Are highly intellectual aspies different than other aspies?

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I describe my condition exactly like you. Since little I showed to be talented in academic subjects and in other "intelectual" things, like writing, puzzle resolution, etc, because that I've been always considered as a inteligent person for most of my close people. My problem has been always making friends and social interaction, but not for unnapropiate behavior (I consider that I'm very good in that area because I can talk politely and assertively and I can see to the person eyes without problems too) if not because I can't stand most of common people of my age tastes (like Pop, Rap and "reggaeton" music, porno, sex, hanging out to parties, etc) and sometimes, for that thing I pass like a mean or "weird" person.

My intelectual aspects has helped me to not be totally "isolated". In my school class many people often go to me to ask me to help them in some things. But fortunately I have made few but excellent friends all this time.

The intelectual aspies may be different to the "not intelectual" in the aspect that they can have a more high adaption level and advantages in the laboral world (for their easiness to learn and to do "difficult" tasks), but in the end they will always have the same main problems that the NI: social interaction problems, social isolation (not all the cases), etc, and because that they will always need help to treat those disadvantages.

I tested as gifted in the first grade (my mother had me evaluated to prove I had no learning disabilities to my teacher). I got into a program called "TAG" or talented and gifted, which gave me access to special educational opportunities (although these classes were typically very boring). I did very poorly throughout school except in the fifth grade (which was unusual), and ultimately dropped out of high school. I've never had reason to doubt my intelligence, I learn things very rapidly and can still easily learn any topic I set my mind to. Unfortunately, for some reason, this has not translated into greater academic success (I burn out of college very quickly) or career success (same for jobs, plus it has always been very difficult for me to find jobs).

I think there's a lot of generalizations being made in this thread about how intelligence interacts with AS that I don't think are universally applicable. Admittedly, in my case the additional problematic factor(s) may be PTSD and/or ADHD and long-term depression, but I think the latter is more of a consequence of my inability to accomplish much. But whatever the reason, the consequence has been I don't have an education and I haven't been able to support myself. But at least I have my intellect, right?

This seriously wasn't for lack of trying, and I am not even sure why I continued to assume that I was failing because of my own personal failings as opposed to having actual problems I needed to see someone about, or even felt like help was something that wasn't available to me. I am not sure that my self-awareness was all that in school or even my early 20s.

i can identify with a lot on this thread, & i had 2 thoughts: being able to conceptualize social interactions is largely retrospective; it doesn't help you in real time. and: finding refuge in academia only works insofar as you don't see through the Higher Bullshit--which reflects the Lower BS, but with bigger words.

i guess i should be grateful i've mostly remained employed, & lived independently. this leaves me free to contemplate the absolute unworkability of our present society & lifestyle.

You don't need to be employed and independent to contemplate this.

LOL!

I just want to add two articles that I am studying right now on this subject as reference for the OP and others....

http://www.hoagiesgifted.org/eric/fact/asperger.pdf
http://www.davidsongifted.org/db/Articles_id_10167.aspx

Being good with words is only one kind of intelligence. It happens to be the the only kind that I have, so I get rather mediocre IQ scores. I have a large vocabulary and I'm very good at Scrabble, but I wouldn't call myself particularly intelligent. I think you're too hard on your level of intelligence. You can certainly write clearly with a logical structure, which is more than I can say for some people I know who have 150+ IQs.

I also don't know everything about my special interests. They are often in quite dry subjects like the politics and culture of obscure countries (had a phase of reading about Vanuatu). I like Aztec mythology but I don't know everything about it. I think there are a lot of Aspies who are perhaps more mildly obsessed with their special interests and don't know everything. My bf has the classic Aspie special interest: trains; even he sometimes forgets exactly how a steam train works.

I empathise with you as regards the job hunting. I've been in a similar situation. It's the guilt and embarrassment that are the worst parts of being unemployed; well, not having enough money sucks, as well. It's a shame that they're scrapping the Future Jobs Fund because I would recommend that to improve your confidence. Getting paid to do work does boost confidence somewhat more than volunteering. I think you should try to stay positive because that's one of the most important things someone looks for in an interview. It's easier said than done, though.

