What would a 'cure' do, anyway?

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"learned to live with yourself"? I have learned to live with myself; I don't need acceptance from others who are incredibly superficial to live with myself, and accept myself for who/what I am.

Perhaps I'm wrong on this...but from my perspective you appear to be a self-loathing Aspie.

That's fantastic! Really, it is. I completely feel the same way.

The point is that how you feel about yourself is irrelevant to the notion of a "cure" as being discussed here. You are interjecting personal passion into a completely logical argument.


You are right; you couldn't be more wrong. Frankly, I don't know what even gives you the faintest idea that I am self-loathing.

My WP posts here often talk about how important self-confidence and self-love is to not only our health but to those around us. I frequently talk about optimism in relation to life and how blessed I truly am as an individual. Many people here, I suspect, find my optimism a bit nauseating.

I don't mean to imply that I'm injecting personal feelings into this discussion if it's indeed meant to be objective, but then I recommend offering better arguments than "learned to live with yourself".

you even said it yourself: this is supposed to be objective, not based on emotions, but at least where I'm sitting, it seems as though all the reasons being given in favor of a cure sound entirely emotion-based.

Okey, after reading the thread repeatedly I think I understand what Magneto is asking for: "How could we minimize social- and kommunication difficulties between NTs and Aspeis?"

I can really only see this happening in either of two ways without starting to alter brains.

An Aspie-NT dictionary and habit guide.

What I'm saying is that, technically, anything which means someone no longer fits the criteria is technically a 'cure'. The DSM defines the Autistic Spectrum Disorders in terms of their dysfunction. If the dysfunction no onger exists, then, logically, neither does the autism. This does not make you NT. Or rather, it does if you're using the definition of NT as 'everyone who isn't Autistic'.

I'll continue this discussion of what NTs are in a another thread.

I suppose you could argue that one may come and go from fitting the criteria for AS/autism over a lifetime. So maybe it's a "cure" of the symptoms, but a more fitting definition might be that it "goes into remission"? Then again, it's not a disease (and I think we all agree on this) so maybe this is an inappropriate way to describe it.

This is very much why I don't like comparing a term like AS to a term like NT. NT essentially means "wired typically" (I won't even say "wired normally" because that's another loaded term that inflames all sorts of passion around here... ). AS can mean "wired differently" but it can also simply describe the dysfunction as laid out by the criteria. So the terms don't jive 100% with each other, and it creates a lot of confusion. Just read the whole of this thread if you don't believe me.


I meant this statement to be taken pretty literally... to mean "successfully being able to work around any limitations you have to be able to function effectively." There is also an implication of accepting yourself for who you are. Does this rephrase work better for you?

After consulting Wikipedia I'll simply state this: Not possible.
Have you even read which the criterias are?

What specifically are you referring to as being "not possible"? Also, Wikipedia is not a definitive source of information.

My anti-curism stemms from the fact that it's leads to the suggestion that Aspergers is a "disease" in the same sense as cancer or AIDS. Working around NTs from all over the world, there's much about modern human society that should be "cured" IMHO, but who am I to have the audacity to tell someone to fit the mold of who I want them to be?

I am not a disease, nor do I deserve to be treated like one. Now, I am not denying some of our symptoms are serious impediments to our function, and I would love to see them wane, but the brain defines who we are, so I can't see how you can make the logical argument that a cure would not interfer in how we define ourselves.

When I read about people looking for a cure (not here, elsewhere) it's never Aspergers they are looking to cure. Literally never. The people going on about a cure are talking about low functioning autism.

To "cure" AS by eliminating the difficulties. Because the way I read it, it's not possible to get rid of them, they are allways there no matter how well you can disguise them.
No s**t, are you serious?!

I don't think that anyone here is describing Asperger's as a disease.


I believe this is what Magneto is talking about when referring to a "cure."


Because we're not talking about curing brain function. We're talking about "curing" some aspect of the criteria that no longer makes you diagnosable. For instance, finding workarounds in your life which provide you with adequate social skills (at whatever level you need them) could be considered enough of an adaptation to no longer be considered a "clinically significant impairment." How that's defined is subjective, of course, but if you have learned to adapt to the point where it is almost automatic (and some of us can do this), I would argue that it is no longer a "clinically significant impairment." That is to say, if I don't need a label, why should I still have a label, even if my brain is wired differently than most people?

A "cure" in this case is merely a successful integration of adaptation into one's life. I would argue that this "cure" is really more applied adaptation than a real cure.

They are always there to some degree, yet some of us can integrate adaptations to the point of them being almost automatic. If you can do that, are you still impaired to the point of clinical significance?

Define 'cure' topic

The only Cure I want is the rock group from the 80s.

This thread started off asking what a 'cure' would actually do, then I pointed out that anything which means someone no longer fits the criteria (which I have read) would be a 'cure'.

Let's do one of my favorite things when discussing AS: see what the DSM says about it.


No.1 may be 'impossible' to alter, and possibly not desirable, but what about the others? No.2 is outgrowable, and comes when the person is ready. No.3 is relatively easy if the person puts their mind to it, and if they don't they could grow out of it anyway and probably will. No.4: if the person wants to change, they'll eventually manage to, and it will become automatic.

I fear if #4 were actually applied, we'd actually be in worse shape than most NTs.

One of the things that makes us as unique and thorough as we are is our emotional disconnect, which helps us see things logically, helping us put things better into perspective, and come up with better solutions to problems that NTs not only wouldn't normally think of, but helps us see life in a totally different way.

Take #4 out of the picture, and we'd be emotional wrecks with no social skills.

Trust me, at that point, you wouldn't be getting the discussions out of us that you see here.