I don't like medical labels and categorizations

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The establishment in general likes to neatly categorize everyone and everything and put people into boxes when, in reality, everyone has their own unique qualities, as well as their commonalities. I don't think people should be fixated on the labels the medical establishment tries to impose on us. I like modern medicine, but a lot of its just a business, and they want as many people as possible thinking there's something wrong with them so they can sell more drugs and treatments.

I think the rising rate of autism may just be from the fact that they've expanded the definition of autism over time to where pretty much anyone who's socially awkward in any way can be labeled autistic. I say to hell with the labels. You can get to know your weaknesses and strong points without a doctor or a psychologist telling you what they are. This is your and my planet too. If someone is obviously being a jerk to you, then kick their ass at D&D, video games, math equations, or whatever it is you rock at and let them know you resonate magnificence. If people are accepting of you when you've been as decent a person as possible to them, then that's all I think matters.

I quite like labels.
Sticky paper labels, dymo, etc.
I don't like clothes labels, on the inside or on the outside.
I like things to have names and categories, its just tidy.



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I think I know what you mean, and I don't think being fixated on labels serves any purpose, but where labels are used to describe personality traits, they can be useful. Even where labels are used as words to describe a collection of personality traits they can useful.
Do you mean where an asperger's label is used to describe a problem reqiring a solution, rather than when it is used just to describe a group of neurological traits?
I am sure that if the label of asperger's was available when I was in school, I would have been able to develop a much better understanding of the world around me. I still got labelled. Wierdo, druggie (not true!) hippy (I think because of the way I speak, and the way I never dressed fashionably) and worse.
I don't think its really possible to escape labels.

Last edited by zippy-tri on 04 Jun 2011, 9:23 am, edited 1 time in total.

No, I mean just as a person, I don't like being bogged down by the whole autistic label. I just don't really think I have to measure what I am by what others make of me, and that includes terminology that doctors impose on my personality. I felt kind of restricted by it, but now I don't.

People don't think in continuums, they need categories to attach properties and thoughts to. It seems hard to come up with a suitable treatment without categories. A more appropriate approach would be to take apart diagnostic categories, and substitute combinations of several variables. The combinations of variables at a given pattern of values would indicate a person's condition. This is computer language, and people would be still asking for names what condition a person exactly has. In practice, we are only roughly able to determine the exact state of a person (at a given place and time) due to the limited validation of assessments. There is room for subjectivity, and I think it's alright, considering the human nature of medicine itself. And it is in human nature to label things. End of story.

My feelings about extending the autism spectrum are ambivalent. This gives the delusive sense of dealing with ever more autistic people, and that it may not be a pathological state, while there are people on the spectrum with explicit difficulties and need for special help. Some less autistic people seem to be doing well without even knowing they have some traits (in fact, some of them refuse to know anything about their conditions, as I see it). So, eventually, there has to be a border between the recognized autism spectrum and the rest of the people, but with an acknowledgment of those having some traits but don't "qualify" as having an ASD.