Dexter and AS - Similar *no spoilers*

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There's a thread about it on this very site:-

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt57576.html

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_h ... n29146842/

"SCOTTSDALE, ARIZ. -- The late convicted serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer probably had Asperger's syndrome, Arturo J. Silva, M.D., said at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law.

People like Mr. Dahmer "have fantasies which go on for a long, long time before they get involved in crimes," said Dr. Silva, a psychiatrist who is in private practice in San Jose, Calif.

Like many Asperger's patients after they enter adolescence, Mr. Dahmer wanted to have sexual relations with other people but was unable to accomplish that goal because of his inability to interpret social cues. His dilemma was "how to have sex with little physical involvement with the other person," Dr. Silva explained.

"Mr. Dahmer devised a series of approaches to answer his sexual dilemma: They involved separation of the psychological from the physical components of the human experience of others.""

I'm not dismissing the idea that there are Aspie serial killers. Just that this necessarily means anything. There are white, gay, black, straight, disabled, abled, cisgendered, transgendered, asian, latin, etc, etc, serial killers. This doesn't mean that there's a link with any of the above groups and sociopathy. Just that there have been individuals who've been both. You see what I mean?

Totally agree.

Sociopathy may even turn out to be 'in the wiring', nature rather than just nurture, it's certainly neurodiversity rather than neurotypicality, but it isn't autism. In fact most instances of what are perceived to be 'bad' NTs are probably encounters with people who have some degree of sociopathic traits.

Interestingly enough, both House and Dexter have physical people as the primary focus of their attention, in a very objectified way, almost as if they are driven to dissect them physically to understand them. In fact sociopathy in extreme, as in serial killers, may feature the strong focus on individual targets, the collection of 'souvenirs', even eating people or wearing their skin. But no interest in actually knowing the mind or the person.

( House of course isn't a killer; he might be a brilliant medical problem solver, but as a person he is a consciously manipulative game-player. He might not like people much, but he gets a kick out of tweaking their tails. Why do people see House as autistic? Getting up peoples noses - well that's easily done; but doing it intentionally, without them realising? )

One definition of sociopath is "to have great empathy, but no conscience".
Another is "characterized by an abnormal lack of empathy combined with strongly amoral conduct, masked by an ability to appear outwardly normal."

A wolf in sheep's clothing. / The Terminators - skilled emulation, no conscience, no right of appeal.

That doesn't mean sociopathic traits are automatically bad. Benign sociopathy, as in the ability to skillfully manipulate people to do what you want them to, without it actually being detrimental to them, would actually be a great managerial skill, and is probably recognised as charisma.

A selection of random definitions:

You said, autistics do care, sociopaths are faking giving a damn about anyone.
That is a very significant difference, not a variation of the same thing.

One basic distinction is that sociopaths can usually read social signals and process others feelings, but can disregard them completely, whether by choice or defect is not known; whereas in autism the difficulty is not actually recognising other people's signals, or not processing or displaying our own properly.

There's quite a good summary of the current ideas about empathy and autism spectrum disorders on this page. (part below)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy


And people on the spectrum do tend to learn to care more and respond to people better, over the course of time, especially if we realise our actions have hurt someone else.



There are considered to be at least three 'dark' personality traits, which can be mild aspects in anyone, or significantly extreme enough to count as personality disorders, or all can be combined, so narcissistic traits, manipulative traits, and asocial/amoral traits don't all have to be present in the extreme.

Anyway, part of the point of shows like Dexter is to highlight how difficult it can be to categorise people, to undermine stereotypes. And it is not really a successful strategy to be seen as 'not nice', since that makes people suspicious - therefore being nice is good camouflage if you have a dark side to hide. Don't families and neighbours of serial killers often say what 'ordinary' people they were?

Isn't the fact that people expect 'baddies' to look the part in some way one of the reasons that the quirks of autism, such as poor eye contact, cause us such social difficulties?

People have made good points but I've had this discussion a number of times on AS forums and it's always the same - 'We're nothing like sociopaths' Well I personally beg to differ. I feel I only stick to the rules because it's expected and could quite easily kill someone I disliked enough and not feel that bad about it - it's just all the hassle that would go with it - being arrested, beign even more villainised etc etc. What does that make me? I think there's an intersectional point where a person can be both autistic and sociopathic or that one can develop from the other. These things are evidently on some kind of spectrum either running parrallel or connected.

All I get on forums is people spouting the same 'not like us' mantra - how is this even demonstrating the supposed AS trait of thinking outside the box??!

