criss wrote:
many people like myself who have advanced right brained / artistic ability often fall way off the autistic radar.
I could never relate to Temple Grandin even though I am a logical and visual thinker, simply because I was brought up having to conceal my difference. However, the life of Donna Williams bares so much resemblance to my own, for like myself, she was traumatised into highly complex and creative adaptations and distortions of her personality in order to survive.
In the next 10 years or so I believe we will see an explosion of Right brained HFA's that will contribute to ending the geeky, monotone, and emotionally cold stereotype that the medical world still holds towards us.
I was lucky when I got Dx'd, as my psychologist had HFA too, and knew all the tricks of highly advance adaptive skills born out of adversity and refined through right brained dominant thinking ability.
criss wrote:
I know so many autie artists, poets, musicians and some philosophers who have been incorrectly dx'd as having exclusively psychological disorders........their difference was masked by their non- stereotypical autistic features. Backed up by a diagnostic criteria that is well past it's sell by date.
i think you're onto something here. a tendency toward creative adaptation?
as an adult, undiagnosed, i am now suspicious of ASDs in a few people i know who would never be diagnosed, who have found a weird niche among very outcasted people and are so far outside of the mainstream of society they have no ties to normalcy and so no pressure at all is put on them to socialize properly. if this works, fine, but one of them has so much trouble communicating and is so lost i am concerned he will eventually commit suicide.
none of these people are geeks. they are all artists and engineer type tinkerers, blue collar sorts (laborers) who have learned to fake street smarts and avoid environments they can't adapt to.
these incidentally are people who came from abuse or very broken homes, and had to learn to act tough, as if their lives depended on it. but they are very different than people even in their immediate peer groups who may have had similar backgrounds. they are just surrounded by people who accept virtually anything behaviorally, and so they are not under much scrutiny. no one is going to go looking for these people.
this is another reason why i think the stereotype of behavioral traits is going to miss some people. some of us were indeed forced early on to develop unusual ways of masking our troubles. but rather than teach us real coping skills, this may have just compounded our problems, marginalizing us further.
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Now a penguin may look very strange in a living room, but a living room looks very strange to a penguin.
04 Jul 2010, 1:26 am
