Wake up people! There is no such thing as Aspergers.

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Spokane_Girl

10 Mar 2009, 1:22 pm

ed wrote:

...to lock or not to lock

I believe Junior1 is a troll, and based on that this thread should be locked.

On the other hand, his topic has generated a huge response, and an interesting collection of posts. It could be interesting to see it continue.

Usual rules apply, of course, as spelled out in WP's TOS.

Of course, a more-experienced mod may overrule my decision to let it continue.

Ed
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How about checking his IP address with foresam (forsam, I don't remember the correct spelling). I bet they will both match because they are the same people.

KingdomOfRats
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10 Mar 2009, 1:39 pm

Spokane_Girl wrote:

ed wrote:

...to lock or not to lock

How about checking his IP address with foresam (forsam, I don't remember the correct spelling). I bet they will both match because they are the same people.

Junior1s posts on this thread don't look like typical Foresam [John Best],and it is probably unlikely can match IPs from a long time back because they change,proxies may have been used,or different locations.

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TPE2
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10 Mar 2009, 2:09 pm

ManErg wrote:

My current feeling is that the extreme cases of Autism that the media pick up on possibly are real disorders. Aspergers has little to do with these, and is merely 'introversion' rebranded.

There are people (adults) diagnosed with Aspergers that can't work, can't go to the street alone, can't live alone, spend his days in daycare institutions for disabled people and have a "performance IQ" in the "mental retardation" range. This is not only "introversion".

Perhpas the problem is that "Aspergers" is becoming what "PDD/NOS" should be: a label used to a very diverse set of conditions who don't fit in the box of "classical autism".

gary1984
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10 Mar 2009, 2:47 pm

"There are people (adults) diagnosed with Aspergers that can't work, can't go to the street alone, can't live alone"

I'm not being funny, but a family member of mine is like that. She is older than 40, but she doesn't have a diagnosis at all. Yet we are pretty sure she also has aspergers.

We also know cases where it runs in families, missing a few members yet not others, almost as if its being passed down in the gene. I personally still stand strong by my opinion that its a very real disadvantage. If they really push to prove its not autism, then it has to be something. Theres far too many complex traits involved, too many unique patterns for it to be just a learned behaviour problem caused by environmental changes etc. If you look hard enough some of these are evident from the very start and carry across the years in one way or another.

millie
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10 Mar 2009, 3:19 pm

for me, this thread and OP is not worth responding to...except to state is not wroth responding to.

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robo37
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10 Mar 2009, 3:38 pm

junior1 wrote:

It does not exist!

Shut the hell up. I doubt that the fact that loads people just happen to have almost the exacted same strengthened/weakened/unusual characteristics as each other is just merely a coincidence. I felt like to most unusual/different/ret*d kid in school and that was before I knew I had AS. I've always knew there was something mentally wrong about me.........and now your saying I'm just plain ret*d? I'm not trying to offend you or anything.

ouinon
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10 Mar 2009, 3:57 pm

robo37 wrote:

I doubt that the fact that loads people just happen to have almost the exacted same strengthened/weakened/unusual characteristics as each other is just merely a coincidence.

Of course it's not a coincidence.

You could select a group of people all with similar personalities/characteristics/abilities from anywhere in the population, that were already experiencing some degree of exclusion on the basis of those same characteristics, and label/diagnose them as dysfunctional/abnormal, and, ( if you had any clout at all, medical qualifications for example ), people generally might believe you.

It has been done with black people, gays, women, and jewish people.

When society is organised in such a way that it disables/discriminates/disadvantages certain people, on the basis of inherited traits or recurring characteristics, it will always be possible to point to the ones who happen to be suffering from the discrimination/pressures, and say, " It is because they are dysfunctional", etc.

Calling people "inferior" is no longer allowed, so instead medicine provides labels with "scientific" backing so that people will think that it is all impartial and objective.

And society can avoid looking at how it discriminates/excludes/disables/perpetuates inequality for a bit longer.

.

Woodpeace
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10 Mar 2009, 4:12 pm

I don't think the OP is a troll. He raises some very interesting points which to some extent I agree with. I also find the discussion here very interesting.

The children to whom Leo Kanner gave the label autistic back in 1943 had "extreme" behaviours. Until the 1970s autistic children or adolescents were mostly mentally ret*d or were diagnosed as having childhood schizophrenia. As far as I know the existence of autistic adults was not recognised back then.

This website - http://www.unstrange.com/dsm1.html - gives the criteria for autism in successive editions of the DSM. The DSM III (1980) listed six diagnostic criteria for Infantile Autism . The DSM III-R (1987) listed 17 criteria grouped in three sections for Autistic Disorder. The DSM IV (1994) has about the same number of criteria. I don't know the reasons for this considerable increase in the number of criteria. However by widening the criteria for autistic disorder, the DSM III-R and the DSM IV have had the effect of increasing the number of people diagnosed as being on the autism spectrum.

People who as recently as 15 years ago would be described as weird, crazy, odd, nerdy, geeky etc would now be diagnosed with Asperger syndrome (AS).

Autism or AS would not exist as diagnostic categories if psychiatrists had not decided that they should be. That does not mean that autistics or Aspies do not have particular behaviours and/or sensory sensitivities. However neurotypicals have autistic or Aspie traits and it is difficult to draw the boundaries of the autistic spectrum.

The book Constructing Autism: Unravelling the "Truth" and Understanding the Social by Majia Holmer Nadesan (Routledge 2005) - http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=n8NQNYorbxcC - investigates the social and historical factors which led to autism becoming a diagnostic category in the mid twentieth century.

