"Malice and Asperger Syndrome"

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You mean the ASD is an excuse they use? Or their child status is ? Not sure if understand you there.
I don't think that they can be faking ASD though because the particular cases in the article have real symptoms of ASD , just not so severely, except the facial emotion recog thing.
But I don't think it's separate from the ASD, except in so far as obviously not ALL ASD's follow this survival/adaptation route ! ! Would be difficult to know how many ASDs do as many may still be undiagnosed precisely because this "framework" makes it possible for them to lead apparently normal lives.

I think the point is that they almost wouldn't be noticed except for more awareness of ASD .This sort of behaviour in children that was just considered anti-social until was thought that might have its roots in ASD . (In the same way persistent criminal offenders are treated with cognitive therapy now that it has been understood that a reason they behave like that is that their empathy-channel is "switched off").

I don't think the children are using ASD as cover, BUT they may be using sly and subtle excuses and explanations as cover. I recognise that. I still sometimes do it. ( not much or often tho!! )But I recognise how can come up with an explanation which REALLY IS part of the truth. But is a slight twisting of it. To cover the desire to shock , i think. And yes the innocence which is not completely plausible.

And I think some malicious behaviours may be connected to ASD in that the difficulty in interpreting humans ,if have ASD ,can be SO much reduced if have at some very early point decided not to believe in there being a real person who can get hurt inside all these creatures. If stop believing that the facial expressions mean anything real. If believe that the facial expressions are just pretences. As someone said on here ; disconnection. For a little while, or even 25 years, or perhaps a lot longer if never have truly intimate relationship , can live with this approach.

I think that until the age of about 26 I really had convinced myself that there weren't real "feeling" people in other bodies , because I never noticed , for instance , that some of the, to me ,scariest looking people were actually scared themselves, until after the breakdown , when I realised it for first ever time.
And so my teasing and "testing" and pushing , and shocking, and " taking people for granted" was not intended to hurt because I didn't believe in the hurt , it was to watch the results , see the expressions , get responses , feel powerful in having that effect. It was exactly as the article relates, a way to have an effect on the world around me, aswell as work out "how" this strange things people worked .

People (of ANY neurological configuration) commit malicious acts because they see doing so as being to their advantage and they don't have enough conscience to care about that.

We may be Aspies during the week, but at evenings and weekends we are also individuals with our own tastes, personalities AND moral values...

Just as many of us as NTs are likely to be deficient in the last. It's and integral part of being people.

M

What is "conscience"?

I've spent a lot of time being full of rage, but it had nothing to do with that. It was simply a reaction to the way people treated me. Almost everyone at home, school, and work took advantage of me and treated me like I was something lower than human. I couldn't do anything about it because I didn't have the social skills, so the anger just boiled up inside me, sometimes randomly spilling out.

I've never seen the commition of malicious acts as advantageous. But after constantly being the target of malicious acts, it becomes hard not to occasionally act the same way. In the US, revenge is expected. If you don't retalliate, people keep targeting you because you're seen as weak. It's hard to ignore it, after a while. It's hard to react in an appropriately restrained way when you can't understand social rules, express your emotions, or control your emotions like most people. But I don't condone malicious acts under any circumstances.

Also, that article implied that most aspie girls act catty in the same way as NT girls. Based on what people say here, it doesn't seem like a lot of aspie girls even understand that kind of behavior. I know I don't.

Regardless, criminals are using this defence to seek lighter sentences, or even dismissals. At least 22 cases were acquitted using the 'Asperger's defence'. They claim they were unable to control their actions because of AS, and people buying it! Whether they have it or not, using a social disorder as a shield for murder, rape, ect. is wrong, but they don't care. It's almost sociopathic, manipulating people into thinking they're helpless, when they had it planned all along.

I suppose anyone has the potential to be malicious, regardless of whether or not they're on the spectrum.

The more I think about it the more I believe that the increasing amount of what has apparently been called "trolling", ( a "clever", "funny" name for :! !) ; the teasing, provoking, winding-up , manipulating , verbal-bullying, and generally malicious posting/"arguing"/interjecting and supposedly" intelligent" but unkind and mocking treatment of others contributions, which is going on on the internet,( and which some ASDs even openly praise for "independence"of expression, wit, etc) , IS a serious and striking example of exactly the maliciousness which this article talks about so eloquently.

And that the worst bullying of visibly autistic or AS disordered children was/is perhaps by those on the Autistic spectrum who have managed to overcome their own greatest difficulties by simply not believing in any real feelings behind peoples faces ( thus cutting down the burden of information to process laboriously, ASD style , by more than half, in interractions with people!!) but for whom the sight of autistic type problems would be particularly insupportable!

