What is Asperger’s Syndrome?

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To the op, thanks for bringing up an interesting topic. If you do not like people to communicate and share their ideas about a question you brought up because of the way a thread is or is not going, that can happen with anybody, especially when a person has their own special interest and there is a desire for people to participate in a certain line, (train of thought, track:-), but, as it has been said, probably more then once on this forum, and not even by me, it is not so easy to herd cats, so, in all respect to you, I am going to continue posting on this thread, and I do hope people will continue posting their ideas here. the dialogue has been very interesting and generative to me, and I think to many others, as the thread seems to be getting a lot of readership.

To all of those who have posted, including the op, I really love reading your particular messages, and I cannot say this about almost any thread on WP. To AsPartOfMe, I am thinking about what you wrote, and I think I too readily saw it as a side topic; I am starting to see that I was wrong.

To the op, who may no longer be reading this thread, but maybe still is,I think you were/are a great facilitator and have raised a very pertinent question. I do seriously doubt that you will find the answer to it on the internet, but maye you will, if you keep looking.

You wrote: "Anyway I think this thread is wearing out (forgive the pun) and I feel like I am being boring (saying the same things over and over again). Until I get a concrete descriptive account of someone with AS, with a full description of all their actual particular ‘symptoms’. And not just generic abstract descriptions. Until I get this I can’t progress further. And I haven’t been able to find such descriptive account online anywhere."

One suggestion, I do not know if you consider yourself to be autistic or not, but you could take a look at your own functioning and your own "symptoms" ( or characteristics, as it may not be appropriate to label various aspects of your functioning as symptoms, of which I am not sure, and this may be the gist of what you are trying to get at. I do think that the way most people's brains tend to function is on many levels very similar, whether a person is autistic or not. All of this said, a lot of people are encouraged to think of themselves as having abnormal behavior and symptoms and many even tend to go along with it. It also should be said that many AS people do experience themselves and are experienced by others as not fitting in. I think many such people do in some way feel like aliens, and that metaphor is used by many. Also many of these people have been scapegoated by other people. And finally, a lot of not always but sometimes ignorant, whacky or both people in the psychiatric profession are makking money off of this, so it is kind of a cash cow some people are milking, and, if not for some a physical cash cow in terms of producing actual money, it can also be an emotional/psychological cash cow, with some kind of psychic pay-off for those involved, from both ends of the stick. Again, this is not to discount that real intelligent, sensitive people are experiencing suffering. Peace out.

In terms of "how much abnormal?", an ASD diagnosis is quantifiable in the assessment process by testing extensively. My testing was 12+ hours long, using a variety of methods (verbal, computer, etc)., and my results were all scored in graphs or charts ranking me by percentile against "the norm", with standard deviations factored in.

These scores showed areas where I was exceptionally different from "the norm" (however the norm is calculated in society, by statistical analysis and years of data collection). Then I also submitted a 188 page autobiography which I wrote to answer the detailed, seven page developmental history questionnaire. I included photos from my birth onward (stimming, no eye contact etc), my full set of answers with considerable amounts of anecdotal evidence for each question, links to home movies of me as a child, every school report ever written including teachers' comments, professional evaluations from my employers, reports from other doctors or psychologists, and data collected from people who've known me since I was a child. This was all used to form measurable or quantifiable data.

I'm not sure what else you could possibly want to know about how a diagnosis is confirmed.

Incidentally, I was not diagnosed with "Aspergers" or HFA. Rather I was told that my impairments would be equivalent to Level 2 Autism, although functional levels aren't formally used any more.

If a person's "special interest" interferes with that person's ability to remember to do ADL's (like brushing teeth, eating), then I would say that this indicates impairment.

RRB's, repetitive restrictive behaviors, distinguish autism from social communication disorder.
Observed together they are indicative of autism spectrum disorder.
And an outward sign of what is going on in the mind.

studies have shown that autistic brains produce more information in the resting state then typical brains.
this may be because autistic people tend to be in their own worlds thinking. or it may be the reason why.
It may be related to intense interests.

An inflexible brain and preference for sameness and only wanting to think about things that have a familiar structure to what has been been intensely thought about before.

Marybird wrote:

"RRB's, repetitive restrictive behaviors, distinguish autism from social communication disorder.
Observed together they are indicative of autism spectrum disorder.
And an outward sign of what is going on in the mind.

studies have shown that autistic brains produce more information in the resting state then typical brains.
this may be because autistic people tend to be in their own worlds thinking. or it may be the reason why.
It may be related to intense interests.

An inflexible brain and preference for sameness and only wanting to think about things that have a familiar structure to what has been been intensely thought about before."

Hi Marybird! Your writing
always did help me think. I have to mull this over some more, but I am thinking that depending on the context, such as in a primitive tribal situation, some of these traits maybe evolved to help the species survive.Then, for various reasons, as the original context broke down over many hundreds or thousands of years, these traits were not as functional, but maybe a person today could still use this in a positive way. I think some people do. It could be the conscious conversion of a trending toward mechanical tendency.

