Saw Rain Man

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Sorry to come off as blunt but...

What the hell?

If Rainman is truly a representative of HFA or AS then Asperger Syndrome itself is greatly, greatly GREATLY misrepresented in general.

The impression most written media writes about AS suggests the person as essentially normal with differences in cognition, neurological differences causing an inability to participate in recipricol social interaction, and an intense focus on a subject(s).

Rainman is not able to communicate in any normal manner, self-involved or not.

I saw Mozart and the Whale and the two main characters seemed to represent AS in a way that reflected what was being stated in diagnostic material, written media and forums such as these. Even the making-of with the Guy (forgotten his name) who was the basis of the story, seemed as normal as anyone except for his tone of voice and facial expression(which was not that static and was more a case of his physical facial characteristics than an inability for facial expression).

The character of rainman and portrayed Autistics seem on a completely different level than any characteristics that AS descriptions imply and I would have thought that their only similarities were in the symptoms but not the severity.

I can't see Rainman coming on an internet forum and being able to relate the way you are. I haven't seen the movie in years so I may be skewing things to an extent, but I would never have compared myself to Rainman, not in a million years. The only similarities I see are in his stimming and that I stim but in a way that is not as overt or to sound politically incorrect - "ret*d".

What i'm getting at is an ongoing problem with AS in general that I am finding. People's interpretations seem to change drastically to the way that the disorder may actually manifest in a person, and it is incredibly frustrating to think almost conclusively that Asperger Syndrome is the reason for all the little nuances through life to the point where I feel like a square peg being forced through a round hole - in life, yet the people who actually have the syndrome then compare themselves to Rainman, who I never would have associated myself with, or to an extent distance myself from, because I am not like that.

Its like reading your favourite non-fiction book with an image in your head, then you actually see the real character and they are nothing like what you thought.

What is HFA and what is AS, because I thought pretty damn sure that I had AS and almost broke up my marriage due to my search for a confirmation of this because it struck such clarity in me that noone or nothing has ever inspired in me, and now it seems that i might be wrong and everyone else is right, that I'm just a neurotic idiot looking for something wrong with me.

I can't view the videos linked, but seriously when people say on the spectrum WHAT ARE WE TALKING ABOUT HERE, because if people are saying that Rainman is on the edge of the spectrum approaching functionality on a normal level, then I seriously must be going crazy.

rainman is a joke, i could put down 100 reasons why this movie isn't related to aspergers or HFA, but I really do not have the patience and time to post the 100 reasons, so i'll just keep it that not everyone who has the diagnoses is not like rainman. some people can speak, some people can function in society. etc

You can say that again! A LOT of people here, diagnosed or not, indicate that, like us, they seem somewhat normal. I wouldn't compare myself with rainman either. I am truly surprised daniel does. Frankly, it would be better for people with AS if they didn't compare themselves with such people.

I was diagnosed as a severe autistic. I can drive and live on my own as well as make a good living in the engineering field.
It all depend on the tyope of support one gets.

VHFA anyone? Einstein and Newton are a smack in the face to the idea that there is this easy split between LFA and HFA. Where do you draw the line between the folks who can do very little for themselves and people who manage to overcome or get around the barriers of being different?

I think Anbuend has consistently promoted the most accurate approach and, perhaps from an overly autistic viewpoint, consequently the best approach. Look at the specifics of what a person can and can't do and deal with THAT. LFA, HFA, AS are vague and not always useful generalizations that seem to leave people making false attributions of individuals based on some cloudy concept.

I happen to be aware that some forms of heart arrhythmias are caused by the same genetic abnormality as is a form of cardiac hypertrophy. By the logic that people use with HFA and LFA, you should treat these different manifestations as similar! Even if that would kill someone.

I guess this is a rant but I am me and I need to lead my odd life without someone thinking I should be just like Einstein or Rainman (or Anbuend, Danielismyname, 2ukenkerl, or whoever). I like being able to see my similarities to all of y'all but I want to stay in the details.

I know enough people who identified heavily with his character -- including one who was diagnosed partially as a result of seeing his character -- that I have to disagree with that assessment. One of them also joked that when she shuts down she turns into "Raymond's sister Ramona."



Welcome to my life. That is where most autistic people fall, are in grey zones, because LFA/HFA or even LFA/MFA/HFA are not accurate characterizations of our skills overall.



I don't understand "poor representation" here. What do people expect him to represent? He's one character. You could snap any autistic person off the street, and put them in the first well-known movie about autism, and they would become the instant stereotype of autism, and everyone would complain they're not representative enough.

After I was on television last year, I got a curious mix of responses from people who thought I was a poor representative of autistic people. About half of them thought I was too high-functioning, because I communicate well in words a lot of the time. About half of them thought I was too low-functioning, because I looked too weird and needed too much help.

And then some people got mad because I lost certain skills during adolescence (like about 1/3 of autistic people) and didn't get them back (like 1/2 of that 1/3), and therefore was too high-functioning when I was young and too low-functioning when I was older and not at all progressing in the right order for them.

Others got mad because I'm not pure enough for them, I've got other neurological and physical impairments going on too. (Which is relatively common as well.)

And of course a lot of people got mad because of traits they imagined I have but I don't really have, or traits they imagined I didn't have but I do really have.

Others were really happy, because I was just like them in some way or just like their kid in some way. Or because they imagined me to be, without knowing me.

Well guess what? I'm one person. I can't represent everyone any more than some fictional character called Raymond Babbit can. And I don't claim to.

But people seem to look for a representative, and then get mad when whatever single person is being represented, isn't that person. Even though it's impossible that a person could be a representative of all autistic people's skill patterns.

