Whats the difference between Schizotypal and Aspergers?

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You appear to be mixing up social anxiety and "being a bit shy" with pervasive developmental disorders. Autism isn't just being shy, and if your social interaction is lacking because you're just shy or have social anxiety, then it isn't autism.

Folks with aspergers, or HFA stereotypically find social gatherings to be challenging and draining- because socializing isnt the inborn skill that it is for nts.

Thats what I should have said.

And there is a HUGE difference between that- and avoiding parties because you think the guests are in cahoots with the Illumanatti to get you.

Though a second person observing your outward behavior might find it hard to tell which thing you were.

However- when comparing an aspie(on one hand) to an nt with social anxiety or shyness(on the other)- the two not not only look similiar in behavior- they kinda ARE similiar.

In one case you dread social gatherings because they are a challenge, the other beause you're afraid folks wont like you. And why might someone think that folks wouldnt like them? Could it be because in the past folks really DID not like you- and that was because- you lack social skills- and had autistic traits? Lol!

Sounds like a distinction without a difference to me. But Ill take your word for it that those two things are different.

Sounds like a distinction without a difference to me. But Ill take your word for it that those two things are different.

However- when comparing an aspie(on one hand) to an nt with social anxiety or shyness(on the other)- the two not not only look similiar in behavior- they kinda ARE similiar.

For the Aspie they don't socialize well because they don't empathize... that is, we aren't interested in and following the music of other people's lives. But for the person with Schizotypal Personality Disorder their imagination is running wild. It's not that they can't follow litte micro expressions, and the ins and outs of a person's song, but they misinterpret the tune they are singing because of their own magical thinking. The song they hear isn't the song at all. Is this close?

Well, the stereotypically aspie who talks non-stop about his special interest is not much similar to a nt with social anxiety (and, again, for an outsider, can appear similar to a schizotypal who, with the few people he trusts, is always talking about the "conspiracy").

You can have social anxiety for many reasons. It doesn't have to be a lack of confidence in your social skills. I was a very shy person and I had social anxiety before I even knew of my social deficits. As a toddler I hadn't had the experience to realize I was socially inept but I was still shy as far back as I can remember. My reason was that I wanted privacy. I avoided eye contact because I didn't want people to see right through me and know what kind of person I was. If eyes are the windows to the soul I wanted to guard my soul and not let anyone see it.


As I grew older and this need for privacy faded I started making proper eye contact more often. I never had trouble with eye contact as an Autistic trait it was the result of my shyness and defensiveness. I do have other social deficits to a very mild extent and I don't dispute my diagnosis.


For me social anxiety was the result of not wanting other people to know my innermost feelings and who I really am and not because of my AS. I had social anxiety as a personality trait alongside my AS but I still have AS and I am a lot less anxious in social situations than I used to be.

Im looking for the difference between aspergers and social anxiety, not for the difference between aspergers and paranoia.

Autistic children are egocentric in the extreme. They follow only their own wishes, interests and spontaneous impulses, without considering restrictions or prescriptions imposed from outside. They lack completely any respect for the other person. They treat everyone as an equal as a matter of course and speak with a natural self-confidence, In their disobedience too their lack of respect is apparent. They do not show deliberate acts of cheek, but have a genuine defect in their understanding of the other person.

For personal distance too they have no sense or feeling. Just as they unconcernedly lean on others, even complete strangers, and may run their fingers over them if they were a piece of forniture, so they impose themselfves without shyness on anybody. They may demand a service or simply start a conversation on a theme of their own choosing. All this goes, of course, without any regard for differences in age, social rank and common courtesies.

But a typical aspie soon learns that rattling on about your special interest puts you in the social doghouse so the typical aspie clams up about the special interest -but fails to master small talk about sports to make up for it,and becomes a quiet wall flower indistinquishable for a social anxiety sufferer.

I know many blatantly autistic people who could be easily defined as magical thinkers according to that list, and there still isn’t any need for the attribute schizo- in their case.

