Asperger Syndrome. Illness, or type of personality?

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Illness can be cured. It's temporary.

A genetic anomaly is not an illness. I believe the opposable thumb was considered an anomaly at some point.

Personality can be chosen: it's how you act on your thoughts and feelings that determines your personality, not how you came to have those thoughts & feelings.

From working with bipolar people, I've grown fond of the term "Order" over "Disorder" or "Syndrome." Autistic Order. Bipolar Order. I like "Order" because it seems like a set of rules that govern the lives of those they affect. Defines limits without the pejorative.

The assumption seems to be that personality is separate from brain structure and I do not believe it is. Who we are and how we process things can be affected by brain structure. However the brain can also demonstrate plasticity in that it can form new connections each time we learn something new for example (usually). But they are not separate from each other...they are integrated. To a certain degree our personality can affect our brain structure and our brain structure can affect our personality and how we process things.

So it's not so black and white that personality is a separate entity from our brain structure and that it is something that is completely under our control. It's more complex than that as it is directly affected by how our brains can process and store information.

People who experience brain damage for example can experience personality changes. Which indicates that personality is not just a conscious choice but can be and most likely is affected by our neurology (to a certain degree). However a person does have a certain amount of conscious choice and new connections in the brain can be formed as a result of that.

It's kind of feedback loop integration type thingy lol but personality and neurology are not separate entities that exist individually without having an affect on the other.

Sorry moved back to my first academic love and my original obsession which was psychology, so am now studying that. Actually we have just started studying personality and how it is formed etc...so I may get back to this post later when I have done more reading. Psychology is my longest running obsession and has been with me since I was 19 (so 17 years now) so I figured it was a better choice for me as other obsessions can be fleeting compared to this one! (Was originally studying health sciences but after trying out one of modules found I preferred my beloved psych, although the health sciences was somewhat interesting, just not to the degree psychology is lol).

Both. Defective personality.

It's the NTs who are defective

Why defective? Why not just different from the 'expected' norm.

People who were coloured used to be seen as 'defective' because of their skin colour when in reality they just had a different skin colour and nothing more. They were not defective but they were not the 'expected' norm at the time in some cultures.

Society is too obsessed with the 'norm'.

NTs are not perfect:

NT's have things like special interests too...its called making pointless chitty chat all day. They don't see it, but they are obsessed with it, often to the exclusion of everything else.
NT's like routines, they just like different types of routine to those with Autism.
NT's can have trouble with change....they don't like differences, they think things should be the way they think they should be. NTs live in a world of their own which they seem to like to stay the same in many ways. Can't have something that deviates from the norm, must try and fix it so everything stays within boundaries defined by them.
NT's don't have empathy a lot of the time, they just think they know what someone is feeling (they often get it wrong). They are just good at pretending they know what someone else is thinking but tend to make assumptions rather than checking their facts first. I have never met an NT who could accurately tell me what I am thinking or feeling, but they sure do like to think they know this stuff even though they are actually oblivious to it.


People with aspergers are no more or less defective than an NT.

Last edited by bumble on 27 Nov 2011, 9:42 am, edited 1 time in total.

"makes me think of..."

I wonder if maybe this is the reason we give the answers we do. You say it's not a personality type, but I said it is. I wonder if the difference in answers is because we interpret "personality type" differently. I think of it as more than simply trivial quirkiness of no significant consequence.

To me it means "who I am," or the totality of what makes me "Me." AS and ADD are part of that picture. They affect how I act and appear to others. They don't define me totally, but they are part of a bigger picture.

In that sense I suppose they aren't really personality types, but just a couple of elements, without which I would be somewhat different than I am. That said, I guess AS is not a personality type, but only part of my personality. It affects my personality, but doesn't entirely define it.

First of all, I'm not ashamed of being diagnosed. I get aspie-pride. I also get the whole "don't judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree"-analogy.

BUT: People with aspergers are in fact more depressed. We do generally have more mental health problems. And I think there are higher number of "us" than NTs that cant hold a job. Now I get that it's an NTs world out there, but does not that still make us defective to some degree? - If we have more trouble functioning in the world as the world is (regardless of "who's world it is" or how the world works).

I don't think AS is a personality type, but I believe it certainly helps shape one's personality.

Verdandi, I admire your economy of words.

But why do they have more mental health issues? NTs have their fair share of mental health problems, many just do not seek treatment for them.

Part of the reason some people with aspergers may have more issues with depression is because of the way they are treated in society. If society was more accepting of difference would you be having the problems functioning that you do?

Perhaps if it were the norm to ask people what they were feeling and thinking before just assuming or having to guess things would be different.

If obsessive interests were seen as passions rather than obsessions and it was understood that a person has a desire to want to pursue those passions, maybe things would be different.

Perhaps if it were not the 'norm' to be expected to be a social butterfly and people were more accepting of various quirks or differences....things would be different.

There is more to blame for mental health problems than the disorder itself. Society should shoulder some of the responsibility as well in regards to how it treats people who don't fit into its so called 'perfect' norm!

NTs would have trouble adapting if the world was mostly populated by people who were autistic. I imagine society would be quite different.

In fact we are all living an unnatural life compared to the one we are genetically designed to live. 15 thousand years ago we were hunter gatherers. There was no society as we know it today. Genetically we are no different to our ancestors from 15 thousand years ago yet we are living a lifestyle that is completely and utterly different.

Take the fight or flight system for example. Perfect designed for life as a hunter gatherer but not so well designed for life in the society of today and the kinds of problems we face. For that reason anxiety disorders are rife amongst the population. Fight or flight evolved to switch on when a predator was encountered and then switch off afterwards. These days it can be constantly switched on. This takes it toll on the body as it struggle to cope with the constant surge of stress hormones pelting its system.

There are a lot of problems with anxiety and depression amongst NTs as well. They have their share of issues too and many of them can struggle to function in many ways also.

Last edited by bumble on 27 Nov 2011, 10:07 am, edited 3 times in total.

It's funny, because whenever my posts are shorter than a paragraph I feel like what I've written is insufficient and I really should elaborate. I love to overexplain but sometimes my brain is like "No! No more words."

In which case I could do with some tips on how to be less verbose lol.

I always feel better and more comfortable about being more verbose. I like myself more when I can go on for six paragraphs about my favorite subjects than for simply one sentence.

I look at it as a gift. I take the advantage of my Asperger's Syndrome and create wonders with it.

This view is exactly what I tried to say that I get. However, regardless of why the world is as it is, regardless of the fact that the world is made by and for NTs, the world still is what it is. And does not the term "defective" relate to how the world is and not how it potentially could have bin?

1: The world is what it is regardless of why
2: We are a minority and have lower function
3: We are therefor by definition to some degree defect
However, to be defect in a non-perfect world does not mean that we as individuals are "damaged".

I don't know if you get what I'm trying to say, sorry if I'm unclear - English is my second language.

That is a great way to look at it!