Who has a "Self?"

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well it did for me, actually. i found your earlier post very interesting. i just didn't answer straight away because i am supposedly "on holidays" and had to attend to my son.
the usual story for me- i am holed up in the room with a laptop and the family are all out playing.
i am playing too. it is just that my playing is in this form and not their form and never the twain shall meet! (well, it does sometimes...but not as often as they would like.)

Okay. Thanks. This too is my escape when I get bored / burnt out with my real life and responsibilities.

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oh i understand exactly the distinctions you are making, marshall. my point is, however, whether or not there is fusion or some kind of evenness and homoegeneity in your "Self" - for example - do all the elements you mention above actually coalesce into a whole or are they disjointed and disparate. for me, they are disparate. it is very difficult for all those elements to come together in the moment particularly in relation to other people.
for example - face to face with someone can I listen and comprehend and feel and intellectualise and also understand what i think and feel and get a gist of what they think and feel? Most people who i have talked with who are not As or ASD seem to find my need to even POSE the question an extraordinay thing. and i suspect that is because they have an assumption that we all have the same kind of "self" or centre, where these things fuse or align maybe moreso than happens in my case.

for example , most of my connection with people is via phone and the net. it has been like this for many years, since i was actually able to cope with people in my life. Now, you put the same person i am emailing or talking with in my immediate vicinity and try to get me to relate in the same way i can when there is less complexity and sifting through of info, and i find it hard- almost impossible. usually i have to work very very hard to not talk at them OR not stay silent and stim (2 extrmes.) very hard. the complexities and overstimulation mean that i get flooded and so i lose the thread of who i am.NOw, people i know who are not on the spectrum seem to glide through with this stuff more easily.

the other thing with me is that the fragmentation not only exists in the moment in relation to others, but over a timeline of mylife. this is also quite severe. and has been commented upon by family and others - like i am a heap of different and very distinct people which are in accord with whatever i happen to be researching or doing in terms of special interests. Now, everyone changes over the course of a lifetime - that is normal and one hopes to be expected. but mmy shifts are sudden and jagged - and COMPLELETEY linked in with special interests.

i think there are some differences to my experience but you seem to be describing very similar things to what i am trying to explain. thank you

to put it succinctly - i am fragmented in the spatial dimension, and i am fragmented in the time dimension. but i would not have it any other way!

Last edited by millie on 17 Jan 2009, 12:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

First post described me quite well.

I'm not entirly sure what you're asking, but I'll give it a shot.

I don't feel 'fragmeanted' but I do feel seperate from things. Like when I'm with people I am aware of my seperation from them in that I am autistic and they are not.

Autistics are like tiny planets who have crashlanded here by chance. But instead of rotating around the sun or other people like everyone else, we rotate around things or obessions.

I personally am very fragmented, I am emotionally unstable, and dont enjoy that. Here is one of my favourite quotes: "I am in a category all to myself" --- myself.

ALL of what you mentioned: it's ALL QUITE THE SAME PROBLEM, just another way IT expresses IT-self
(and, in an individual, of course there is no difference, IT=theindividualtoo)

I'm not sure if I get your meaning completely, but when thinking who am I? I find it quite difficult to answer. Being in the world seem to me like a whole lot of pretending and compromising. I guess these things put the real self in the shadows somewhere. But now, when thinking of your question, I think there is a me somwhere, behind the person that the world is percieving.
The real me is; very honest, has strong opinions, never compromises, a good friend(if given a chance)very loyal to my believes, humoristic and very optimistic. Can also be; Real mad, childish, cynical, exluding, introvert and a pain in the ass.

Could this fit your question?

Wow, I've never thought of it in this matter before, but your description seems to fit me perfectly.

I feel as though I'm a completely different person in each unique situation and that I have to, in a sense, load the part of me that is needed like a file on a computer's hard drive.

I see myself sometimes as being very immature, jocular and never wanting to grow up, while on other days I feel as though I am incredibly mature, studious and intelligent.

It feels as though my life is full of a variety of choices, each peaking with another special interest and having a personality of its own, and I have no idea how I'm ever going to choose one to follow.

I don't feel as though I can show my entire self to any one person, because it is far too broad and universal to appeal to any one person. I believe that I am the only one who can ever understand the full spectrum of what I really am.

The people who know me well do have a great part of the idea however, and I'm sure one in particular would describe me as both the happiest person they know and the most depressing person they know, as well as the funniest person they know along with the most serious person they know.

If asked to describe myself in one word, I would choose "abstract" on a given day and completely change my mind and choose "concrete" the next day.

