I'm told I shouldn't have much of an imagination with AS...

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but, ever since I was a child, I've had a world inside of my head. It's gotten better as an adult, but as a child, it was very real to me. I didn't find what I needed in real people, but had those inside my head. There were no faces, just comfort, and it came without me needing to be socially perfect. There were times when I'd stop mid conversation with a real person, and find myself inside my head, only to have the other person wondering where I went.

Did anyone else have this "imaginary world" or people? It's just a rather curious thing that I've never really talked about.

Yes. Quite. Every book I read, every game I play, and half of the (admittedly few) movies I watch I create myself as a character and reimagine the story with myself in it.

Plenty of combined stories as well as tons of original ones. Basically I live within my imagination very very often. If I couldn't it'd probably kill me I think.

"I'm told I shouldn't have much of an imagination with AS..."

By whom?

by those who think they know something about AS. *sigh*

As a kid, my imagination clouded out everything else...

Not much as a child, a lot today, actually the "imaginary" world is my real world, the so called "real" world is basically non existant at the core of my psychological asset. Then some should explain why you call one imaginary and the other real....maybe with "real" you mean "shared" ? Because, for example, if I'm home alone watching a movie or playing a game, thinking only about it, what's more real than those images ?

They say children with asperger syndrome when playing with another children don´t role play characters very well, cause they can´t put themselves in the position of the character (theory of the mind problem). So they tend to role play with only one character and keep repeating the same character/story over and over again. I was exacly like this!

I was always extraordinarily imaginative. I would say my imaginary world often seems more vivid to me than the actual one. One of my best friends continues to be imaginary...

I never had that role playing issue, but some of my other AS friends do.

What Vyn said. Except for the part about not seeing many movies.

Hmm, the roleplay issue. Now that I think about it, I always do fit 1 of 4 archetypes when I do it. The character might be different but I always take one of those archetypes for the personality. Oddly, all of them tend to just be extreme parts of my own personality, that are exaggerated parts. 1 being basically me with much more severe aspie traits (I tend to do this when I'm depressed and feeling bad. Strangely it makes me feel better) 2 being a funny joker with a cutting wit that takes nothing seriously. 3 is a real cassanova that knows anything and everything about the opposite gender, he has a ton of fun. 4 is the dark intelligent emotionless ruthless mastermind, and tends to be the most common. Other types are very difficult to do.

Goodness knows my poor daughter had so many dolls thrust at her during the course of evaluations to see if she would "feed the dolly" or "have the dolly talk to the kitty". She never did and was deemed to have no imagination. It seemed to me a rather...unimaginative...view of imagination. It was as though the only type of imagination they could conceive of was role playing. Meanwhile, she had imaginary friends (all of whom she declined to discuss in evaulations so the reports always said "mother reports hearing about imaginary friends but Child did not demonstrate this during evaluation"). She pretended that the weather was different than what it was, that the enviroment was different than what it was, that she was talking to her various beloved relatives when she was alone and so on. Various imaginative things. But she wouldn't give the %$#%$^%$ doll a bottle in the doctor's office so "she has no imagination". Sigh.

That diagnostic criterion is really badly worded. What is meant by "imagination" in that context is "fantastically-themed playful interaction with peers". An example would be girls playing with miniature tea sets.

I've always lived in my own world. The imagination part is social imagination like being able to see someone else's point of view and agree to disagree. I can't really do that. Also the ability to distinguish playing pretend and reality. For example I'm intelligent but I was 23 before I fully accepted wrestling wasn't real. I had to read the autobiography of a retired wrestler to believe it was 100% fake.

The american DSM IV doesn't include any imagination criteria. The UK eqivalent does and it's a work in progress.

Sure, I engaged in "fantastically-themed playful interaction with peers". With my friends, we threw rocks at each other and hit one another with sticks (yes, I played with mostly boys). With not my friends, it was actually... a lot of the same thing, come to think of it. Just more dodging. Does that count as imagination? I never had tea parties and I used to throw my baby dolls out of trees. I didn't play dress-up, but I did invent an elaborate pulley system to bring the family dogs up into my treehouse with me. They did NOT get thrown out. I did play games like catch with peers. I rode bikes with them. We went swimming and sledding together. But to say that it was imagination, I don't know. Yet I play RPGs now (the pencil-and-paper type). Hmm.

But I've always had an internal world. It started when I was three years old and continues to this day. To call it imagination by that definition would be very wrong. I have repeated the same stories (or perhaps story, that has become a little more elaborate over the last 23 years) to myself thousands of times. I am always the same person-- not me, but a more empathetic version of me. One that knows the right thing to do and does it. I can do "the right thing" because I created the situation. That's where I go when I get stressed.

Wow, if we are defining imagination by that criterion, I guess I don't really have one.

I've always had a very active imagination. As a child, my excessive daydreaming frequently got me into trouble. It wasn't unusual for me to be unaware of my surroundings because I was always caught up in my own head. I also loved pretend play. There were a few children I would play pretend with, but more often than not, I would play out entire imaginary scenarios on my own, with the help of any toys I had on hand. I also had imaginary friends far past the age when having imaginary friends was still regarded as normal.
I've also been making up stories in my head for as long as I can remember. A few of these these stories get written down, but most of them never see the light of day. I also occasionally narrate my own life in my head, sometimes in the third person. I do that most often when I'm walking somewhere, and I'm tired, cold, or otherwise uncomfortable. For instance I might think to myself, "Her weary muscles protested with every step," or "Icy winds assaulted her as she walked." Occasionally, I might even say these things quietly to myself when no one is within earshot, or when I *think* no one is within earshot.
So, no, I don't think that AS precludes imagination. I think that lots of people on the spectrum have excellent imaginations, even if said imagination is not displayed in the conventional ways recognized by NTs.

Last edited by OuterBoroughGirl on 30 Oct 2009, 10:21 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Yeah. I still live in my own world. I am very creative.