distinguishing between AS and schizoaffective

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Er... the fact is that most autistic people don't view people as equivalent to rocks.

Well, if one has no emotional feelings to another, there's no need to talk to it/them in a social and emotional way; "people" are like rocks to me in relation to the feelings I derive from them. I speak to those I don't know here for I may learn something; no feelings. Rocks don't offer much in the way of information (however, if one studies a rock for some time, one can find many properties that it communicates to one).

Funnily enough, Gillberg sees that Autism is this (it explains the lack of social and emotional reciprocity), and in my case, he is correct.

(One must remember, not everyone has the same level of impairment in empathy.)

One thing, I'm not a complete proponent of the "lacking in empathy" theory, as it doesn't explain many things I do. I now recognise people (I have for a long time), but I wish to run from them for I don't know what to say, and it makes me uncomfortable when I cannot find words. Whereas, I can talk to a rock, or a dog without problems. If it was just empathy that makes me how I am (the relatedness of feelings), I shouldn't be able to talk to an animal or a rock, but this isn't the case.

It explains how I lack the feelings of connection to others (which has changed over the course of my life, which is the common pattern for Autism), but it doesn't explain how I cannot physically talk to people socially, like I can with a dog or a rock.

There's something about "people", other people, which makes Autistic people behave how they do (the door swings both ways, after all).

Yep. I was actually going to mention in my last post, I remember telling my first real friend, "Congratulations, you have now entered the category reserved for animals, trees, and objects." I can't explain why she's like that to me, but she is. And it's a compliment, not an insult.

I have recently read The Quiet Room: A Journey Out of the Torment of Madness, New York, 1994, in which Lori Schiller recounts her life as a schizophrenic person. There are also chapters by her parents, her two brothers, a girlfriend, and a psychiatrist who treated her. This description is from my memory of the book. There is a review of the book here: http://www.division42.org/MembersArea/N ... _room.html .

Lori was born in 1959 into an upper middle class family. For twelve years in her twenties and early thirties she was a patient in various psychiatric hospitals and halfway houses in and around New York, though for several months she was a mental health worker in one of the hospitals.

She was given a variety of diagnoses: manic-depression, schizoaffective disorder, borderline personality, and schizophrenia - which was her final diagnosis. But for several years she identified as schizoaffective even though she was hearing voices.

She was tormented by her Voices (she capitalizes the word) who commanded her to kill herself and to kill other people. She also had visual hallucinations. She made several suicide attempts. She self-medicated with cocaine.

She writes about the power hierarchy in psychiatric hospitals and the vital importance of status within them. She was terrified by the prospect of being sent to the state hospital if she didn't cooperate with the medical staff in New York Hospital. She was often put in the Quiet Room of a hospital and describes the terror of being there with her Voices. Several times she smashed the safety screen of the Quiet Room, and so the hospital staff subjected her to cold wet packing. She decribes the horror of that treatment/punishment.

She was given electroconvulsive therapy over several weeks and various drugs, amongst which were Haldol, Thorazine and lithium. She attributes her recovery to clozapine (Clorazil). But while that medication may have helped her recover, I believe that she could not have done so and been discharged from hospital without her desire and determination to want to recover.

Oh, I met her once.