I could go on and on with constrasts...

~S_O_S

What? People think they have selves? That's amazing!

I thought the terms 'myself', 'yourself', etc. were just placemarkers, used to indicate something that could never really be described because it was never the same thing two moments in a row. I thought people just referred to 'selves' so that they could associate all the different moments a physical (although also physically changing) body progressed through as one timeless lump, purely for the sake of convenience. Communication could become difficult if this was not the case. I had no idea that people actually considered 'themselves' to be some absolute, bound-together, discrete entity. Come to think about it, I don't think I've ever thought about how other people think about their 'selves' before. It's entirely possible that I didn't even realise that other people had such thoughts at all. WOW! You've opened up a whole new world for me! Thanks, millie!

Where do these people's 'selves' begin, and where do they end? What it the boundary between 'self' and not-'self'?

In answer to your question, no, I don't consider myself, this 'I' that is being referred to (or whatever it is that is referring to the 'I') to be some complete thing. I use words like 'I' and 'myself' to describe a series of moments that for some reason seem to connect together by a shared perspective (not shared opinions or emotions or anything though. Or even shared thoughts). animal doesn't know where this perspective comes from. In fact, the more animal thinks about it, the harder it becomes to figure out how to think about self, or perspective, or unity of consciousness, or anything like that. It all seems a bit constructed, like the brain comes up with this inner structure just so that it doesn't go insane or something. Maybe we have a smaller/less insistent inner structure in this respect. Or maybe we are just too close to our 'selves' to observe them with any accuracy. Kind of like an eye trying to look at itself without the aid of a mirror.

Actually, that's just made me think of something. People have 'selves' because they see them reflected in other people! Do you think this is the case? 'We' don't look to others for reflections, so we don't see our 'selves' so easily.

Well, there's a few theories. This is what happens when you give me ideas.

Okay, I think maybe I understand a little bit better. I don’t think I have it as severe as you though so that’s maybe why it’s hard for me to understand.

On your question about relating to people face to face I’ll try to explain. What I feel is that there are these different modes of consciousness. Speaking with someone must use a very different part of my brain from the part that’s in use when I’m simply thinking to myself. Starting up the interaction is sometimes like starting up a car engine. For a while not all the cylinders go in sync and my mind feels like it’s sputtering. Any little distraction, whether it’s an emotion or some kind of sensory interruption or even an interruption by some image in my head, it will cause the whole process to stall. Once I get going I eventually get to a point where I have that more centered feeling. I’ll feel like I can flow and think of things to say and try to interpret the other person’s reactions to what I’m saying. But then some little thing can go wrong and I lose the connection. Either I get so excited that my own thoughts distract me and cause me to go off into a long tangential monologue, almost forgetting that the other person is there. Or there’s something external that knocks me off balance, some sensory distraction makes me lose the connection.



I guess I don’t relate quite as much to the fragmentation in the time dimension. I think I was like that as a child but now I’ve slowed down some and am more static. The general concept of being fragmented makes sense though. It may also be that, to different degrees, this is the core fundamental difference for everyone on the autism spectrum.

What I’ve used to try and describe my own experience is the analogy of my brain to a supercomputer. At any one time there are multiple processes going on in different locations (different nodes on the system). It seems like NT’s have the ability to control all these different processes at once without even being aware that they are separate. We are more aware that the processes are separate and therefore only have control of a limited number at a time. Since face-to-face social interaction uses the greatest number of processors at once, that’s the one area where we have a universal difficulty. In other areas that require fewer processors operating at once we have varying degrees of ability depending on our personality and how we developed individually.

Sorry if this isn’t all comprehensible. I’m really tired at the moment.

hey marshall - not incrompehensible at all....completely understandable and synonymous with my experience. the analogy makes a great deal of sense to me.

i am almost breathlessly following the line of this thread, millie

thank you for straying off the traditional (OUTSIDE) view of autism:
the one Triad is ONLY valid as a diagnostic tool, and may remain so
the other Triad of explanatory views of autism can be explained away from a different perspectibe

However, think from opposite perspective, face traditional thinking with prima facie questions

thats where i started, freshly selfdxed a year ago, confirmed soon
that is why i am adamantly sticking to MY view, as it is a view i have always had of me: so far, i have desperately been trying to use only MY words, and stay away from traditional phrasing as much as possible

at 52, if found myself totally new at what autism is,
but totally expert at ME (and a sceptic linguistic at that)

