Differences between mild Aspergers and severe Autism?

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OK, I know this is going to start up another 8-page argument, but I am so confused. I know I keep on throwing Youtube clips at you but I eally don't get it. I've been researching the Autism spectrum for weeks, and trying to understand it a bit more, but everywhere I have read explains about high-functioning and low-functioning Autism. I can't get my head round it because I've got a few Aspies telling me one thing on here, and I've got all the Autism books, web pages, and my social worker telling me something completely different. I don't know if some Aspies like to be very unique and so use their black and white thinking to be stubborn on how they feel AS and Autism is all about, I don't know.

Look this little clip up on Youtube, for example:

Brother and sister help protect autistic brother from head punches

What disability is this?

The insistence on high-functioning and low-functioning labels is black and white thinking. No one is saying that everyone is autistic in the same way with the same severities in every aspect. What is said is that being labeled HFA or LFA does not predict things like whether you can actually hold a job or maintain a social life or take care of yourself.

Like, self-harm? Head punches? Banging head against walls? That kind of thing? It's not limited to those classified as "LFA". I know of Aspies who do or have done this. HFA seems to be more about perceived intelligence and little else.

Trying to say there are two categories that everyone neatly fits into is not accurate.

Do you really want to know how many times I've slammed my head into walls or fists into my head? Until I couldn't see? Until I couldn't coordinate movement well enough to continue? Until I blacked out? Until I vomited? Until I got really nasty headaches on the opposite side of my head? Until I had months worth of vertigo, coordination problems, and nausea?

And you want me to watch a video of someone ELSE doing it?

Heck no.

I don't need to relive that (and the sensation of having other people grab me, hold me down, stick their hands between my head and whatever I was banging it with, tie me down, strap socks on my hands, etc). Not for you. Not for anyone.

But I forgot... I'm just one of "a few aspies" (not a term that's ever applied to me) because I can write on the Internet. (Although plenty of "aspies" self-injure like this.)

What does that do to your categories?

I know what your categories do to me: They rip me in half. Writing on the left side, headbanging on the right, and never the two shall meet. Except I am one person not two and this is my life not an abstract category system.

I think I've told you before that the ex president of the American Psychological Society, also an autism researcher, doesnt believe in these categories. Neither do several autism researchers I've talked to both in the USA and other countries. But to you that too seems to just be "a few aspies".

Just because most people that you run into believe in something doesn't make it true. Some ideas, like functioning labels, are like the Emperor's New Clothes: Everyone THINKS they see them, because they've been told it's true and their brains can filter their perceptions to match their thoughts.

There was a time when everyone you met would have told you the sun and planets and stars went around the earth. No matter how much real information contradicted this idea, people would just make more and more complicated models making the planets go through a bunch of weird motions to fit the real information. It took a long time before it was accepted that the earth and other planets all went around the sun. And if you lived during the right time in history, it'd just be "a few crazy people" who were RIGHT.

This doesn't mean that just because there's a few of us saying this, then we must be right. It just means that the number of people who believe something doesn't necessarily mean it's true.

Anyway, other than that, what Verdandi said. Nobody is saying that there are not extreme differences between different autistic people. Just that dividing us up by "there's a huge difference between mild AS and severe autism" is not the right approach to that diversity. Posting YouTube videos doesn't really mean anything because each video shows... a person. Not a severity. Not a functioning level. Just a human being who happens to occupy one small area on the many-dimensional landscape that is autism.

http://aspergersquare8.blogspot.com/200 ... label.html

http://chaoticidealism.livejournal.com/66341.html

http://chaoticidealism.livejournal.com/76026.html

These links are the best answer I can give your question.

(And God... I am so glad my family or others never made videos of (or even about) me doing that and posted them on the Internet. I would feel so violated. Even the idea is tripping off my PTSD a bit, as may be obvious from the tone of my first post. I went through a lot learning not to do that to myself. Used to do it for hours. The biggest help in not doing it is a motor condition that makes it hard for it to get past the impulse to do it, that impulse just never really reaches my body that easily. I came closer to it than I had in years the other day. I've given more than one talk on how to keep from doing this kind of thing because I have to use so many methods in combination I've become a bit expert about it. People who said they benefited from the talks were often... "aspies", the one's you think don't do this.