I can relate to a lot of what you say because I'm also only diagnosed with dyspraxia. I show a lot of AS traits but there are some things not quite ASish about me. I have a fairly good theory of mind. I find people easy enough to read. That doesn't mean I'm any better at actually socialising. I don't quite feel like I'm from another planet. I feel like I've been hit with the awkward stick. Can you relate?

I am an intellectual personality for sure. Hyperintellectual in fact. When I was first dx'd with AS, anyone else I met who was dx'd with AS were hyperintellectual too, while people who weren't so intellectual tended to be HFA or PDD-NOS. It's hard for me to see someone who isn't hyperintellectual as having AS, to be frank. If AS indeed includes a broader range of people than it did when I was first dx'd, I think hyperintellectual Aspies like me must be some sort of subset. I just don't really relate to anyone else on the spectrum except other hyperintellectual types of Aspies.

And I hate that if I say something like this, be this honest about it, I fear people will think I'm being a snob. But I'm just a hyperintellectual person--that's how I connect with the world. And being an Aspie, I'm a quite rigid and limited that way. So it's hard for me to adapt to other people if they aren't on that intellectual plane. While it may sound like I'm being snobbish, I do recognize this as a limitation of mine rather than a failing in other people. I kind of envy people who aren't so intellectual. I think I'd been more balanced and stable if I wasn't so driven to sate my mind's insistent need to know, learn, develop, understand. Sometimes my brain is working on 3 or 4 things at once--it's unreal. How can anyone have a normal life when their brain just wants to shut out the world and work obsessively on its own thoughts and ideas? No wonder I've had one nervous breakdown and have come close to another one two other times.

My brain has two modes: hyperintellectualizing or burnt-out depressed. No middle ground. When I'm around people 98% of the time, I just keep my mouth shut because is I start talking, it annoys people. They think I'm being a know-it-all or condescending. But it's hard for me to not communicate in that intellectual way. Even around people who know I'm an Aspie, it's hard for them when I'm in my intellectualizing groove, as they think I make them feels stupid or they can't keep up with me. So it just makes me more isolated, I think. That's nothing to brag about.

I once had a friend, back before I was dx'd, and I think he was probably an Aspie too. We really clicked intellectually. We could just sit and talk for hours about stuff--philosophy, music, art, computers, science, math. On and on and on. Just two hyperintellectual Aspies talking away in our monotone voices! We probably would have sounded like two computers having an endless conversation about gabbly-gook to normal people, but it was the most stimulating and intimate friendship I've ever had with someone. Too bad he was gay. I was in love with him intellectually, but nothing beyond that. That was 15 years ago, and I still deeply miss that friend. I yearn to have another friend who is that kind of a "mindmate." I was just thinking about him tonight in fact and how much I miss being able to connect with another person like that.

LOL @ hyper-intelligence definition in Wiki....

yeah.. That matches....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperintelligence

The pyschologist I spoke to day before yesterday said the same thing RE intellectual people as mine did when he gave me the "gifted" label. It is both their experiece that generally speaking...

The smarter a person is the less they think they are smart) as they understand just how little they know.

They are not surprised to find gifted adults who are completely unaware of the fact that they are in the IQ range with 2%

Well, Socrates did say that realizing you do not know is the beginning of wisdom.

I see the limitations of the kind of person I am and it can be very painful, especially when society wants to deem being "really smart" as attractive or desirable thing. As I see it, the range of intelligence that is actually desirable or attractive is little below me. I'm in the "just shut up already" range.

I dislike the term gifted, but those articles you linked to earlier are interesting. I never got evaluated for giftedness as a kid although my brother did. But by those criteria in those articles, I should have been. In the table of gifted vs AS traits in the first article, I had all those traits as a child, combined, and yeah, it was very complex. And confusing. When I think back on my childhood, it just seems like a massive ocean of confusion for me.