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10 Mar 2009, 5:14 pm

junior1, if you're not John Best Jr. then I apologize.

Ounion, I think you're dietary theory if is very interesting. I would love to hear more about it. In addition, on your other thread if you did set a gathering up, I would be honored to go there. I am an excellent computer troubleshooter and I could troubleshoot computers if needed.

I think it would be interesting to try your diet and see if it has merit. Then I think it should be tested under scientific conditions to see if this has merit. I have the feeling you have done your research and it will have merit. If you have research, may I see your research if you do not mind?

junior1
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10 Mar 2009, 6:02 pm

robo37 wrote:

junior1 wrote:

It does not exist!

Robo37, I certainly am not saying you are ret*d. I'm saying you are a unique human being, just like the rest of us.

I'm certain that people on this forum do NOT have the same strengths/ weaknesses/ unusual characteristics. If we did, i wouldn't have teed off so many people by posting here because everyone would agree with me , since we would all be the same

Society has created this artificial label called Aspergers, but it does not really exist.

Poeticromance
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10 Mar 2009, 6:15 pm

Mmmmhmmmmm, thats why so many people and doctors say it exists??? :afro:

TPE2
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10 Mar 2009, 6:35 pm

robo37 wrote:

I doubt that the fact that loads people just happen to have almost the exacted same strengthened/weakened/unusual characteristics as each other is just merely a coincidence.

This forum is full of threads and/or comments saying that AS manifests in different ways in different people. There is even a recurring theory that AS is underdiagnosed in females because usually appears in a different way in females.

Now, people with AS "have almost the exacted same strengthened/weakened/unusual characteristics as each other"?

TPE2
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10 Mar 2009, 6:45 pm

Poeticromance wrote:

Mmmmhmmmmm, thats why so many people and doctors say it exists??? :afro:

Many people and doctors say that people with AS have little imagination. Do you agree with them?

junior1
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10 Mar 2009, 7:06 pm

pandd wrote:

Quote:

No, its effect is more on society as a whole, to reinforce confidence in a certain way of being, and to "encourage" as many people as possible, as many people as can humanly manage to, to conform to those standards of behaviour.

This is simply not true. Most people have not heard of AS and before AS was in the DSM getting accommodations from society was certainly not easier. I am unaware of AS having any effect of causing non effected persons to confirm to particular standards of behavior, nor am I aware of any evidence that overall the application of the label to individuals has a nett effect of increased compliance with such standards.

Ah, wanted to make sure I responded to this.

There are some psychology studies that suggest labeling or stereotyping people can alter people's behavior. Some people here may have felt better getting a "Aspergers" diagnosis, but some people may have gotten more unhappy and the label may have made them have more social difficulties.

Quoting from here:

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=how ... to-success

Quote:

Steele and Aronson’s classic demonstration of stereotype threat emerged from a series of studies in the mid-1990s in which high-achieving African-American students at Stanford completed questions from the verbal Graduate Record Examinations (GRE) under conditions where they thought either that the test was measuring intelligence or that it was not a test of ability at all. Intriguingly, these participants’ performance was much worse when they were told that the test was a measure of intelligence. This slide, the researchers argued, occurred because “in situations where the stereotype is applicable, one is at risk of confirming it as a self-characterization, both to one’s self and to others who know the stereotype.”

This pattern of findings has been replicated with many different groups on many different dimensions of stereotype content. For example, Sian L. Beilock of the University of Chicago and her colleagues reported in a 2007 issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology that if female students are made aware of the stereotype that men have greater mathematical ability than women do, they tend to perform worse on complex mathematical tasks than they do if they are not alerted to this stereotype. Likewise, elderly people have been found to perform worse on memory tests if they take them after being made aware of stereotypes that associate aging with deteriorating cognitive ability.\

Although in all fairness there are positive stereotypes as well:

Quote:

Studies conducted at Harvard University in 1999 by Margaret Shih and her co-investigators provide particularly good demonstrations of this point. The participants in this research were Asian women. In different conditions of the studies they were required to focus on the fact either that they were women (who are stereotypically worse at math than men) or that they were Asian (stereotypically better at math than members of other ethnic groups). As in Beilock and her colleagues’ work, in the former case the women performed worse than they did when no group membership was made salient. Yet in the latter case they did better.

Also:

"Women's Math Performance Affected By Theories On Sex Differences"

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 161245.htm

"Implicit Stereotypes And Gender Identification May Affect Female Math Performance"

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/20 ... 104155.htm

If psychology moves away from harmful labeling, its conceivable that one day the "Aspergers" term as we use it today will no longer exist.

Liresse
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10 Mar 2009, 7:34 pm

junior1 wrote:

If psychology moves away from harmful labeling, its conceivable that one day the "Aspergers" term as we use it today will no longer exist.

Yes, I hope all those people who freak out at such unimportant noises as wrapper rustling, voices, cars or birds won't get the help they need and will rightfully be excluded from educational institutions or positions where they could be productive and contributing members of society.

(the above was sarcasm.)

(Attention ed and other mods: junior1's topic is interesting and may have stimulated discussion, but his attitude is derogative and insulting. He does not want to facilitate discussion but cause emotional responses in other people, using words such as "naive," "naivete," "lame" etc. This paragraph is a comment about his attitude, not his information.)

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Marcia
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10 Mar 2009, 7:37 pm

Woodpeace wrote:

Thanks for this Woodpeace.

You express very well what I think, and I'll see if I can get the book you mention in your last paragraph.

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