Margot Nelles is missing the point Asperger's (clinically) isn't like a particular type of cancer or whatever, it is an arbitrary set of requirements. It doesn’t give you more information about the person than higher functioning autistic does. It is actually give a misleading and outdated impression. Even Asperger himself called it "autistic psychopathy", not "Asperger's". He wasn’t attempting to classify but rather simply making observations.
This is not just an issue about the classification of ASDs, but goes to the root of the flawed methodology that is psychiatry in general.
Such poor precedent where we are using these supposedly specific labels to suggest what are in practice vastly differing needs and requirements, and use this as the basis of which services are dealt out, which is the status quo. She is saying that is hard to get the recognition that ASD people “need help”. Yet she does nothing to change that culture, by encouraging such an arbitrary category.
You can group people on the spectrum. However you need more than just labels, you need a way looking at what is a multi-dimensional spectrum of components for that individual. Right now psychiatry is concerned with these pseudo-science cookie cutter requirements. Whilst they acknowledge the spectral nature of thing almost nothing they do actually reflect this. The basis of mutual exclusivity or coincidence of traits and conditions is entirely arbitrary in psychiatry.
In simple terms:
If assume traits are not bolted together but free moving, that allows for the possibility of establishing that some traits might be bolted together, through analysis. Whereas if you assume the traits are bolted together in the first place you can’t get any further forward than that.
04 Nov 2009, 4:46 pm
