Do you see people as people?

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Well, with me it's Asperger's. Alison Gopnik's description doesn't fit the way I percieve to a tee but the implication is there. It's one I can relate to. I get overwhelmed at times and others become these sources of great annoyance. I don't focus on the fact they are people, just the fact they cause me annoyance. I don't think this way all the time, just when in a bad mood.

Yes, all the time! However when I becoming anxious I lose sight of it and begin thinking about how much I want to be free. Freedom to me means not being around the same people. My dream existence is that of someone who travels and never has to look at the same person twice.


I view strangers with far less dread than I view people I have always known. I feel the most comfortable with strangers and tend to trust them more but not much more. In other words, I relax more when surrounded by them.
My greatest source of anxiety are people I have known for a long time and I would be happy if I could move far away from them.

I don't think of them as objects but I do see them as having the capability to harm me or perhaps kill me. I tend to view them as, generally, quite dangerous.

I agree with the above poster oooanaooo.


1.
dx'ed AS but as my earlier post suggests, there may well be far more corssover of the artificical distincitions of ASD's than was initially thought. (LFA/HFA/Kanner's/AS) are aribtirary dsitincitions and here on WP I have read a lot of exapmples of people who defy these labels by exhibiting traits from various typologies.

2.
I defintitely do recognise other people as human, but that is not a constant, and depending on the severity of my day re autistic traits (which tend to fluctuate in me ) and sensory problems and how bad my day is, i lose this grasp. I know intellectually that they are, but at those times, I cannot grasp it at all.

3. Yes. i can seek out human contact...but nowhere near as much as others and I get fed up and frustrated with people face to face fairly quickly. Engaging is exhausting.It requires conscious and cognitive effort. I do get lonely however.

4. Humans are like objects sometimes. Other times i can have a connection, but i never really feel like I can get the kind of empathic connection with others that people talk about. I care deeply in some ways - in a social justice sense and in terms of fairness and human rights, but i struggle to understand others' vantage points.


References to the quote being an example of someone who is psychotic or schizophrenic? Well? what can one say?
Some posts indicate a very restricted view and comprehension of ASD's... with scant experiential (or even intellectual) knowledge of the day to day affects of sensory integration dysfunction (in particular relation to visual acuity) or sensory overload. No wonder so many people with ASD's receive prior incorrect diagnoses...seems some think that ASD's are all about robots, machines and the usual geek scripting and prevailing stereotypes. That's great if that is how it is for someone, but there is a host of people on WP who present with a far less stereotypical presentation and who are not psychotic or schizophrenic.
ho hum....

I have a deficient TOM.

But that description is totally off for me.

I still saw them perfectly and accurately so I can't at all relate to the description. I have very keen senses.

My drawings of people were awesome, people said so.

Dxed AS. Definitely AS in the original sense (in Hans Asperger's sense), might be modern HFA/PDD-NOS/AS.



Sure I know.

After all, I have developed very good intellectual social skills and I understand a lot about social interaction between non-autistic people. I'd dare say I understand more of the mechanics and their motives than almost all people with AS/other ASD I've read from online. I work in a purely social job which is all about being social, being closer to people, knowing how to handle lots of immature kids socially.

But spontaneously, I do not know. I don't remember that whoever might think whatever.



I seek out people, I work in a job where I'm in close contact with 100+ (about 300 there) kids and adults every day. Still I like to meet or talk to my friends in the evenings.

I seek it out because it's interesting. Nice to chat. Interesting and helpful to talk to others. Being with people is cool.



Nothing of that. They don't feel 'present', they're not part of my spontaneous perception and consideration.


In short: My TOM is deficient, though my coping and understanding of the world is great.

Easy as that, explains all.

But the description is, like, absolutely off for me. Very alien.

Mostly I answered in previous post, but your questions are valid so I shall answer.

1) HFA w/ dual Dx of AS. I am high-functioning (cognitively, etc) but have commonalities with all facets of the spectrum.

