Rain Man

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Hallo,

I read often that Raymond-D.Hoffman of Rain Man was an Asperger, but if many of you, listers writing in this Forum are Asperger, then you are definitely different from him.
Here in Italy nobody would say that people like you, are autistic, as autism is considered a pervasive disability. may be they would say you are a little bit "weird" (but everybody is more or less "strange").
Please understand that I don't want to be provocative !
I'm just using my English at my best. I hope you understand what i mean to say..

I also think to be like you. I have many autistic features may be even more marked of many of you, and I will tell you about them in a future message. But I don't think it can be pathological enough to say I'm disabled. I can control them in many situations, I can analyze them, I can even "use" them. That's enough to make a difference.
I can live normally amongh other people and only my family know my difficulties. I think people think I'm a little shy, but nothing more. Nevertheless I did have girlfriends, now I've a wife, I graduated, I work and have people responding to me, I traveled everywhere..
Nobody out of my family knows about my fixations for order, for collections, for databases etc etc.. I would be too embaressed to speak about that!

Please let me have your opinion!
Msmartie

Ciao Msmartie! I have a very good friend who lives in Milan. I am from Australia. Your english is very good - a lot better than my italian! You are right, rainman is not at all typical of aspergers. Autism is a big spectrum, and it is rare to have all the parts. I don't consider it a disability - just a personal way of looking at the world, and organising it. Some people have greater problems interacting with things than others. I have a job, a degree, a son and am thought of as being wierd. My son however has a hard time at school, difficulty writing, is bullied and has temper tantrums and hits people and teachers. In his case, it is looked on as a disability - this means the school can apply for more money, and put in place extra staff to help him to adjust to their world. I don't really see him as having a disability, but other people who can't get him to behave the way they want him to seem to think that it is. Everyone has a unique personality, and so long as it doesn't impact severely on others, I think it is exactly that! It is good to find that there are other people that share your focus and interest in things. I think the biggest problem I have, is that most people I respect are NT, and want everyone to conform to their code of behaviour. They get upset when you don't like/do as they do. They seem to like to enjoy things as a group, rather than on their own. They get concerned for us (the loners/shy ones) and try to help us, and this is where we disagree!

Welcome, Msmartie from Italy. I am in the USA. I do not think of my AS as a disability, either. It is my personality, my way of dealing with the world and getting along in life.

I am gifted as well as having AS, as are many persons with AS. It is very hard to distinguish which of my Aspie characteristics are actually "autisitic traits" and which are simply "gifted traits." I have made it a habit to study non-autistic gifted persons and notice the differences between them and myself. In fact, I once had a list of traits of giftedness and traits of Aspie/giftedness, but I no longer have that list, thanks to a computer crash.

By the way, your English is very good!

Thank you for your answers. It was just what I hoped to hear from you. Indeed I thought that my message could be misunderstood and be seen as a kind of insult to you that are grouping in this Forum to talkl about what actually is lived as a problem, at least in some situations of life.
When I started to read about the autism spectrum (yes, my Australian friend, I have your same problem a son with learning difficulties) I was really astonished: I realized to have many traits of the autistic behaviours. When I was a child I was collecting everything and I was so maniac of the order (think to a boy of 7 years!) that I slept out of the bed not to wrinkle the blankets ! ! Moreover I kept list of everything I was doing: the movies I saw, the friends I had, the places I visited etc.
I didn't like to be kissed by parents and relatives, I didn't like any kind of showing feelings...I liked to be in small groups of friends.
I found also a school homework in which I wrote "yesterday it was my birthday. My mum wanted to call all my schollmates at home, but I didn't want, I don't know why..." That is giving me creeps!!

Still today I'm a big collector (more then 1500 vhs for instance), I keep a written budget, a list of all the money I spend and i earn, I have a list of all the flights I took from the beginnig, with the Air Company name and destination..I still love the order.

But all this is my dark side. Nobody out of my parents and my wife knows about that and I wouldn't tell it to my best friend.
I don't like groups of people, or to speak to an audience, I blush for silly things when I'm with more the 4 people.
But that's all. For the rest I'm doing very well: I've an incredible memory and people say I'm very sensitive, very smart, with a good sens of humor. At work they chose me for the relation with our customer because they say I know how to interact with every kind of people...
I don't consider my existence as problematic. I'm different in some ways but I really think everyone in this world is a "little universe".

bye!!

I always saw RainMan as being more of a traditional autistic, though I may be wrong . . .
I always tell people that I got cheated on the math thing (I can't do math to save my life) and that I WISH I was a savant!

However, that movie is on one of my free movie channels and I always have the TV on so it drowns out many sounds in my house and I have heard the movie about four times tonight now, and I was thinking that Tom Cruise's charcter has some AS traits - I wonder if they did that on purpose? . . . but I don't think in 1989 they had any idea that autism probably had a genetic component to it . . .

And I just got put on midnight shift at work three days ago, so I'm still getting used to my new schedule, thus I am the first to say that my brain may be picking up stuff that isn't really there!

[quote="animallover"]I always saw RainMan as being more of a traditional autistic, though I may be wrong . . . and I was thinking that Tom Cruise's charcter has some AS traits - I wonder if they did that on purpose? . . . but I don't think in 1989 they had any idea that autism probably had a genetic component to it . . .

