The Autistic sense of self

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Why would someone 'on the spectrum' not have a sense of self? Where did this idea come from?

"Autistic" here's too much of an alternate group-think, subordinate to the bigger propaganda-culture.
Nevertheless it's so invalidating that it dives into ridiculous proportions of hurt, but still hang-on because it's a familiar trap ?
I've observed heroin-use in the userspopulation, to classify it primarily as an ego-distabilizer, but I realised much later that all people are junkies on ego-malware.

Hi Lintar, I reference the people I got the idea from in the OP. Researchers such as Michael Fitzgerald and Peter Hobson. Also Uta Frith argues this in her classic Autism: Explaining the Enigma. I'm pretty sure it's a fairly widely-held notion among researchers that autistic (spectrum) people typically have diminished sense of self at least. I'm not sure where the idea originated historically: probably from Kanner or psychoanalytic thinkers during the 50s and 60s.

Thanks for the replies everyone else! I haven't been able to answer them all but I do appreciate and have read each and every one.

Okay, thanks. I guess maybe I'm a bit biased about this, because I myself have always had a very strong sense of self, and I never for a moment thought that those with autism or A.S. would be this way.

Glad to hear it, this is my intuition too!

I don't have a stable sense of self and I never really have. I've always held onto certain opinions and well-loved hobbies that for all intents and purposes kind of become the only real identity I have at any time. I've noticed that sometimes I'm literally grasping for a strong stance on or interest in something when I'm going through a period without much direction. Whatever sense of self I do have, I quickly lose it in social situations and that has caused me a lot of internal grief.

I definitely quickly lose my sense of self in social situations also!

Does anyone else here hate questions such as, "Where do you see yourself in five years?" Or when someone says, "Tell me about yourself,"? I find these almost impossible to answer. My therapist said these things recently, and I wonder afterward if he was trying to see if I could answer.

Re: identity, I find it soothing to say to myself, "I am a nothing." I find the concept of identity or voice as an absolute to me hard to relate to. It's so alien. People tell me I'm funny and I can entertain others for brief periods, but that's more out of an interest in mimicking others's voices or personality.

I feel this way, too. I often feel consumed by others, especially if their personality is forceful or overbearing.

(Female, 34, Aspie)

I consider myself to have a very strong sense of self, but haven't always had. I'd say it started developing a lot more from around my mid-twenties (around the time I went to uni to study psychology), and then had another boost a few years ago when I got my Aspergers diagnosis.

So, in my mid twenties I had a sort of shift from someone who follows orders, takes in information, etc. without questioning much, to someone who questions nearly everything. By questioning things, I was able to provide my own answers, thus strengthening my sense of self, because I was suddenly aware of how I really felt about things, what I really thought, from my individual perspective instead of from trusting the masses or other external sources.

Then, when I got my diagnosis, I had a shift from "something is different about me but I don't know what", to "ooh okay there's a label that explains nearly all the quirky things about me". The result of this was that I started seeing myself as a person who is wired a certain way which causes all sorts of idiosyncrasies and such, and that I was actually pretty cool the way I was. I didn't need to "fix myself" or "adjust myself" anymore, I just needed to learn how to relax and be myself.

I haven't finished that process, but I'm getting a lot better. At first it was really hard to tell when I was pretending, in order to fit in, and when I was really being the "natural" me. The more I allow myself to be natural, the better I am at identifying others who share my traits, and I guess that's where the "comparing yourself to others to form a sense of self" comes from. I'm aware that I'm very different to most people, but I'm also aware that there are many people who share individual traits or clusters of traits with me. Because I know myself so well, I can pick up on these a lot easier than I would have, say, 15 years ago, and so I feel a little less of an outsider now because I know there are other outsiders too, and sometimes we meet. Or phrased a different way, I'm a lot more comfortable with being an outsider, because it's often such a pleasure to identify and meet other outsiders.

In short: Yes, I have a very strong sense of self, which means I understand myself well, and also how I relate and compare to others.

feeling "consumed by others" is a very relatable way to put it. I feel that way around quite loud, manic personalities. Suddenly I am unable to express emotion at all

I feel like I have a very strong sense of self, but it's something I feel and experience within and maybe I'm not able to project it outward as a very strong personality.

My personality can change a bit according to who I'm around...kind of like I can get caught up inside a bubble with whoever I'm interacting with, but as soon as they are gone the bubble bursts and I'm just me again. I have a very clear sense of the difference.

Well I know this is going to sound very contradictory, and I'm not sure how to explain it...yes I can definitely relate to that. I was not especially close to anyone growing up, and I was keenly aware of my own likes and dislikes being different from others, and how my own way of thinking about things was different from other people around me.

But on the other hand, I can get immersed very easily in the mindset of another person. I can talk to a person who has very different views from me, and see things so totally from their perspective that I momentarily lose all sense of where I stand on the subject. And I may have a lot of difficulty verbalizing my own views on the subject. But, my own way of thinking about it doesn't actually change, it's still there waiting for me like a very stubbornly rooted anchor.

I can for instance read a long, contentious discussion on a forum, written by people who are complete strangers to me, and find myself agreeing with each person's comments and identifying with their point of view, and getting more and more discombobulated because they all disagree with each other. But in the end, I might come away from it with a perspective that synthesizes all those different views into something that is very much my own.

I have more difficulty in being immersed in the mindset of another person, but I don't find it impossible. Much depends on how credibly they express themselves, I tend to be pretty impervious to emotive arguments, having studied propaganda. For me, it seems to be much more a logic-driven thing. Other people can sway my opinions by giving me real, externally-verifiable information that contradicts what I previously thought. But I've felt that temporary swaying of my beliefs occasionally, and when I've later come to my senses, I've felt quite angry, as if somebody has violated my individuality. I think there is some kind of innate human tendency to want to agree with others, which can override the mind's critical faculty, and that feeling is a part of me too, though I clearly don't like it.

In a way, individuality as a rather strange concept, because as far as I can see, very few ideas of my ideas are actually original (although I've had some of them before finding out that others have thought of them first). Perhaps the only individuality there can be is in a person's ability to select for themselves which of the world's ideas to buy into.

I think what you're talking about here is addressed in this video starting at around the 5 minute point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=p ... rNIuFrso8I

Thanks, that's a useful video. Certainly elucidates the potential dark side of conformity (5'05" onward), in a balanced way that admits conformity has its uses.

I wonder if the Aspie brain responds differently to the NT brain when it comes to the influence of others?

Absolutely. What goes on in the brain is completely different, even when the outward behaviors appear to be similar.

I would love to see the Asch Conformity tests (and some of the others) done with aspies.