW, paranoid personality disorder involves paranoia without psychosis; so it is quite possible to have one without the other.

I think the chief link between autism and psychosis, honestly, is the long history of misdiagnosis that began when autism was listed as childhood schizophrenia.

I find this very interesting. I used to have psychotic depression in addition to my AS (now it's just depression) and I also have a brother who is schizophrenic (but definitely not spectrum).