So yeah you've successfully reminded me of a time in my life when I spent a lot of time screaming, headbanging, biting holes in my skin, ripping hair out in clumps, and all kinds of things that you probably didn't expect when you posted about that video. These things you talk about are part of some people's lives, even the lives of people who you don't seem to expect to identify with the people you're discussing. I just so completely wasn't expecting that to be the kind of thing you were going to bring up next. Maybe I should have been prepared but I wasn't. I didn't mean to react as harshly as I did, it's just the sensation of all those memories flooding back combined with your assurance that these wouldn't BE the memories of anyone you were talking to.)

Being tagged as "low functioning" has not been a part of my life so I'm not sure how useful my insights might be, here. But anyway:

It seems to me the problem is that people get a feeling from perceiving certain things about a person, and then make a leap to assuming that that feeling correctly infers a bunch of other things about the person that may not be true. (And beyond just not being true can also lead to dangerous and horrible consequences.)

IOW, if you're good with computers, it would be like someone saying, "you're a woman, so there's no way you're good at that."

It sounds like what's bothering you is that if making the HF/LF distinction is a bad idea, then why do so many people (including experts) do it?

I'd say, as far as perception, yes, there is something that most people can recognize (and that I can recognize, albeit a bit slowly) as an HF/LF distinction. And, it's common enough that most people can pass it along to most other people, and they'll understand what is meant. So, the perception that an HF/LF distinction is real and important definitely exists in most people's minds. But none of that means that what that perception tends to make people think is accurate at all.

The trouble is, that from that perception people start assuming all sorts of things. I couldn't get that YouTube link to work, but from the title the person in it does some self-injurious behavior. Ok, most people upon seeing that would think "low functioning." And then think, "...which is kinda like 'ret*d,' which is like being 'cognitively limited,' which is like being a much younger child, or maybe even being 'out to lunch' and there's not really anybody 'in there,' and..."

So, maybe later, when someone suggests trying to see if AAC would benefit that person, the response is, "why bother? he/she obviously doesn't have the capacity for communication." And... they're wrong, but they'll never find out because they already think they know the truth. -- And even without any direct evidence; what does head banging have to do with language? And, as some people have described first-hand, even worse things can happen with medical personnel like, "why bother (to save them)?"

In the past (and still, sometimes) autistic kids would be institutionalized to be forgotten, since doctors "knew" they'd never learn or progress at all. So, 20 years later, after not been given the chance to learn anything, the doctor says, "see? I was right." And why did the doctor "know" he was right in the first place? Because other doctors and 'experts' also believed it and wrote it in books and journals, and told him so. So, basically 'everybody' believed that, and 'everybody' was wrong.

I don't think it's people being stubborn or having black & white thinking about this subject; some (not me) have had to deal with the consequences of this stuff personally. And often, people with first-hand experience can see the b***sh** involved in the thinking of people who have power over them. The human mind is be remarkably good at hypocrisy, especially when it comes to power.

And, I think there's some ego involved, as well. Some people seem to think that their suffering due to caring for an autistic child will not be sufficiently recognized unless the world understands that no child is more low functioning than theirs. And therefore anyone who is not as "LF" in their eyes is in a position to say anything about it. That's a political argument, rather than an argument about truth.

Yes, it definitely goes way back. I was thinking of what I've come across in the past few months.

Similar attacks on Michelle Dawson are described here: http://www.autistics.org/library/ (just page 3/4 of the way down or text search for "Michelle"). They were about ABA, which goes back to parents and functioning labels used to silence.

Don't have time to read the entire thread, but since this topic has come up again, here's a video for ya that might be helpful:

http://www.vimeo.com/12901883

The boy who made that video defies at least as many HF/LF stereotypes as I do. (I know him.)

Well I'm like a NT then, because I don't fully understand about other people on the spectrum. I've never met another Aspie before, hence I don't no any different to myself.

I don't uncontrollably hit myself in the head. Sometimes I hit myself once in the head when I am angry with myself, because I hate my brain so much. But I've never had people holding me down or anything.

By the way, my brother's NT friend once was hitting himself in the head when he was depressed. He as also a bit drunk. I saw it.