Asperger's Label No Longer Relevant?

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@ azurecrayon

It sounds quite difficult for you now you explain all that. It also makes me glad that we have the NHS over here. I have to admit that one of the causes of me writing that piece was the fact that I had just read a number of online comments on websites poking fun at people with AS. and it all got me very down. Comments such as:

I am not sure if the website was for humor reasons or insults. I think people with autism who have autism for real need the supports needed. Technically behaviors of autism can in part go away and then it's called a history of autism traits. This is resisted due to self-identity within the group for some sort of preservation. My belief is autism as a topic in context is seldom not absurd in the processes of deriving an absolute but counter productive toward the choices of individuals that really do have it for sure. The image of autism has little to do with a persons subjective personality but rather difficulty someone experiences for the most part

That cracked dot com entry for Asperger's Syndrome should be antisocial personality disorder.

I also wish people would bother to understand what empathy is before making sweeping claims about it.

It comes down to why is the label so important to people that just want to fit in to autism. The label is about helping people adapt. If after fitting in to the label there is no progress for adapting I see it as wasteful. I don't understand why ultimately people spend so much time absorbed in the identity of the label for social chit chat. Other times focusing on differences and by doing so other-times expelling the mainstream with what seems like generalized and at times rigid anti-societal philosophies. This preserves a group framework that was artificially constructed as a result of labeling.

Thanks Ci and Verdandi, although Ci I didn't undertsand what you meant when you said this:

The image of autism is stereotypical vs. an individual with autism is an absolute construct of fact. This statement has to do with self-advocacy socio-philosophy in politics. Autism as a personality type I don't think is wise.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empathy

Oversensitivity

A common source of confusion in analyzing the interactions between empathy and autism spectrum disorders (ASD) is that the apparent lack of empathy may mask emotional oversensitivity to the feelings of others. People with ASDs may suppress their emotional facility in order to avoid painful feedback. This is cited by Phoebe Caldwell, an author on ASD, who writes:
What is clear is that, while people on the spectrum may not respond easily to external gestures/sounds, they do respond most readily if the initiative they witness is already part of their repertoire. This points to the selective use of incoming information rather than absence of recognition. It would appear that people with autism are actually rather good at recognition and imitation if the action they perceive is one that has meaning and significance for their brains.

As regards the failure of empathetic response, it would appear that at least some people with autism are oversensitive to the feelings of others rather than immune to them, but cannot handle the painful feed-back that this initiates in the body, and have therefore learnt to suppress this facility.
An apparent lack of empathy may also mask an inability to express empathy to others, as opposed to difficulty feeling it, internally.[48]

I think I get it now. You are saying that the general public has a view of autism as one particular thing. Whereas in reality it shows itself in a variety of ways depending upon the person with it.

The empathy bit, I admit I am frightened by displays of emotion (I have never liked being emotional myself) but am not sure why and it's also difficult for me to know when people need sympathy. When my grandmother died my brothers and sisters were with my mother comforting her. It had to be explained to me that my Mum needed me too, although I couldn't understand why as she had my brothers and sisters around her. But I loved my Mum very much, she needed me, so I went and held her. Funny thing is, I have never had a problem displaying affection for my daughter. In fact I tended to go the other way and was always accused of being over-protective with her.

Thanks for explaining that for me.

I can relate yes. Although my brain (mind) is avoiding autism self-explanations. I think the label was good for me to get what I needed. However I think awareness needs subjectivity and personalization. I don't think autism for inclusion awareness should entail explanation but present the subjective individual in understanding circumstances that detail truths of the subjective individual. The more stereotyping of maybe's results in alienation of human diversity in micro-causal interpersonal potentials in public relations.

Emotions (psychology) can be about an abstract math of probabilities, possibilities and unlikely results.

Thats why I feel better speaking about people such as myself who have a developmental history such as speech delay, integration (transitional) problems, learning difficulties and so on. A person who functions in the world and works with no supports to me is not disabled. Autism means disability. What I am trying to do where I live is get the populations support in creating adaptive transitional circumstances in training as a therapy and skills development protocol as a civil rights inclusion platform. By this means behavioral and or skills adaptation can take place. Although I don't use the word therapy government medical related dollars are used.

This is the social problem with ASD. Recruiting to get people to self-diagnose has been used as mechanism to grow a said culture (social clique modality) and at times for political reasons. This also gets into allot of the mainstream political issues such as government social security claims and so on. This is not my thing. I like to think my job is to help people become self-sufficient but first quality of life is priority as this is ethical. The agenda can also serve the tax-payers bottom line.

I really hate the idea of well it's ok he is developmentally disabled that's why we pay taxes then exclude by not seeking to include. It's a vicious cycle of excuses to not include or attempt to force to include with guilts like they cost us all the money and are lazy. The social psychology of this sort of thing I had figured out some time ago. However the public is not educated enough about it. Also the issue can be used incorrectly and for biased reasons. Ethics are a top priority but ethics do not always have absolute determinations.

I am an IT engineer with strong AS traits and some background in psychology. Around half of my colleagues score above 30 in the Barron-Cohen AQ test, and looking back over 30 years in science studies & IT, I can recognise AS traits in at least half of the people I have worked with.

I have been actively working towards greater awareness of neurodiversity in the workplace, and have published a manual for managers of technical teams. Most of the problems we have faced have been due to lack of awareness and work environments that are hostile to AS functioning.

One of the problems we have is that because we are all talented and capable, managers assume that we can just deal with any conditions. Most of us have not saught diagnosis, because we tend to define ourselves by our abilities at work, rather than our limitations.

I think we still need AS as an official definition, mainly because it is far easier to introduce people in the workplace to the idea that they may have AS traits, than the possibility that they might be autistic. Whether we like it or not, the wider population still has negative preconceptions about autism and will go straight into denial, while most are willing to conceed that they may have AS traits.

A major issue is the black and white thinking in society that sees AS as something you either have or have not got. The fact is that we are all on a scale from NT to seriously AS affected. Most of us are in between the extremes. A diagnosis is merely the opinion of the psychologist that your AS traits are strong enough to be a significant problem for you.

For most of us high AQ and AS technical folk, we are happy to take advantage of our AS traits in our work, but need managers to realise that they need to make some adjustments in order to get the best out of us. This has to start with the acceptance of a label in order to go beyond labels.

Steve

People diversity is important I think. Everyone seems to have good parts and what others might perceive as bad parts. Good businesses utilize the good parts while accommodating the bad parts for every person to optimize the psychological effectiveness of an individual and group makeup. It comes down to is a business a good or bad business in internal strategy utilizing personnel optimally. Businesses that can innately function within this optimal premise are more efficient, adaptive and succeed over that of others that do not.

This statement is irregardless of labels.