Do you think Santa Claus has AS

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Interesting theory.
Either that or he's very, very old.



There is proof that St Nicholas did exist and that he was a charitable man:

http://www.stnicholascenter.org/Brix?pageID=35

You mean as in Santa Claus being like a social phenomenon?

As for the conventional "fairy tale" Santa , I'm not so sure.
What about the Santas in department stores and how would you ever find the "real" one? They're certainly all alive whoever they really are!
Are you all suggesting that these Santas should all be screened for AS?

Being Santa does seem to require a lot of advertising and PR skills these days. Santa has to "sell" the dream Christmas (in the shops anyway). Perhaps some would find this overwhelming.



It has to be remembered that the original Santa Claus stories are from a time when it was socially acceptable to be a carpenter; carve wooden toys with a lathe or chisel, and work alone in one's shed all day: in a pre-industrial society. There were specialists. Santa Claus looks like a Yule Tide specialist to me and would certainly know more than anyone about the subject.

Goods items weren't mass produced back then. If you needed a shoe fixing you went to the cobbler to have new nails put in: you didn't throw it away and buy a new one. Chain stores like "Nike World" and "Clarks" hadn't been invented yet. There were no conveyer belts as such, or "Toys R Us".

The Santa stories were also being circulated around long before the advent of disco. I believe that the strange clothes are probably based on religious garments or priests' cloaks, that became more ostentatious as the legend and mythology developed.




In the movies, people are.

The "Real Santa" gets taken to the police station for his behaviour and is breathalysed (if I remember correctly). Some men in white coats also make an appearance...

I think at one point St Nick had to defend himself in court...


Burglary in reverse?
The court couldn't charge him with anything...

Whether Santa exists as a flesh and blood individual is moot to the question. It is possible for even a fictional character to exhibit enough Aspie traits to qualify for at least a tentative diagnosis. Of all the unknowable "Was so and sos..." thus far posed, Santa would seem to me to come closest to a likely yes.

He only hangs out with his nerdy (elf) friends.

His suit is traditionally acknowledged to be primarily velvet, thus very soft and comfortable.

Visiting in the dead of night not only speaks to issues of personal boundaries, it's technically Breaking & Entering, whether he steals anything or leaves something. It's also a rather extreme measure to go to in order to avoid social interaction.

As far as all the psuedo-Santas, they could be considered an Aspie coping mechanism to further avoid actual social interaction, though I can say from personal experience having played Santa at various Daycare Centers for Christmas portrait shoots, there is something actually magic about that costume. Even an Aspie will melt in empathy at the joy and excitement it generates. But I digress..

The whole toy-gifting ritual also speaks to the notion that as an Aspie, Santa suffers not from a lack of empathy, but from outright empathy overload.

I don't see how there's much doubt on this one...

lol at this thread.

Of course he does! Notice how rigid the interaction with Santa is? Letters must be sent instead of face to face, meeting Santa has the same behaviour every time, he can only summon the ability to visit once a year and then he waits until you are asleep.
The keeping of lists and narrow range of foods is very Aspie, and the making of toys is his special interest. He has obsessions about what things people should have in their houses and so he breaks in and puts them there, arranging them just so and specifically under a tree.

He doesn't know what to say or do, so he tries to placate you with gifts and laughs a strange sterotypical laugh. Ho ho ho!

Activebutodd, I was just thinking about Santa's obsessive list making. He's always checking it, and revising it. Also, it shows how rigid, and black and white his thinking is. You're either naughty, or nice. There isn't a gray area with him.

Santa does seem rather object orientated in his thinking.
He expresses his compassion by secretly distributing material goods with limited social interaction.

He also expresses his compassion for a set limited time in a ritualistic fashion. In department stores each child only spends a maximum of about 3 minutes sitting on Santa's knee.
Santa also keeps small talk to a minimum by asking:
"What would you like for Christmas?" at the earliest possible opportunity.

Santa is also clearly an animal lover.
He keeps stables of reindeer tended by elfin grooms and looks after the Reindeer's welfare.
He is also portrayed as a kindly "Reindeer Whisperer", possessing as much knowledge on Reideer as the Sami (though he doesn't make the reindeer into pepperami type sausages of course).




It's interesting to note that many fictional characters associated with festivals or rites of passage exhibit ritualistic (almost religious) behaviours and routines. Santa is just one example. Perhaps all these characters may be all moderately OCD.

The tooth fairy is another interesting example.
She seems to show compulsive hoarding tendencies.
She obsessively collects teeth to build fairy castles.
She also avoids social human contact and only comes out when children are sleeping.
Dentistry is her special interest.

The Easter Bunny has an obsession with chocolate egg collecting and distributing.
Food (confectionary) preparation and making treasure hunts, seem to be the special interests here.


As for other fictional character diagnoses, Winnie the Pooh has been diagnosed with ADHD (inattentive type). Again, this story book character was around before the advent of mass marketing and post-industrial production methods. The story seemed so innocent to me at the time though.

http://www.cmaj.ca/cgi/content/full/163/12/1557

I can't help but wonder about Pinocchio.
He was created by a lonely old pre-industrial wood carver...


Maybe I should reread some of my old childhood story books and make some arm-chair lay-person's diagnoses of my own...

Santa makes his elves work ridiculous amounts of hours and profits off their hard work with fame, fortune, milk, and cookies even though he only works 1 day a year. Sounds more like a NT corporate CEO to me.

Callista,

No, no, no. Just a joke, mimicking those who say that "AS" isn't real.

I'm of the opinion that:
-AS is primarily a white matter disorder of the right hemisphere and of the corpus callosum
-LFA is a white matter disorder of the left and right hemispheres and the corpus callosum (this leads to greater handicap as one side can't take up the slack)
-HFA is a white matter disorder of the left hemisphere and corpus callosum, with the latter being a little "worst" than as seen in AS

Social development is scattered throughout the brain, so even though AS and HFA affect different sides, both sides can't adequately communicate with one another in both disorders, so social development will be impaired in both, even if they may manifest a little differently due to the hemisphere affected.

So not true. Many don't know how to stop giving. Some can't help but try to please other people.

What is a white matter disorder??

Ok, maybe I should have said healthy giving

Giving out presents to 386 million children a year is personally healthy behavior on Santa Claus's part?

^^ Ok, then maybe he could be a compulsive giving aspie, who knows...a feature supporting this hypotesis is that he is loved by children and seen as a silly fantasy by adults.

He probably has AS but has comorbid problems. The obvious thing is his delusional thinking. He thinks he is Santa Claus.

Points go to flamingshorts!

Why does Santa not exist? Is he so advanced that he is working backwards through time and is actually stealing? You can't just know if someone is naughty or nice, if that was possible, it would be easy to know of that person would be worth bringing up and if they became a bad person, stop them from being born.

Presuming Santa is probably advanced and from the future and no-one sees him and is always the same, does that mean he is a clone of a clone?

bump.

this is funny.