Does anyone NOT identify with Attwood's Complete Guide?

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Then why does he call the book "The Complete Guide"?

If the book was "Complete" then surely every variation of the condition should be listed somewhere?

It's an Incomplete Guide!

I was thoroughly disappointed by this book, especially the misleading title.

The title gives the misleading impression that the author knows everything there is to know about the condition. A more accurate title would be "What we think we know so far about AS". I find it sad that people have to use misleading titles just to sell books.

I appreciate that the author is doing good work in the field and is trying to help a lot of
people. He seems like a genuinely caring person. I am just uncomfortable with the idea of labelling people as "different" as is my family. This why I am so sad and nervous right now. I read through the book, but the family told me to read the book to prove that I "didn't have AS". The man's ideas are inadvertently causing a rift in the family. No one in real life seems to want to discuss the points raised in the book with me. I feel very alone on this. My philosophy, attitude and world view seem to clash with a lot of the AS self help books out there. This isn't anyone's fault, but a lot of the "fuzzy" therapy language terms like "empower" seem bizarre and alien like they're from a completely different culture to the one I experience at home.

However, a lot of the information in the book seems out of date and biased to me. I get the impression that a personality type is being pathologised and categorised. I also feel dissatisfied. I was expecting more biological detail, concrete empirical evidence and useful practical advice.

I also disagree with many points raised in the book because they don't apply to me.
For example, I have a very strong sense of self awareness. People have often commented to me how reflective and self aware I am. I don't think I'm alone in this. People seem to accept without question that those with the condition have a "weak sense of self". Attwood seems to imply this idea. What if the "sense of self" of an individual has been attacked since birth? What if there are in fact as many different senses of self as there are people?

Who in society gets to define who is "normal" and who isn't?
Surely societal/technological pressures affect an individual's sense of self and one's ability to cope?

I think that the book contains useful information that will be helpful to other people.

However, I found it too unhelpful and vague for me.

I am very sorry that I'm getting irritated by books that use vague pseudomotivational words like "empowerment" and "The Complete Guide". The smiling faces on the covers make me feel ill and depressed. I feel like the people on the covers are trying to pigeonhole me to fit their idea of reality. No one knows myself on the inside better than I do and yet these people claim to be "experts" when they haven't lived in my body for over 20 years.

Sadly, there will never be a "Complete Guide" to anything because there will always be information that the author is unaware of or has missed. As new ideas are discovered in science, some information in the so called "Complete Guide" becomes obsolete. A Guide that has to be updated by definition is just a Guide, not a "Complete Guide".

There's no shame in calling something just a Guide, but in the hyped up world that we live in people have to use sensationalist titles to sell books. People are easily bored by the
mundane. Everyone, for some bizarre reason, feels inadequate. They all want to be "empowered" "superheroes" with "Complete Guides" to justify their existences. They want all the answers now and get bored if they don't. I am probably just as bad as they are in that respect.

Anything with the title "The Complete Guide" is always going to underdeliver because the elusive "Complete" can't ever be reached!

Last edited by AmberEyes on 25 Jun 2011, 1:36 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I can relate to a lot of the posts here. As a child, I had very little interest in making friends. People just wern't that interesting to me, and almost never worth the hassle involved with trying be friends or fit in with them. Our interests were rarely the same, and I was always viewed as "the weird kid." I really didn't have much interest in other people until I was about 13 or 14 and started to want a boyfriend. To this day I feel like it would be fun to have a friend, but it's not that important to me. I can count the number of real friends I've had as an adult on one hand with fingers to spare. This very rarely bothers me except when I really need to "network" to advance my career and I'm completely clueless. It is definetly a necessary component of my career as a designer and I just hate it. I hate having to be part of the "it's who you know more than what you know" crowd and unfortunatly there's a lot of that in the interior design world.
It's reassuring to read other people's views of T.Attwood's book, though. I've read some of these books and I wonder if I'm atypical or if they're inaccurate, or if they just generalize too much. I also disagree with the idea that special interests are compensation for not being able to socialize--my interests have always been more important to me than interacting with people.

Very literal interpretation of the word... is any 'complete guide' truly complete? I think, to the average NT parent, the book covers everything nuts to bolts - the complete basics - not EVERYTHING. I'm not sure this book was written FOR Aspies - it's written from an NT perspective for clueless, scared and knowledge hungry parents, families and even unpracticed professionals. It makes AS accessable.

If everyone wants something with more substance - try a book written by someone on the spectrum. Attwood is trying to act an an interpreter to the NT world - and we need those.

I wonder if there's a book co-written by one NT and one person with AS? Perhaps that's too much to ask.

I read on this forum that some people had seen psychologists who also had AS. An AS psychologist should write a book like this, combining personal and clinical experience.

Indeed. There are a few doctors who both treat and have ADHD who have written books (Scattered Minds - Gabor Mate, for example.

That's quite a snowball the chicken or the egg ? did they get rejected and develop co morbid conditions , or did they seek relationships due to the depression.?

From personal experience get the co morbid under control and those sorts of things suddenly I think "meh"

Are these aspies seeking a relationship due to depression? many are I suspect.

Anyway much of what Tony writes rings true to me It's the law of the averages so why write about those on the fringe ?

All autistic people are statistically on the fringe. Why leave some out?

Also, the book Delivered from Distraction by Edward Hallowell is a good read (since he is a shrink who treats ADHD, as well as being diagnosed with it).