Magical thinking is a natural human characteristic. According to a poll (results are from Wikipedia) 41% of Finnish citizens believe in God. As many (41%) believe there is some sort of spirit or life force. Only 16% believes there isn’t any sort of spirit, God or life force. In similar fashion 35% of my colleagues in my unofficial “survey” done for this purpose believed in past lives. All are, believe it or not, sane people, without any disorder. 60% of the same, sane colleagues believed in some sort of precognition.

Psychiatry in itself is often as purely subjective or cultural bias serving interpretation as any other form of magical thinking – the only difference being that psychiatry is clothed in our society in the sense of objectivity and precision. Whether the area of magical thinking or the person involved is seen as sane is completely arbitrary and often more bound to our cultural norms than anything else. Let’s go back only 40 years or so and homosexuality is a mental illness. What happened? Did the “illness” change or was it rather a change in the dominant ideology that dictates our beliefs, values, explanations … and mental illnesses?

I personally believe magical thinking is a natural human characteristic (well, everything existing is natural anyways) - all the way from our animistic ways of using language (Why did my keys went lost just now? [do they have a will?]) to our elaborate belief systems. I can’t see, how believing in God (many respected and also autistic people do) differ from believing in superpowers or clairvoyance? How does believing blindly in “signs” differ from believing blindly to your own “logic”? Different names for the same aspects of “reality” and as long as anybody can’t really differentiate the two, I don’t bother myself with any list or categorization.

This study addresses the unraveling of the relationship between autism spectrum and schizophrenia spectrum traits in a population of adolescents with Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD). Recent studies comparing isolated symptoms of both spectrum disorders as well as diagnostic criteria for each (DSM-IV-TR) suggest resemblances in the clinical phenotype. A group of 27 adolescents with ASD (11 to 18 years) and 30 typically developing adolescents, matched for age and gender, participated in this study. Within the ASD group 11 adolescents satisfied DSM-IV-TR criteria for schizotypal personality disorders. Autistic and schizotypal traits were identified by means of well validated questionnaires (Autism Questionnaire, AQ and Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire-Revised, SPQ). Significantly more schizotypal traits in adolescents with ASD were found than in typically developing controls. Besides high levels of negative symptoms, adolescents with ASD also displayed high levels of positive and disorganized symptoms. There appeared to be a relationship between the mean level of autistic symptoms and schizotypal traits, as well as specific associations between autistic symptoms and negative, disorganized and positive schizotypal symptoms within individuals. Schizotypal symptomatology in all sub dimensions that are reflected by the SPQ scores, was most prominently associated with attention switching problems of the autism symptoms from the AQ. These findings indicate that patients diagnosed with an ASD show schizophrenia spectrum traits in adolescence. Although other studies have provided empirical support for this overlap in diagnostic criteria between both spectrum disorders, the present findings add to the literature that behavioral overlap is not limited to negative schizotypal symptoms, but extends to disorganized and positive symptoms as well.

It is not uncommon for the CSC to struggle to discern reality from fiction; many get cartoon or movie
characters stuck in their heads, and they insist that these characters are real. Most children (and many
adolescents) in this profile category struggle to distinguish between reality and fiction (i.e., they believe
that the images seen on TV are real). They may insist that things happen the way they do on TV and
become frustrated when unable to replicate them. Given their lack of defining these boundaries, a student
with CSC may state “my dad is buying a Rolls Royce,” when the NSC would have stated, “I wish my dad was
buying a Rolls Royce.”

I was under the impression believing in god or a simular life force, past lives and such is not magical thinking by the definition used for the disoderder. I think its more thinking certain patterns or things are trying to tell you something when there is nothing like that going on. Like if one thought the message of a movie or t.v show was being directed at them specifically. That is not the greatest example but yeah from my understanding it was more to do with flawed perceptions rather than spiritual beliefs or philosophies.