AND EVERYTHING simply FITS

so.there is me thinking:
who? me? executive dysfunction??? no planning???
YOU MUST BE JOKING

next: ToM??? that simply cannot be right and must be rephrased
first thing when i saw ToM, i recognized Point of View
(i am a literary student, and know about these things)

btw: i have excellent, intuitive THEORY of most otherminds, almost to a degree of clairvoyance, which however is NOT the same as empathy = feeling;
knoiwing is not the same as experiencing&therefore knowing

i have by now repephrased: AWARESS OF OTHERMIND=otherself

this answers also the thread: WHEN did you first realize you were different >>
it must be rephrased: when did you first realize THEY were different!

that is the moment any human being discoveres a mental realiity that is not of its own and only by definition different;
to NT's this occurs at very young age (ref early ToMtesting)
auti's may never find out at alllllllll

THIRD: weak imagination

that did hit home remarkably for someone with vague writing non-aspirations
and in fact quite remarkable imagination
so: will accept problem there

so far for the first triade: the diagnostic triade

however: i can already conclude in my personal view:
it requires an act imagination to mmaintain the simplest ToM;
thus: imagination MUST be underlying this ToMthingy

and yes: poot imagination might well explain lack of planning (and execution thereof) in all sorts of degrees; is there a key in this imagination stuff????

WHAT IS IMAGINATION MADE OF???

coffeebreak, till next post,please respond & barethink with me, Millie
& Pakled & all of the others

next post on my acquaintance with the Symptological, Diagnostic Triade
[sorry if mixing some things up, working under time pressure & no time for this- this too important to me to let pass]

Actually, i'll do a simpler post alltogether
hereafter

I've always had a sense of myself, but it has often been very different than what others thought of me - and I agree that it has been difficult to put into words what is going on in my mind.

My father's family is very alexithymic (have difficulty understanding their own and other people's emotions). I think the reason I developed the ability to have a theory of "otherminds" was because everyone else in the family was so naive when it came to the intentions of other people, that for self-preservation I learned to observe and interpret the emotions of others. I don't, however, have fluid empathy for others, often I feel like a clinical observer.

Z

i'd say you are getting my point...,
interesting nick though ('zonder' in dutch means 'without')

i think Alexithymia exclusively refers to one's experiencing one's own feelings, where empathy would apply to the other, however this in a emotional manner indeed - empathy would involve at least a partial emotianal co-experiencing;and that precisely is what the tern ToM refers to: not a Theory at all; but a physical recognition of sameness of feeling (call it echoing);
hence my preliminarily modest switch to Awaress of Othermind (and therefore becoming capable of, enabled to imagine other Point of View (which than becomes my humanities'scientific point of entry)

this echoing is what we generally refer to as 'that electrical feeling' existent between lovers; it is what i call resonance (within and without of my self - reminitions of Much's Das Geschhrei allowable at this point);

it is the click we feel with other individuals (WE NEVER CLICK EWITH MORE THAN ONE AT THE TIME - and it is in every flirt of our entire lives)

it's in the word words He Cute! (ha! i am typing this swinging to Otis Redding Knock on Wood babe! - this funnnnnnnnnnnn)

it is when experience becomes multi-layered

and precisely that is what always seemed wrong: fragmentation yes, in time, absolutely, in space, of dear yes, you would not believe my parallel lives all my life), in taste!! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! ! oh such a strange patchwork, sooooooh
eclectically selective, but nevernevernever 'giving' only passively taking,
taking whhat? shhape? form? content????? WHAT

all this fragmentation, all this adaptation & still alwayys that shadow of...
what? boredom? depression? DISTANCE!! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !! !

and from a distance, everything receives (from our vision) the same surface of a superficial flatness that is supposed to contain full reality,
but not to the autistic experience, which shall remain distant

and , for matters of selfprotection, aloofffff, much rather than open to & aware

Does this make sense??????

Ja, perfecte betekenis . . . (With a small knowledge of Dutch and an online translator, you can conquer the world!)

I've found that I rarely deeply "connect" with other people. My timing is off. I don't feel what they're feeling when they're feeling it. Sometimes I begin to understand my feelings after an emotionally-charged event has occurred, and then I can intellectually analyze what went on. It's not that I don't feel, but I'm internally out of sync and frequently blocked.

Aloof is a good word to describe how I can come across - also possibly detached.

I chose the name Zonder precisely because it means "without." There are some significant things I am without, one of them being an internal fluidity of emotions.

(I've been to the Netherlands a couple of times and regularly work with Dutch people. Gezellig!)