Like as you were saying, it took me well into adulthood before I realized my intellectual level. All through school I pulled away from my peers and from the curriculum to do my own things--and that was due to a complex combination of finding the social aspect of school stressful and counterintuitive and a strong need to work on my own, at my own pace, at my own level, on my own interests--and that was met with a wide variety of responses from my teachers, some very positive, other very negative. One teacher would think I was a problem kid with behavior issues; another would be happy to let me study on my own and let me out of group activities that I resisted to work independently. One teacher would think I was mentally ret*d and needed to be held back a grade, while another would be frustrated that I was underperforming for my abilities. I don't think the widely inconsistent reactions helped me understand myself. I knew I could learn things fast, and I could learn a lot things to a very exceptional level quickly. I knew I had interests that other kids didn't have, and I knew i wasn't 'getting"something with the social interaction that other kids were doing. And of curse, i knew a lot kids just hated me and would make fun of me, especially when I outperformed them academically or i was engaged in something they thought was weird, although I never quite understood why. I don't think I ever realized how smart I was until when I was 25 and took a formal IQ test, and yes, scored in the top 2%. I mean, I had always relied on my intellect--it was the only thing that gave me any self-confidence as a"weird" girl. I wasn't pretty, I wasn't bubbly or cute, I wasn't socially outgoing and charming. But I was smart and could learn things without effort or intuitively. So I always knew I had that. But the sheer lack of encouragement, appropriate educational opportunities and equal peers had left me quite unaware of what I was really capable of doing. It really wasn't unto grad school that I found people that matched my intellectual level, and only then I began to gain insight into some problems and difficulties I had been having all my life from being around people who weren't as "hyperintellectual" as me. And not surprising, it triggered an psychological crisis for me, where I basically panicked over being such a freak of nature and possibly never being happy in this world, resulting in suicidal depression. That crisis resulted in my dx'd with AS.

Can autistic people be intellectual? So what if some can't communicate properly or have learning disorders. there are many types of intelligences.
I love to learn and people think I'm smart.
So I didn't learn to read at 3 months old. Or even five years old.

Yeah, but while you need intelligence to realize, wisdom is accumulated knowledge - a separate topic all together.

Heh, it took me a few decades to accept that the gifted label was accurate. My life was too much of a mess for me to take it seriously until I looked back.

College helped a lot, when it was significantly easier than I expected. Too bad I ended up dropping out three times.

I am just not certain if this makes me different than others, or of it does, it does so in a categorical way that people seem to ascribe to their giftedness in this thread. Maybe it just made it easier for me to hide many outward signs? I don't know.

I don't think I value IQ as a measure of anything, and given my own history I am not sure I value "gifted" all that much.

are highly intellectual X different from other X?

ruveyn

Yes

I was responding, somewhat ironically, to kfisherx' comments about smart people being smart enough to know what they don't know, but not the OP's question about intelligence an Asperger's. That was meant to be about our journey to understand ourselves, including our intelligence, and not meant to be a statement about intelligence itself.

Yes, I can relate.

I know all the social cues, but I often find it hard to actually use or express them. It's like I fear I might get interrupted, or not listened to, and then feel embarrassed - which is why I often stay quiet in a group conversation, but that doesn't mean I don't know what to do. I make good eye-contact, I smile, I laugh at appropriate times, I listen really well, I empathise, I understand other people's emotions, I can ''read'' other people just by looking at their face and body language, and I can tell what they're saying by ''reading'' their tone of voice, and there are a lot of other common social interaction difficulties which I don't have, but are common in most people on the spectrum.
But the AS part I do have is the meltdowns and high anxiety disorder (which might not be related to AS, but I do get anxious about silly trivial things, but those silly trivial things are huge issues to me). And with the loud noises - I hate sudden loud noises, and although I have a lot of nose and ear trouble and am blocked in my ears and nose, I still can hear background noises very well and get very distracted (but I can't smell things very well).

I'm lucky with my special interests, because they are topics what people use in small talk, which makes me good at small talk. A lot of people talk about the weather, so I can join in because I think talking about the weather is ''fun'' (but I don't talk about it much to people), and I also get obsessed with men, but I don't gabble on about a particular man either - even though women do talk about men, so I can get away with being listened to when I do talk about men. I also like gossip, which I do do a lot, but that doesn't really make people think, ''oh she's so obsessed!'' because it's normal to gossip, however much you do.

But I'm still not very intelligent. I got one C in my grades, and the rest were all below, so I got no As or Bs. And I was in the bottom sets for maths and science at school. There was another Aspie in my year who was a boy, and he was in the top set for science, and second set for maths, and he ''lived'' in the library. I never went in the library when I was a teenager. I'm not being stereotypical here, but are most boys on the spectrum a little bit more able to focus on their special interests, and girls more able to make more effort in being with other people than to sit alone? I'm not saying all do, but it seems most do.