Is autism the opposite of schizophrenia?

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That's an interesting idea, but Williams syndrome is a really rare disorder that is qualitatively different from the general population. By contrast, autism and schizo spectrums are fairly common, and just seem like opposite extremes in normal neurological variation.

Hearing voices and seeing people that aren't there are not exactly "normal neurological variations." You're really losing me here.

Well, I was hoping to get to see what the "God" factor was all about, but it's getting late and wogaboo (that's a cool username by the way), hasn't posted in a while.

Either I exposed his evil scheme ( just kidding, really!), or he's posting a really long reply, or...

he's sitting in his living room burning me in effigy.

First day of school tomorrow so I gotta get off the computer. Hope to see more in this thread tomorrow. I'm intrigued at least.

night.

Ya I agree.....I don't know why they were thought of for a long time as the same thing....they DO have quite a few features in common...but the hallucinations and delusions or the lack there of seems like a very important distinction to be overlooked

I was under the impression that the diagnostic criteria for the two disorders are almost identical, but one important difference is that autistics are able to distinguish imagination from reality. I do not know that much about schizo, but my brother deeply insulted me for a month by saying I should not talk to myself, because people will think I am schizophrenic (even though I only talk to myself in a private room).

And there are autistic schizophrenics. I think there are even a couple hanging around here.

I had to do some research into the history of schizophrenia, and it was my understanding that 'autism' was actually part of the initial descriptors of schizophrenia. Only later did the word come to be used away from this context. So there's some degree of overlap, which would go against the 'polar opposites' thing.

Don't ask me to cite my sources though, I'm just going on a hazy memory of past research.

Actually autism and schizophrenia can and does co-exist in some individuals. They aren't usually diagnosed at the same time but often someone with pre-existing autism can develop schozophrenia later in life. This is because autism has an early onset while schizophrenia might not show up until someone is in their 20s or later.

Anyways, the fact that they can co-exist goes against the theory that they are "opposites". In fact there are some overlapping symptoms. For instance, people with schizophrenia often have intense obsessions just like people with AS. The difference is AS obsessions don't involve delusional thinking or paranoia.

My own personal theory is that schizophrenia is a type of hyper-intuition, i.e. the same subconscious brain mechanism that's responsible for making deep intellectual insights and seeing connections in the world goes overboard. The opposing brain mechanism that's responsible for keeping these subconscious connections in check stops working. The end result is that you have so much intuition that your subconscious starts to make connections between things that aren't quite related in reality, or at least not totally consistent to an outside observer. The brain begins to operate on a kind of dream-like logic where the boundary between the inner world and the outer world get blurred.

I know someone IRL with both. Also, the mathematician John Nash probably had AS before developing schizophrenia.

Just because someone is diagnosed with something doesn't mean they have it. The people who have been diagnosed with both conditions may all be examples of mistakes made in the diagnostic process.

Well this fits perfectly with the theory I'm promoting because women are more intuitive than men, so if schizophrenia is extreme female brain, such brains should be extremely intuitive. By contrast, men are more logical, so autism should be hyper-logic.

Not all aspies lack intuition. I've always been intuitive (other people have told me this). One sign that I'm an intuitive thinker is that I rarely quote sources. I mean, I do read a lot but I tend to be more interested in talking about my own theories than making points by paraphrasing or copy/paste-ing something verbatim from wikipedia. I synthesize what I read from multiple sources and apply my own ideas/experience/logic to it in order to form my own order/theory to the information. I also tend to be able to "feel" that an intuition is correct without having all the little logical gaps filled in so that I can explain it to others in a way that is foolproof and makes complete sense to them.

LOL are you going to change the options in the poll after people have answered to make it look like they all said something different than what they did?

I agree there are misdiagnoses every day. It seems to me from this statement though, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, that you're basing a lot of your theory on misdiagnosis being the norm.

If you begin with that premise, you are essentially throwing every rulebook out the window, in which case you can pretty easily concoct just about any theory you want to.

I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing. Many new discoveries are made by doing just that. "Out of the box" thinking is great. But, if you are going to do that, you need to be willing to be (first) up front about it, and (second), not use the rules you threw out to defend the theory. Not saying that's what you're doing, just pointing it out.

So, what's with the "God factor?" I understand you said you would rather not tell us what the connection is, because you're afraid it will skew our answers, but that assumption presumes we won't be honest in our answers. It's not really going to matter that much anyway. Forum poles are inherently flawed anyway, at least from the standpoint of proving a theory. They are really only good for entertainment. Nothing more.

Are you concerned that if you explain the theory in its entirety it will be shot down in a hail of negative posts? You probably will no matter what it is, and no matter whether you tell us now or later. I won't fling any monkey poo. I may ask questions though. On the other hand....

Well, you just never know.

If you want to theorize about things, you kind of have to be prepared to be ridiculed. Few good theories are ever accepted widely at first. Almost all receive strong criticism. So what if it is? The vast majority of theories turn out to be either wrong, or not quite correct anyway. Every failure or near failure of a theory adds to knowledge.

I get the male-female brain thing. It's just another way of defining something I'm kind of already aware of. It just uses slightly different language than I do. I even get the AS opposite of schizophrenia thing. As it's described, it does make some sense.

All that's left is how the God factor fits in. Trust me, the poll isn't going to reveal anything useful at all.

How about just spitting it out?

You do know that's not possible, right? Polls can't be changed once they are posted. That would be a dirty trick though.

Haha, I was wondering if it was. I guess we'll find out what the plan is soon enough o.O