Which AS traits did you find in Cruise's character ?
I didn't note them, but it could be. I know the screenplay paid a lot of attention to the single details and it was supervised by many autism-experts. Among them Bernard Rimland, the founder of Autism Research Instute and inspirer of the Defeat Autism Now! movement.

I noticed that Cruise's character has quite a big temper, is really detail oriented, seems to be unable to understand emotions unless they are BIG ones (i.e. when Raymond has meltdowns) and also that when he talks to his girlfriend you can really see this sort of 'not getting it' look on his face . . .
And, if I remember right, there is a point where he gets really upset and is screaming at someone doing something like a stim behavior . . .

I know his character is supposed to be really self centered, but the lack of understanding emotions really made me think 'I wonder if they are implying a genetic component here . . .'

Maybe it's just me, but the Monotone that Rainman speaks with makes him sound like he's from the East Riding of Yorkshire. Does anybody else notice this, or am I wrong?

Hello, Msmartie

I always thought the character in RainMan had 'classical' autism, not Asperger's.
I have a friend with a severely autistic son ( now adult). He is so 'disabled" that there is no way he could live a normal life and like the Dustin Hoffman
character, he has to live in a residential home for people who are similarly affected . He requires constant care as he cannot communicate verbally and has no sense of danger (for instance he does not understand the danger of traffic ...if something caught his attention, he might just walk across the road towards it , without checking for traffic and without realising he could be knocked down by a car!
The point is that this sort of autism is visible; it is apparent to everyone that something is 'wrong'. Asperger's is different; The problems it causes are usually not visible to outsiders, who merely consider the Aspie to be weird, or eccentric. And unfortunately, a lot of people do not find eccentricity acceptable.
I personally have experienced a lot of problems with AS, both before I was formally diagnosed, and after. Maybe I am unlucky, but most people I have come into contact with, including professionals - doctors and psychologists, etc - don't seem to have a clue as to what AS means, or what problems it causes, and therefore can offer no help. That where a community like WrongPlanet is so encouraging - it shows Aspies they are neither peculiar, nor are they alone!

And finally (this is addressed to CockneyRebel) I'm sorry, but as an English person(although with no particular regional accent of my own) I never noticed that Dustin Hoffman sounded as though he came from Yorkshire at all ...he just sounded American to me (although with a monotonous way of speaking)!

Glenn

I agree with you. That is my perspective of AS, too. But y'know, I'm finding out a lot of people seem to think differently on this, including those currently handing out AS dx's of kids. I regularly read an autism message board and an Aspergers message board on my AOL service. These boards are crammed with parents trying to deal with their child's dx of AS or autism.

The majority of these kids with ASPERGERS dx's seem to be much more severely autistic than anyone here, myself included. It's a bit confusing to me to read about these kids with AS dx's and be constantly saying to myself, "That doesn't sound like me."

I'm wondering if it isn't just the "new" thing to do to dx those with higher functioning autism as AS rather than just "higher functioning autism." Or maybe those of us here, communicating in this way, are just that much more higher functioning. I don't know -- maybe I'm the one who's confused! But the kids getting AS dx's nowadays certainly seem to have the kind of autism that is visible, with public meltdowns, serious social issues, and obvious physical stims -- way more than just weird or eccentric.

You may be right Cindy, but it is worth bearing in mind that on a message board it is hard to determine whether someone who is clearly high functioning intellectually has public meltdowns, serious social issues and obvious physical stims - I do (I'm pushing 30 and quite large - I'm sure it is fairly obvious my tantrums in supermarkets etc and frantic pacing under stress are visible and slightly alarming to those who don't know me - and contributed to the atmosphere which led to me being pushed out of my last job), and I presume some others are visibly autistic too.

rainman was from east yorkshire? i am boggled.

My understanding is that the only official difference between a high functioning autism diagnosis vs. AS is that aspies start talking on schedule, while speech is delayed for HFA. Now, this distinction may have some use for small children, but I think for adults, it doesn't matter.

Kim Peek was the inspiration for the character Raymond Babbit in the movie "Rain Man". Kim was not autistic. He was an "idiot savant", an individual with Savant Syndrome. Raymond Babbit was modified from him to be an autistic savant but Dustin Hoffman did spend time in the company of other autistic savants to study the role.

Here is more about him here: http://www.wisconsinmedicalsociety.org/ ... impeek.cfm

Here is a link to numerous other Savants, autistic and non-autistic.

I think that maybe we are higher functioning only because we are older than many of the kids that parents are discussing and so we have learned to cope.

Looking back at my childhood, I was clearly autistic and had several impairments. Although, because of my good verbal ability, no one would have said I was autistic. Throughout my 29 years of life, I have learned to adapt and mimic. I have had 29 years of studying people and analyzing their methods and motives. You would not guess I am autistic today.

So, if these are parents of AS kids who are under, let's say 15, then yeah those kids seem lower functioning than us. My bet is that in 10 years or so, they will have learned to adapt or not to and those that don't will be left behind unfortunately.

Tallgirl

Right.