2) In peripheral, I truly do see others as smokey glass. I hear the din of human voice. But I do not negate others or feel they do not exist. I have be oblivious but then starkly aware of their presence but they often do not make logical sense at all. I observe but seemingly from afar. I do have that classic Autistic 'locked-inside' sense, as if I'm looking through an impervious but invisible barrier that cannot be breached. This can be frantic but is reality for me. I am a rational, logical, and analytical being. NTs do seem erratic and unpredictable, sometimes even scary - they can be mean.

3) Actually, I do get along with others. I am in a professional/academic atmosphere and I love/respect/admire most....unless they prove otherwise. But I am far too trusting and can be very naive which renders me vulnerable. I am leery of them but afraid is not a correct term at all. They seem intangible as if a culture in and of themselves that I am not privy too.

4) Special? Umm...no. But they are in the majority, of course, and their social rules are hard and very exclusionary. Even those whom I do like/love I cannot ever truly relate too. I am ethical and would never intentionally hurt another. Machines and animals do make sense, NTs - no. I can be offish, maybe sometimes cold due to my not being able to 'read' another. I do lack ToM and cannot begin to guess their emotions, intent, motive, or expression. Mindbliness is the term and it can be surreal. But I wish I could know another sometimes and I am curious. Then, they have their rigid cruel side too - haphazard mix of Neurotypical-ness.

I did answer honestly and do not mean to offend any others - really. When I was really little I interpreted others (= that which is not self) as inanimate, like furniture. This means neutral; I assign no value judgment to a chair or table fan, for instance. It just is. Then I learned others are sentient...sort-of. Still smokey glass.

dalekaspie wrote:

man that psycologist is f***ing thick

(autistic guy on the sniper)

"take him down jhonson!"

"i cant see him sir!, hes NT!!"

the OP referred to autistic people, not AS.

it sounds very much like what I read on a blog written by a LFA. I think it must be more or less true.

^ Yes, OP is contrived! I am high-functioning however (re: my above posts). So the function is not mutually exclusive.

Wow, this is like the opposite to what I experienced as a kid.


I thought that others didn't make sense. I just didn't understand a lot of social interaction, people seemed to talk incoherently around me and I figured they could not be intelligent and thinking and feeling, because they did things differently than me and didn't sound intelligent.

When I figured that kicking = hurt I was unsure about who to apologise to and wondered why kids kicking kids had to apologise for that, but kids kicking tables nobody took notice of. Both weren't thinking and feeling right?

I then tried being 'social' to everything - tables, stones, kids because I thought that if they had some kind of thoughts and feelings, I'm the one responsible for everybody as I was the only intelligent being around usually.

That's a really creepy description, but not something that's ever been true for me. XD I'd like to read some horror stories by this lady though, LOL. She should change careers, she'd be awesome at it.

That is interesting but I suspect it is nonsense, then problem is that it is impossible for me to observe the world through the senses of a NT or someone with a different ASD to myself, or even through the senses of another aspie.

If you read "The Man Who mistook his Wife for a Hat" by Oliver Sacks he blames the inability of one man to understand what objects are on a tumour or disease in the visual part of the brain. I am not an expert on brains but I have never heard of a suggestion that an ASD is due to a defect in the visual part of the brain. The man in the book by Sacks was able to understand a cube was a cube, but he could not understand a glove or a coat was a glove or coat. He was able to give a detailed description of the object but he could not translate it in his mind into knowing what the object was. What the book contains and the text book which gina-ghettoprincess mentioned does not sound like my experience of AS.

Something shouldn't be called a load of crap if it doesn't fit self,it is a spectrum,and doesn't mean it wont be true for others. [as proven by WPers in the thread already].

though it's not a exact copy of own experience,am experience people in a similar way,it wasn't until first going on medication for another part of autism that am started to discriminate people from object in a 'incident' or meltdown,am see and treat people mostly as objects in a normal state,but have grown a respect for all as equals,whereas as a young adult and younger was treating them as would do the wall or door.
still end up doing things such as use their hands to pick own nose,or use them to hit self when sensory seeking.
Am LFA,and don't think it's based on functioning either as LabPet has said,it will depend on which connections are made that determines the experience are going to have [sort of quoting Temple Grandin].

Well, when I was a kid, stuff really was just a sort of blur, and stuff would happen and I didn't know what was going on but I would go along with it, but it seems like that stuff is more of a symptom than a cause, (the cause, from what I can tell, is trouble processing info and keeping the mind concentrated on the world in real-time) so saying that it can't get better and we can't function in society is kind of dumb.

