About the existence or inexistence of Asperger Syndrome

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[quote="Danielismyname"]Watch these kids with AS, and then say whether they are outliers in regards to social behaviour or not (and whether they need a label or not):



Does AS stand for "aspergers?" I watched the first 2 segments and the video appears to be about "autism" not "aspergers". "Aspergers" is only mentioned once. I wonder what percent of people who were diagnosed with aspergers here were outliers to the extent that they went to a special school away from what folks here call NTs?

Lord knows why the boy who throws tantrums and likes star wars was considered having "Aspergers" while everyone else was just labeled with "autism".

the narrator says "autism covers a wife range of behavior. Some rarely speak. Others show no outward signs of disability"

We might be able to conceive of 25 different conditions those kids have. You could probably take the same clips but have the narrator say "Tommy has schizophrenia, Susy has the gitterbug, tommy is bipolar" and people would nod and agree when they watched it. It all depends on what model society invents to classify them.

The underlying status of being that "Aspergers Syndrome" refers to is very real and in my view is a disorder. The reliability of our technology and its application are another issue entirely.

It is not a personality by any coherent and sensible interpretation of personality that I am familiar with.

Asperger's Syndrome is generally viewed by the scholarly community as a form of autism. There are many different kinds, and they don't all manifest in the exact same way. Some people survive cancer, some people don't. Some people with autism are non-verbal, others have excellent vocabularies.

Of course I am aware of the mainstream definitions of the psychiatric community.

Danielismyname posted a video about some kids that act very different from other kids to the extent that they were put in a special education school.

Group A is put in a special education school and (mostly?) labeled regular autism.

Group B goes to a NT school but is labeled "disordered" or "aspergers".

I'm very concerned about the logic of saying "Look at group A. Aren't they different? How can you say group B doesn't exist?"

It is not clear that group B has the same condition of group A, or that the community of "experts" has produced any definition other than that which separates the students based on social constructions of what school a child should go to. Nor is it clear why at the special education school they've separated the kids into regular autism and aspergers (Group A-1 and A-2 if you will)

10 years from now some of those kids in Group B might be sent to Group A, or vice versa.

Some of the people on wrong planet went to a NT school and weren't told they had Aspergers until they graduated from school. Let's call them group C. Its not clear they have the same "condition" of group A and B.

Some think they have it but were told they didn't. It is not clear that there is any meaningful difference besides they went to a psychologist or psychiatrist with different practices.

Of course all people in the world have similarities. Its not clear that there is any such thing as a "disorder" or that its anything other than social construction to divide them to group A, group B, group A-1, Group A-2, Group C, etc.

I related to some of those in the video; especially the part with the tape labelling! It made me feel less alone. I was extremely passive in school to the extent I'd be mute sometimes. I wonder why they didn't show such pupils in the video. The DSM-IV AS diagnosis wasn't well known until after I'd left school. I wasn't diagnosed until adulthood. It provides a framework in which so many of my thoughts, experiences, and behaviours finally make sense. This knowledge is essential for me. My doctor understands this aspect of the label.

There was an classical autist at my highschool... He had a service dog, and was very friendly, and followed his NT brother everywhere when he wasn't with an EA.

Welcome to the dark side! Inhabited ony by the few who are interested in getting to the bottom of what is *really* going on. There are a lot of people who hold the view you describe. Many books and studies written by smart, rational people. As we get all get diagnosed by psychiatrists, the least we can do is Google "Psychiatry Scam", study the evidence for a few weeks, and then see how confident we are that psychs have got it right.




Having mingled with those in the psychotherapeutic profession, my impression agrees with this. These seem to be people getting ego satisfaction from being allegedly able (as they don't bother with empirical evidence) to fix the faults they see (non-empirically, again) in others.

Even stranger when we start labelling ourselves and getting attached to the label. Maybe we all have an 'internal psychiatrist' in our minds? A little voice in your head that judges everything as 'normal' or 'abnormal' based on some made up criteria. If so, I'm telling mine that the rest of my being can't afford his gross fees for such inept psuedoscience and he can go take a hike.

There are many kinds of behaviour currently not labelled as signs of a disorder/dysfunction; many people exhibiting these behaviours, who are not labelled as "suffering" from anything. Some of these behaviours are moderately anti-social, others not particularly, others upsetting to some people, etc.

What distinguishes these people from those being diagnosed with "Aspergers"/AS, or other "disorder", is that their behaviour is accepted by the majority, even encouraged, or simply not noticed. In this society they are not disabled by the way they are, the way they react to things, the desires they have.

Whether someone's needs and/or behaviours disable them/result in "disability" depends almost entirely on how society is organised, including how much noise, speed, restriction of movement, etc, tolerance for chemicals, etc, etc, living in the society involves.

The activities/behaviours that society requires of its citizens, at what rhythm, in what combinations, in what circumstances, will determine who is enabled and who is disabled in that society.

And the choice society has is whether to describe/"diagnose" those who find themselves disabled under those conditions as "dysfunctional/disordered", or whether to rearrange things, ( environments, demands, etc ), so as to include those people, even if it requires certain sacrifices from some of its other citizens.

In the same way as whites had to give up some power to include/"enable" black people, and men had to renounce certain privileges to include/"enable" women, so people currently benefiting from certain environments and social structures would need to give up some of that, if society wishes to include, to re-enable, people currently being diagnosed as AS.

