Do you sometimes feel that AS is a made up disorder?

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i think it is real. you have to be autistic to have aspergers and autism is not made up.
i think autism ranges from "profound" at the bottom end to "asperger's" at the top end.

but at the top end, the level of autism is so mild as to be almost indistinguishable from normal people.

where should they draw the line?

where on the spectrum does a person no longer warrant a diagnosis of autism.

imagine a threshold between the land of autism and the land of NT's. the mildest asperger people are on that line slightly into the autistic side.
there is no resolution on that line and it is arbitrary.

i think that to have autism means to be much more than socially paralyzed.
"social inadequacy" is just a "symptom" noted by NT's.
it is a result of a deeper wiring incompatibility that is more fundamental than simple communicative ability.

you know you "have something" if you never meet anyone who you identify with or who identifies with you.

it is a lonely world is autism. i never met anyone who i can look in the eye of and let them talk for me.

only i have ever been able to explain what i think, and i never heard anything from the mouths of others that describe what i am thinking.

there is a very stale meeting point between me and NT's, and i just go through the motions of protocol i have learned and it is a chore.

there are many people i have seen on forums who claim thay are "asperger syndromites" and they seem so vastly socially superior to me that i question their honesty.

but i must realize that they are milder in autism than i, and i believe they are truthful mainly. but they seem so unimpaired by anything other than just "not having much charisma" and i think they are sometimes clutching at straws to explain their lack of fame amongst their friends.

AS seems to be the rage at the moment and that is sad.
many NT's clamor to join the AS procession, because AS people look normal and they are just "naive in a cute way".
the pretenders lie in their profile that they are diagnosed AS to join the potentially fruitful party of people who do not perceive their social flaws.

many people are socially maladjusted, but very few are so because of a brain design that is not facilitating to "connection and socialization".

most socially backward people are that way because of their nurture and not their nature.


these people do not complain of sensory issues they have like textures of fabrics and the sound of squelching from vacuum tubes in appliances.

if i am in a room with incandescent lighting at 50hz alternating current, i can see the flicker effect and it drives me insane. it is incessant and i encounter another aspect of autism... i can not shut it out and look away until i leave the environment.
i can not ignore what irritates me and it gets amplified until all my nerves are at breaking point and i have to run for safety or curl into a foetal ball.

mostly what i see discussed by pretenders is how they want a girlfriend and they try to remarket themselves in the light of "having aspergers".

No. AS is often the same as (early) verbal, high IQ kanner's. So it's plenty real.

Putting the question in another way: what is really the difference between Asperger's Syndrome and simply a variant of personality type? You can answer "sensory issues", "difficulties in understanding non-verbal/non-literal communication", etc., but nothing of that are necessary conditions for a diagnosis of AS ("sensory issues" does not appear in any diagnostic criteria; even the A1 criteria of DSM seems to have more with difficulties with using non-verbal comunication than to with difficulties with understanding it...).

Like I already wrote in another thread, what is really the difference between an introvert person with a strong interest in some issues and a person with AS (not every people with AS are introverts-with-a-strong-interest-in some-topic, but I think that all introverts-with-a-strong-interest-in some-topic can be diagnosed with AS, at least according to the criteria of DSM)?

And, if we think a bit, perhaps allmost all psychiatric diagnosis are made-up conditions: when the psychiatrists think that some people are:

a) enough different from the "average individual"; and

b) enough similar between them

they (the psychs) invent a label and give that label to these group of people. But, in the end, the frontier between having a "condition" and being "normal", and the frontiers between the various conditions are simply arbitrary decisions of the psychiatric community.

Returning to AS - there are at least four AS: DSM-AS, ICD-AS, Gilberg-AS and Szatmary-AS.

As I know, if we choose two of these AS and comopare them, most people who have one don't have the other (specially, in the case of G-AS and S-AS, it is even more probable to have one if you don't have the other!). It is needed more evidence that the concept of Asperger's Syndrome is an arbitrary social construction?

It is a measure of a social disconnect. Many have the traits, but not the disconnects. They can read body language, pick up on infered meanings, can carry on a conversation, and function as part of a group.

Many with the disconnects still get by. There is a lot of the world where social communication is not needed. They can function very well within their world.

The problems come with trying to merge them into a more social world. A good cowboy is a bad office worker.

Some of it is just a backlash to the sudden changes of the last hundred years, from life on the farm, to life in the burbs.

The concepts of Asperger come just as most people were living in cities for the first time.

Some people are just not wired to be social. They are only impaired in a social world.

The hunter/warrior would be burdened with social skills, empathy. They need the tunnel vision, the intense focus, to survive. Meeting strangers at the border that seemed friendly, were social and open, would most likely lead to being killed. Thinking about what other people thought of a sports event is not going to make a good hunter.

These Asperger traits are useful in business. Dealing with the world in an impersonal way works.

NT is a made up condition. Being easy to manipulate and socially dependant is a weakness that is encouraged.

The study of mass psychology is called advertising.

I think we (the people on this site) must be different in the same way, nothing else would explain the depth and power of the sudden feeling of talking to people on the same plane as me when I first (truly) started posting on this site.

I doubt myself all the time. A lot of the time I think I am using AS as an excuse, I am a hypochondriac (like my nanna, i actually really do think I can be at times), there's nothing wrong with me except that I am self centered, vain, and just want to be able to say i am different. My family, and even another friend this year, have actually said this; that there's nothing really wrong with me, and I am using AS as an excuse.

The truth is I don't think there's anything really wrong with me (apart from being really unstable emotionally and numerous personality flaws), but sometimes i just want to feel like I know who I am, like I understand myself, and I'm a screw up not because I'm a failure as a person - I'm lazy and I don't try hard enough, but maybe because there is another reason outside of my control (cause I can't accept that even when I think I am trying my hardest I still fail at tasks other people suceed in unless it is out of my control).

B9, some of what you say I much agree with. On the other hand, I suspect I might be one of those people you talk about at the end of your post who you think are NTs pretending to have AS. Except, I don't say I have it. I say I'm on the spectrum, or that I have both aspie and NT traits.

AS is real, Autism is real. I'm convinced that it's only a matter of time before significant brain differences are discovered, and after that, genetic differences. I recently read about "William's Syndrome" and the road to recognition they faced. Now the syndrome is well recognized, and the genes responsible have been identified. Which means there is no 'cure' for Williams, it's genetic, and there will soon be a pre-natal test for the genetic 'flaws'.
How anyone can say Autism isn't real is quite beyond my understanding...