I was amazed by the level of defensiveness on this subject. I could not understand that so many intelligent people would feel so threatened by such an article. Now I believe that it is precisely because it IS a problem!!

And that in that respect this site is like putting the sheep in with the wolves!! Just a thought!!
I don't think it is useful to pretend that this phenomenon doesn't exist.

Yes, of course. I can't relate to the examples it cites, however.

Postperson said something very interesting on the thread in Adult in-depth " Nobel for Doris Lessing" about how perhaps what the researcher missed was that the child with aspergers will be less skilled at concealing maliciousness , and/or ,as I then wondered , won't even realise that it needs concealing, not for a while anyway.! !
I think that's possibly a very useful observation. Maliciousness in NTs is maybe much sooner concealed , and becomes quickly "unconscious/automatic .

Last edited by ouinon on 17 Oct 2007, 4:13 am, edited 1 time in total.

This is a loud of evil crap that seems to be based on the idiot's misunderstanding of a word, as per:

I'm beginning to wonder if people are even reading the same damn article as I am.

Yep, I agree, there is definitely a clash of interpretations here.
I admit my own ( clashes with my own interpretations ! ! ), and thank you for pointing this out.

Maybe a part of the problem is that we tend to forget a lot of those times when we were genuinely innocent and confused when something we had done out of a spirit of reseach upset a lot of people and so mix it up with other more memorable "maliciousnesses".
I remember one such when ,aged around 6, I think , I picked all of the ripe gooseberries in our grandparents garden and putting them on the flagged floor of the terrace stamped up and down on them until they became mush. Apparently my explanation was that it was something to do with treading grapes for wine . But everybody was very shocked and hurt and angry. I find it difficult now to believe the explanation I gave at the time ,because I didn't use a bowl or anything, and so wonder whether there was something dodgy about it. But I do remember being shocked by the reactions ; I think I had not believed people would mind.
I forget about those kind of incidents because are so awful , the unpleasant surprise that people treat what you've done like a murder!! whereas I remember the occasions very well where I was aware of "malice" , and at the same time being "fascinated" by the persons emotional reactions.

BUT the article is not actually very clear which kind is being talked about which may be the main reason for the confusion and multi-reading of this article!. The garden incidents ( the boys and mine!!) both prob fall into same group ! But I didn't get the impression that the article stopped there ; it seemed to include more deliberately destructive/hurtful acts. For instance the boy telling his aunt that her husband had been killed, "surreptitious pinching" and feeding poison to a baby, are just a few.

Perhaps it would be useful to break the cases up into two groups?
Those which were genuinely "innocent", intending no hurt or pain at all , disruptions and the like , AND a second group , more deliberately hurtful/painful .

Perhaps the second group of acts are perpetrated by ASD sufferers who have 'chosen' ( unconsciously, or automatically, or under the "heady/out of body influence of gluten if they are gluten sensitive ) to cope with their disability in life by a Narcissistic Personality Disorder !?!? By recognising only the surface of things but especially of people, believing that there are no real feelings behind faces , save themselves an enormous amount of processsing that would otherwise slow them up terribly , making their ASD far more visible.

That would explain the two kinds of destructiveness.

The scary, SCARY part is that the "idiot" in question is SUPPOSED to be some kind of expert on AS, sometimes considered to be on par with Attwood!

To me that might slide beyond stupidity into manipulation...not as some "sinister plot" to harm us, but as simple sensationalism to get his name "out there" with the general public...and NEVER MIND how much harm the does to real, live human Aspies.

M

(Who can think of someone else with that same mindset a LOT closer to home right now.)

Maybe someone should write to him and say that his article unfortunately lumps together two distinct types of behaviour, ( pure innocent disruption by classic autistic spectrum sufferer , AND the more deliberate if still relatively "unconscious" kind ,of an ASD sufferer who has in infancy adopted a Narcissistic personality to cope with their disability.)as I suggested might be the case in my last post above , and that it is causing potentially dangerous misinterpretation. ! !! !! !!

Last edited by ouinon on 17 Oct 2007, 7:20 am, edited 1 time in total.

I think that about says it...

It's just the kind of mixed premise, prejudicial distortion one would usually expect from a self appointed pseudo-psych on a "mission" (usually to fill his bank account) rather than a supposedly qualified and accredited shrink.

M

As I said earlier, LadyM actually has an appointment with the chap at the start of next year, so maybe I'll take a transcript of this thread along, or link him to it, so he can get some feedback.

With that in mind, as a request to mods.. should this thread get out of hand (not saying it will per say, but ya never know) feel free to lock it, but kindly avoid deleting it, because it would be interesting to see what Mr Tantum actually has to say about the aspie response to his article.

And I still think people are overreacting to it quite badly.