Diagnosing people as dysfunctional/disordered is an excuse, ( in the same way as black people and women used to be compared to children, and science found many ways of proving how mentally inferior, [ immature, unstable, over-emotional, incapable, etc ], they were compared to whites/men ), a way for society to avoid taking/admitting to responsibility for certain people's exclusion.

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Here's a rough analogy to describe what I think about AS (don't stretch it too far, though)

It exists and is real in a sense similar to how a country exists, but not at all in the sense that a mountain or river exists. The underlying landscape may remain the same, but we can change how we divide it up. We could abandon say, the US , and divide it into 2 countries, East & West US. We can not physically divide the land, but we can categorise it how we please.

*However* the reason we can't change the boundaries willy nilly is because the mental constructs in peoples minds would get very upset about having 'their' country taken away. It's physically easy to change a nations boundaries. The physical atoms involved wouldn't need a single change - because international boundaries were never physically there in the first place.

The most interesting aspect is not that we all imagine categorisations that have no need to be there, but that after we imagine them, they actually do start to change our behaviour! Put a boundary round any piece of land, label it, and eventually the inhabitants of that land will develop their own customs, dialects, beliefs. If travel is limited to this new country, the people will even start to develop physical traits to a point that they can be identified as 'different' to rest. The crucial point is that the difference (now real) wasn't there originally, it developed as a result of marking a boundary (when there was no real difference).

This is all metaphor, so don't reply that incidents of AS are higher in country X than country Y Basically, national boundaries are on the map, not the landscape, even though they often coincide. AS can also be 'on the map', but not really in the landscape. Who constructs the map?

Maybe Aspergers is a Prussia of the mind?

If it weren't for the economic trouble the US is having, I would be all for Canada adopting it and raising American quality of life with things like better healthcare... Hopefully Obama fixes that problem for you guys...

On the videos/documentary called 'make me normal'

From what I remember about the video and from what I think about it, that's hf AS mostly.

I think it should be AS for the special interest-boy and the meltdown-girl, though the guy who's staring at the ceiling a lot is appearing looking somewhat atypical. He's the most noticeable but he also got a girlfriend and engages others successfully which again is hf.

Asperger's Syndrome as a whole cannot be reduced simply to a personality disorder. I don't understand nonverbal behavior. It isn't an aspect of my personality in the way that my preference for argyle socks and penny loafers is an aspect of my personality. I'm incapable of automatically noticing body language and other nonverbal cues. I frequently confuse facial expressions like happiness and anger. I don't automatically say hello to people who say hello to me; I have to remind myself to do it.

There are too many similarities between people with AS for it to be a simple matter of personality. A few of my friends are also on the spectrum, and even though we're not affected in the same way, we have similarities in terms of social cognition, eye contact, etc. Psychology is not like chemistry; psychology relies on a preponderance of evidence for the existence of many disorders in many cases.

I don't enjoy executive dysfunction or the constant confusion in social situations; if they were facets of my personality, they'd be much easier to change. I also have sensory issues. I don't like bluejeans, florescent lights make me dizzy because I can see them flicker and hear a very high pitched whine. Many people with AS also have sensory issues.

"They" have already 'caught' me and made me a moderator. Isn't it interesting that people register into WP and think all they have to do is flaunt the rules by having two accounts and disrespect the help (had you not, I would have never thought to look you up) and somehow we have to allow them on WP.

That is not the case.

Merle

So I'm not banned yet?

Its pretty odd that the moderators don't identify themselves as such on this forum or in their posts.

If you are going to ban me because you received private pms from people saying they were upset at things I said, then ban me for that reason, don't pretend its because I mentioned a thread was locked in an offhand comment or I registered more than once(??) because I didn't remember my old login or whatever. (Actually, I don't even see 2 email addresses with this account. I don't know if you are comparing ip, which are imprecise, or attempting other methods to violate my privacy??))

And when did I say you have to allow me to post on WP? If you are a mod, are you banning me or aren't you? Is it not up to you and you are asking someone else to do and decided to post here in the meantime?

I don't know if I just violated some "don't talk about banning rule" but you brought it up.

You might want to take a look at moderation practices on other forms if you want to do this right. Identify yourself, give clear guidelines and warnings, make clear where the line is drawn. :

If other places are so fair and balanced, I invite you to use those places exclusively.
had you read WP's rules, as requested before you posted here, you would realize having two accounts are against them and a bannable offense before you insulted our members and had to have a thread locked because of your abrasiveness.

Merle

Merle

Society and/or the people in power;


It's a bit like the weather, if we could control it! Most people would want warm dry sunny weather all the time. But the farmers would start suffering, be unable to grow food without rain. Clearly society would care about the farmers, ( we need food ), and would agree to a certain amount of rain, less sun. It wouldn't say, " Farmers are dysfunctional, ( because they need more rain)".

But what if it's a small minority of people, ( whose "produce" isn't exactly obvious nor appreciated ), who are suffering from the "lack of rain"? Society might choose to ignore those people's needs and label them as dysfunctional/disordered for needing so much water, ( such an "inconvenient"/"abnormal" amount of it ).

At what point does it become worthwhile for society to "care about" a minority's needs, to change rather than label more and more people as dysfunctional/disordered?

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