A. A pervasive pattern of social and interpersonal deficits marked by acute discomfort with, and reduced capacity for, close relationships as well as bycognitive or perceptual distortions and eccentricities of behavior, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

(1) ideas of reference (excluding delusions of reference)
(2) odd beliefs or magical thinking that influences behavior and is inconsistent with subcultural norms (e.g., superstitiousness, belief in clairvoyance, telepathy, or "sixth sense"; in children and adolescents, bizarre fantasies or preoccupations)
(3) unusual perceptual experiences, including bodily illusions
(4) odd thinking and speech (e.g., vague, circumstantial, metaphorical, overelaborate, or stereotyped)
(5) suspiciousness or paranoid ideation
(6) inappropriate or constricted affect
(7) behavior or appearance that is odd, eccentric, or peculiar
(8) lack of close friends or confidants other than first-degree relatives
(9) excessive social anxiety that does not diminish with familiarity and tends to be associated with paranoid fears rather than negative judgments about self

B. Does not occur exclusively during the course of Schizophrenia, a Mood Disorder With Psychotic Features, another Psychotic Disorder, or a Pervasive Developmental Disorder.

I was under the impression believing in god or a simular life force, past lives and such is not magical thinking by the definition used for the disoderder. I think its more thinking certain patterns or things are trying to tell you something when there is nothing like that going on. Like if one thought the message of a movie or t.v show was being directed at them specifically. That is not the greatest example but yeah from my understanding it was more to do with flawed perceptions rather than spiritual beliefs or philosophies.

According to the DSM-IV, Aspergers and Schizotypal cannot coexist. If you go to this link: http://counsellingresource.com/lib/dist ... -symptoms/ you will see under criteria B, that schizotypal cannot be diagnosed with a pervasive developmental disorder (ie. Aspergers). If a psych is following the proper criteria, then they only give one diagnosis. They are too similar, but veer off at some point, which is why they are mutually exclusive. If you look at other schizophrenia spectrum disorders, you will see that they and ASDs are always mutually exclusive (not all psychs follow the criteria, but if they did, they would not be diagnosed together). The only time it says they can be diagnosed together is if a child with autism has very severe hallucinations, then they can also receive a full schizophrenia diagnosis. This is rare.

Where they differ: schizotypals have paranoia and odd beliefs/magical thinking, and can also include illusions. These things are not found in Aspergers, so someone with these characteristics are likely schizotypal, not aspie. I tried to find a good article that illustrates the differences; however, I haven't had much luck there. I did find a long post elsewhere, and I cannot word it better, so I will cut and copy (these are NOT my words):

The main difference between Asperger Syndrome and schizophrenia spectrum disorders is, Asperger Syndrome does not involve psychosis. People with Asperger Syndrome do not have hallucinations, unwarranted paranoia, distorted concepts of reality, and so on, while people with schizophrenia spectrum disorders, with the exception of schizoid personality disorder, do.

Another aspect of schizophrenia spectrum disorders that differs from AS is that social deficits in schizophrenia spectrum disorders, are often caused by paranoia that others are out to get them, or thinking negative thoughts of them.

Of the schizophrenia spectrum disorders schizoid personality disorder is most similar to AS, at least in a sense, by the mere fact that it does not involve hallucinations, or delusions, and these people are generally sane. People with schizoid personality disorder are either overtly, or secretly socially withdrawn. They struggle with feeling deep emotional connections to people, and often have a blunted, and limited range of emotions. This can mimic AS, but differs fundamentally from AS, as people with AS can and do form deep emotional connections with others when given opportunity to do so, and people with AS can express a full, unattenuated range of emotions sincerely.

Unfortunately she does not speak anymore about schizotypal but about schizoid instead.

There seem to be some misconceptions in this thread.

Research is finding that individuals classified as being on the schizophrenia spectrum have an "atypical" neurology--and that signs arise early in development. The same neurolocial soft signs that autistic people exhibit are also found in schizoids/schizotypals. Bizarre movements/stereotypies/and tics are also associated with these disorders. Repetitive/ruminative thinking and OCD are features of schizotypes.

There may be schizoids who are schizoid because of emotional trauma/upbringing, but this isn't so for schizotypals. Schizotypals are almost certainly born, not made.

Autism is genetically correlated with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Guess what? So are schizoid and schizotypal PD.

Schizotypals have "body illusions". Autistic people have "sensory issues". Both have high levels of social anxiety. Both can have bizarre preoccupations; they are just driven by different motivations.

Yes, there are differences between these folks. But the cavern is not very deep. Anyone who thinks they understand the complexities is almost certainly fooling themselves.