Sometimes I feel so alone in my ideas and that an AS diagnosis is worthless as I just do not think like the mainstream of people with AS - they seem like just a sub-set of NTs who are a bit more bearable to me! It's conformism every time with other people, no matter what diagnosis they say they have.

I know I will be proved right on my theory but it will take a long time as all the conformists with closed minds will need to catch up. No new idea was ever welcomed by the mainstream and that is what you are being with your ideas - mainstream - something which most of you state you detest.

I am different from the norm of people with AS it appears to me, in that I actually want to get to the facts, the truth of the matter, no matter how unpalatable; most here seem to want to maintain the status quo while saying to themselves 'Hey, I'm still quirky and different though', but you are just identikit copies of the next person doign the same thing to exactly the same socially-influenced degree!
This is conformity. Conformity reigns in life and only a few people ever break away from it in any significant way.

Anti-social Personality Disorder/sociopathy has been linked to somatisation disorders and Histrionic personality disorder - males tend to be diagnosed more with APD while women tend to get labelled as Histrionic or BPD.
DSM-IV criteria for APD:

I don't really see much related to autism - the main features are thrill-seeking due to an understimulated cortex, and lack of regard for society or for other people and is highly correlated to juvenile delinquency. There is no requirement that there be reduced understanding of the feelings of others - the case if often quite the opposite in some sociopaths who are very good at understanding people and then manipulating them for the sociopath's ends.

People with autism can do bad things, can be mean and horrible people and can commit crimes - some may even have many characteristics of APD, but that doesn't mean that there is something inherent in autism that links it to APD. The danger in linking the two, when there isn't a relation, is that the already negative stereotypes of autism could get even worse - there's already enough fearmongering without [more] accusations of sociopathy.


So you want the facts... as long as they confirm your theory.. and if anyone disagrees with you.. they're a conformist?

Yes that's right.

I have a theory that says that some Aspies have assumes that every other aspie is like them and makes big ASSumptions about things, like the "fact" that we don't have empathy - which is a big bucket of horsec**ks.

You may have a lower empathy - and thats fine, but stop ASSuming that everyone is like you. An empathy deficiency is NOT a diagnostic criteria for Aspergers or Autism. It CAN occur within the spectrum, but it is more exception than rule.

Once you meet a sociopath, you will change your mind about wanting to be a "distant" relative to them. They are, for lack of a better description, narcissistic a**holes and the only time they will seem to "care" about you is when you have something they want.

The fact is, Dexter at one end and Big Bang Theory at the other are both quite entertaining and seriously flawed.

Face it, ANYBODY writing about the spectrum from outside - or writing about anythinf sharing some features with the spectrum - is going to get things totally wrong. I would hate to start telling you how totally wrongf about my workings my family have been, let alone most - maybe all - non-spectral friends.

And to be fair - if I wrote about one of them it would be pretty much caricature in a lot of ways.

I think you'll find that we do lack empathy. We lack or are deficient in the mirror neurons in the brain that enable us to feel what another person feels to as great an extent as NTs. Empathy isn't a moral quality, it's simply a brain function that isn't working as well in us.

You seem to be editing out the aspects of the diagnosis that you don't like. Here's a thought - why not just pretend you don't even have autism? Problem solved!

I believe the mirror-neutron theory was disproven recently.
The difference is, that people with autism may have a difficult time discerning what the other person is feeling. A person with APD doesn't have this deficit - they know what people feel but they don't care, or use those feelings to their advantage.
I think.. you should take your own advice about editing out or in aspects of a diagnosis you dislike.

It's certainly news to me that the majority of autistics aren't deficient in empathy!

I would say 'Discerning what another person is feeling' is the same thing as empathy.

You are splitting hairs. I'm not the one saying 'We aren't like that' here. I fully take on board what my diagnosis means. I am not the one wanting to reinvent myself in the image of an NT.

That's really interesting. Dexter is a sociopath as written by a probable aspie. It makes sense. Dexter is a unique fictional creation, and neither fish nor fowl. Or rather, a bit of both.

That wasn't what I said. I agree that most autistic people have difficulty discerning the feelings of others - however, my point was that people with APD generally don't, but use that ability to discern to their advantage. I'm not reinventing anything, I just disagree with your theory.

My 2 cents.

Dexter is a sociopath and has a compulsion to kill people.

People with AS don't understand others and have a hard time connecting with others, but we aren't driven to kill other people.

No you seem to ASSume that everyone is like you because you experience a lack in empathy.

Here is a thought, stop projecting your own symptoms onto others. Problem solved!