And LOL I hate that, I always go off topic and want to ask questions. XD; If I'm ever a teacher, I'm going to answer off-topic questions the same as on-topic ones.

What is HFA, AS, LFA or alphabet soup ? While if you were to plot a series of parameters on a set of two or more axis you could divide the world up into AS, HFA, LFA, XYZ, blagh, and whatever else by drawing lines on the graph.

But I think that within each group so much variation exists that it is impossible at this time to set the border between each state in exactly the right spot. Also what one professional thinks is a case of HFA another might say is LFA, while another might think it is something else. So I think that the first question raises up another set of questions which are impossible to answer with our current understanding of the human mind.

I do not have a formal DX but I suspect that the one which I am most likely to end up with is AS.



Yes other humans are alive, I am able to see them but I can never know if my vision is undistorted. While I have a clean bill of health from the eye doctors, and I have no gross distortion of my vision I am unable to expereince the world through your senses. Even if you tell me what you are expereincing I am unable to know if the lime green plant with the smell of a lilac that you are writing about is the same one which I am thinking of or looking at.



Yes I do seek out others, sometimes I have to in order to earn a living. I have to have dealings with some other people. But it is not always easy to understand the motivation and views of others. Sometimes they give explicit clues to the things which motivate them, so sometimes I can create a model in my mind of what motivates a person.



The humans who walk about the world are different to non living objects.

^ agree with KoR here. it is a spectrum with so many presentations and variations. I have an AS dx (prefer to say I am ASD the more i know about the spectrum) and i can really relate to the OP quote. that does not mean I am psychotic or seeing things. It means I do see people as terrifying objects at times and I do have feelings around these experiences - feelings that are akin to fear and mystery and worry because others are so impenetrable to me. I get really heightened visual acuity with the sensory problems. I am considered high functioning as a woman because I have a child and live with another as well. But i need some help and yet can appear completely competent at times to others. I am low functioning in the sense i have never really held down normal long term full time employment with other human beings.

There are as many variations of ASD as there are individuals with it...a point that perhaps needs highlighting here and there.

1. What sort of Autism do you have? Asperger's? Kranner's? Etc.

Asperger's.

2. Do you recognize other people as human--like you in some ways, different in others, but alive and thinking?

Yes.

3. How do you interact with others? Do you seek out human contact, even just to say hi or share a fact?

It never really occurs to me to contact other people purely for the purpose of contact. So just to say hi - never. I forget other people are there until I actually have something I need to find out or a piece of information that I'm very excited over and want to talk about . Once I've achieved that aim, I tend to just leave again. I don't feel any desire to prolong the interaction once I've said what I came to say.

4. Do you think of humans as objects or toys, or are they "special" or different in your mind?

I don't know. I do see people as people, not purely as objects. But they still just don't register in my mind with the kind of strength and importance that they do for most. NT peoples' primary daily purpose seems to be interaction of some kind with others; other people are always their primary focus. They just don't have that kind of importance to me; objects, information and interests have taken that place. I seldom become attached to people. It's hard to get them to mean anything on that level.

This explains somewhat how I was. I remember my mother constantly drilled it into my head that I had to think of other people, and think about their feelings; I had to always imagine how I would feel if that happened to me. Of course, in my case then that extended to everything: why did people cut the grass with the lawnmowers? Doesn´t that hurt the grass? Why do people slap cows on the back, and insist the cow can´t feel it? I could have sworn I saw that cow flinch when she was hit. I felt guilty if I preferred some articles of clothing over others, I knew I was hurting the clothing´s feelings....I didn´t understand these things, and when I asked these questions, nobody could give me logical answers. The world seemed like a strange place, the rules didn´t really fit.

As it is now, when I am around too many anonymous people, they just become a blur, "the masses". I´m afraid that when I am out on the street, or in the train, I do tend to think of people as being like bowling pins. They don´t really have any meaning for me, maybe they are too overwhelming. I try to avoid them. But when I get to know someone, they take on a personality, and become human to me. I´m very much like Saint Exubery´s "Little Prince" in this way.