Hi littlebee. How are you?
I like to think that autistic traits were more useful and accepted in primitive times.
But if that is the case, wouldn't it be more common in the population today?

1/68 is the current estimation and it is not so small. Remember that there are Aspies out there doing well enough not to seek diagnosis.

Marybird wrote:

"Hi littlebee. How are you?
I like to think that autistic traits were more useful and accepted in primitive times.
But if that is the case, wouldn't it be more common in the population today?'

Thanks for asking. Not so good on one level as my boyfriend had a stroke and the whole thing is really stressful and tomorrow or the next day they are moving him to a nursing home thirty to fifty miles from me, and I don't even have a car, not that I could drive on the freeway, though I could once do so, that will possibly drain all his finances. Have been on the phone nonstop for nine hours today talking to all kinds of people, both nasty and nice, and some seeming to be nice who turned out to be outright nasty. The good part is I have been going through a profound rite of passage, very difficult but worthwhile, which I do not think has much of anything to do with this other stuff, just kind of happening concurrently; at least I have a chance to try to practice functioning from this new angle under difficult conditions. Should I eat macaroni? (side question:-) I need calming food. I already tried coffee with (a small amount of) booze in it and that didn't work.

This said, in answer to your question, a wonderful question which I would like to inquire into more detail in a future message, I am thinking that in these early tribal conditions which the human being/brain adapted to cope with, the context was entirely different, so elicited a different kind of affect.

What magz wrote in response I have already been thinking along that train after talking to some of these neurologist interns and even talking to his kidney specialist at the VA a month ago.. These folks are just as smart is my guess but they are able to focus on one topic, their particular specialty of medicine, in such a way that is extremely, how could we say it---one sided. Really fascinating. During a convo with these interns, if you are just trying to throw in a little sugar (or maybe salt:-), you can never EVER get them off topic; it will not happen, at least in a hospital, though maybe in a doctor's office when you are paying them personally in cold cash, but it is all transpiring within a very concise and well defined structure, the medical situation at hand. Kind of akin on some level to what was once a form of tribal regulation.

Sorry to read about your boyfriend.

Having had a stroke I understand that unlike some conditions it is involves very sudden, unexpected, and radical negative changes both for those that suffer the stroke and those who care about them. This is especially difficult for change averse aspies.

People can partially or even fully recover from strokes with time although nothing is certain another thing that is especially difficult for those of us on the spectrum.

The only advice I can give is this. Autistics often have difficulty with multitasking and thus trying to deal with the “big picture” but do well with hyper focusing. The old cliches of dealing with one day or one or two things at a time is especially useful for people like us.

If people scold you for not adjusting fast enough ignore them, they are not autistic they do not understand.

OP,

Asperger's is essentially a social disorder. All of the accounts of special interests, and poor executive functioning, and intense focusing, and meltdowns, or what have you are all secondary. Those things may or may not be present, since they're so prevalent among those with Asperger's, they end up on "lists of symptoms."

I'd elaborate more on what the disorder itself is, but I think you've abandoned your thread. And you're correct, a lot of people tend to go off on tangents about themselves, not staying on point, and questionably not even understanding the point. Very common in these message boards.

If your needs weren't being met and you had to provide for yourself, you'd see just how crippling this pathological eccentricity can be. Survivability (for those without a safety net) is often predicated on sociability (whether we like this or not).

Imo special interests are the key to understanding autism. *Btw. a special interest could be oneself. I suspect most people never thought of it that way. The op asked a good question, but some folks would perceive the Arabian Nights as a deflection while others like myself would even study that kind of allegorical text. Anyway, thanks for bringing this thread back, but sadly to me, though maybe happily to some other people, I probably cannot write here much now. Because I am super-sensitive and synesthesiac, actually, very big black letters translate to my senses like a glaring bright light or a message in all caps is perceived by some as shouting. Also moving logos. This is an involuntary response and quite unpleasant. Too bad.

The original question about special interests is interesting, but first it is probably necessary to ask what is the value of labeling a person as having aspergers syndrome? Tghe category of aspergers syndrome was removed from the diagnostic manual because apparently at least some people who have studied this (and also have a lot of power) do not feel that label is particularly functional. I kind of agree, actually. I think there are different kinds of brains because it is to the survival advantage of humanity for these different kinds of brains to have evolved.

This said, I think understanding how having a particular kind of focus played into what I suppose could be called social malfunction or maladjustment does explain autism on any level. So a special interest is an increased focus or concentration in a certain direction. If this kind of focus is made at the expense of not making certain other kinds of connections to the degree of malfunction, then it might be of some kind of use helpful to name it something. So what is the common factor between different levels of autism? I think it has to do with the way the mind works, not so much around focusing on certain data, but rather by omitting other kinds of data. By omitting certain data, concentration is increased.

But what is essential data and non-essential data? I think the first special interest is an interest in oneself. In primitive tribal conditions obviously a person wanted to survive just as much as a person does today, the first regard and special interest of any person, on some level, being the survival of himself, the exception possibly being a mother valuing the survival of her children more (because of a deep bonding due to oxytoxcin, perhaps), Just riffing:-)