And I've actually been told something very similar, that I am so "low functioning" (someone else's words) that I would scare people and give them an unrealistically grim view of autism, make them not want to identify with it in themselves, or identify it in others. So I don't know, according to those people I ought not to be seen, maybe, but I don't think there's a sort of autistic person alive who ought not to be seen for fear that they'd scare someone.



Raymond didn't strike me as remotely out of touch with reality in any innate sense.

I have to wonder though, how fragmented would your knowledge of certain things be if you'd spent your life shut off from them and having to get them from books or television? (And mind you most institutions don't have near the degree of private book storage that place did.)



No, it's more like "high functioning" and "low functioning" don't sum up real people's skills accurately enough for anyone to say someone who could do this couldn't do that and so on and so forth.



People can do both, you know.



Welcome to my world, and that of most of my friends -- either nobody believes the extent of our abilities, or nobody believes the extent of our difficulties, but oh so rarely does anyone grasp that both exist in one person.



I have known a fair number of people with savant skills, and their ability to hold an oral conversation runs from absolutely fluent to less fluent than Raymond.

Who are "such people", and why shouldn't some people with "AS" compare themselves to them if they see similarities?

Why, also, should anyone be surprised that Daniel does? None of us know him in real life that I know of. None of us know what his speech is like or what his actions are like. Personally I see a similar rule-fixatedness in both of them, and I'm not sure why that comparison shouldn't be made if it's there.

I identify with some people more than others, and the people I do identify a lot with are from all diagnostic subcategories and many different superficial appearances, as are the people I don't identify a lot with.

Well... actually, that's as far as early childhood goes.

By adulthood, there are people diagnosed with autism who can speak fluently, and people diagnosed with AS who can't.

anbuend--

I stand corrected. Thanks for all the first hand information--I trust you know. I realize how little I truly know.

It is another realm for me and in trying to understand what I don't, I get carried away--believing I can assess a situation--it's bs really. I'll admit it.

It's a spectrum--very broad and mysterious, eluding absolutes.

I apologize for my blatant ignorance.

thx again,
equinn

That's not a matter of "having to" because of their abilities, that's a matter of "having to" because of lack of other resources, which can happen, frankly, to anybody in the wrong circumstances.

Raymond's family was so rich there was no lack of resources to it.

This reminds me of something I don't understand about Rain Man. How was he able to do complex math problems in his head but wasn't able to do basic math in regards to money? Was he really unable to learn or did they just not bother to teach him?

Daniel, you seem intelligent and write well. I never would have thought you were like Rain Man.

I actually knew an autistic kid who was a math whiz but couldn't figure out money at all because it had no relation to anything comprehensible to him. (And who was, while in gifted math classes, still being constantly regarded by the school system as having an intellectual disability because they thought that someone who behaved like him couldn't be good at any academic areas, and because he didn't do well on IQ tests.)

But it could just as easily be never having seen it, given the circumstances in the movie.

I heard a rumor that, from a verbal standpoint, he wasn't much different from you. He wrote a post here that gave me the idea (I don't recall if it was expressed or merely implied) that that was true. I didn't mean it as an insult o ANYONE. HECK, if perception was closer to reality, resources would be allocated better anyway.

Intelligence is an odd thing, and the rainman character seemed more like an idiot savant. Granted, the term has been changed to autistic savant, but the former makes his case clearer. There is verbal, and there is communication. He may be verbal, but he doesn't communicate well. YOU may not be verbal, but you DO communicate well.

And group homes are not any better places to live for disabled people. One was recently shut down in my state where the owner was taking the money the government gave him to house the people there and keeping it for himself. He was supposed to provide nutritious meals and he gave them toast for breakfast and a can of spaghetti O's for lunch every day. The place was filthy and overrun with bed bugs, roaches and mice.

Obviously that's true. They're evil places (no better or worse than other institutions overall, they are, as I said, mini-institutions). But that isn't what the video was about.

There was not a single whit of concern for disabled people's welfare in a group home in the neighborhood in the complaints about the group home. The people who objected to the group home were not objecting to bad conditions in group homes any more than they objected to bad conditions in other sorts of institutions.

They were objecting because:

• Developmentally disabled people were going to be near a school.
• Developmentally disabled people living in the neighborhood would "bring down property values".
• Developmentally disabled people living in the neighborhood would "endanger the children".

(All of which are classic examples of bigotry against disabled people.)

They'd have objected just as strongly if they'd had a chance to protest against all the residents of the group home (in some alternate universe) moving into their own houses in the neighborhood while being assisted with total competence by staff they hired from the proceeds of their own jobs. The people objecting to the group home were being ableist, not trying to protect disabled people from moving into a nasty place.

If I am remembering correctly, Raymond wasn't asked to perform mathematical calculations with money, but rather he was asked how much something would cost (like a building or something). If he has lived in an institution most of his life, he really *wouldn't* have a good sense of how much things cost. He may never have bought anything independently in his life, and he certainly wasn't handling his personal finances on a day to day basis. In addition, although dealing with money is a skill taught to autistic kids these days, I would guess this was not something taught to Raymond.

By the way, I would consider Raymond to be fairly high-functioning, but maybe that's just because I work with low-functioning kids all day. But if you think about it, although Raymond did not communicate "normally" (how many autistics can?), he was still able to communicate his wants, needs, etc. He was even able to express his emotions. His linguistic command of language was certainly intact. Also, he was able to carry out many activities of daily living independently. There may have been some areas in which his skill was lacking (I doubt he could cook a meal himself), but I also doubt he received any training in these areas, like kids do today. I also strongly suspect that if given job training, that Raymond would be able to hold down a job.