Autism = "Crazy"?

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A person answered a question on yahoo that asked "Do crazy people know they're crazy?" with the answer:

"I think it's perfectly normal, and confirmation of our sanity when we question ourselves every now and again. Truly crazy people think they are the only true sane people on the planet, and everyone else is crazy!"

So, given that many people with autism who don't know they're autistic think they are the only sane ones in the world and everybody else is crazy (Because people talk in subtlety and metaphor and jokes are easily missed and things get taken literally and a whole bunch of other thinking/talking differences), are many autistic people considered crazy?

I know I was considered crazy in high-school (I might still be in college though no one has plainly admitted it, yet. It's just kind of obvious they think that when they seem to be hesitant to interact with me.) and I didn't even have an inkling I might be autistic or ADHD. (I'd imagine ADD/ADHD is very similar to autism in this regard? Maybe?)

I previously held the view that most other people were crazy because they'd say silly things that seemed to have no relevance whatsoever but yet other people found it entertaining for some reason, but I'm starting to come to terms that I simply don't understand their intention or maybe they really are stupid/crazy sometimes (My IQ is 45 points higher than half the population, so maybe.), which is probably related to ToM and possibly memory. The memory hypothesis is being tested soon as I'm getting tested with the WMS.

Interesting and kind of humorous way to look at it. Don't know if you meant it that way, but I got a chuckle out of it.

To answer the question directly though:

Uh, no. Autism and Crazy is unrelated. Though I have AS, and have no problem admitting I am also quite crazy.

You are OK. I guess you want to be told this... maybe they think you are crazy, but you have autism and this makes you different.
Make them know you are different, someone founds it interesting.
I read some of your posts and I think you should love more who you are.

Sometimes I feel like the only difference between "eccentric" and crazy" is that the former has a lot more money than the latter. Crazy bums can't afford to be eccentric.

It seems like a totally reasonable assumption to make. Yes, we are probably viewed as crazy, especially if we don't agree with that assumption.

^ No, the triple "! !!" is there for emphasis.

AS is not insanity or "craziness". I have AS and I am mentally competent, as evinced by my ability to earn a university degree, form and maintain an ongoing relationship (my marriage), raise a family, hold down a long-term job, transact business, enter into legal contracts, make investments, and plan for the future. This is all a struggle for me, due to my crudely-developed diplomacy skills and general inability to pick up on subliminal communications, but it has been worth the effort.

Yes, I think that autistic people whom no one knows are autistic can be considered to be crazy by others at the same time that they consider others to be crazy.

There's different definitions of the word "Crazy" that they might be talking about.

A. "Any psychological disorder."
Boy, this is a big category. You've got everything from arachnophobia to bulimia nervosa to Alzheimer's. In this case, yeah, autism fits; but most people wouldn't call many of those things "crazy". For example, I don't think people would call you "crazy" for having ADHD, which is a psychological disorder. And I'm pretty sure they don't call people who have dementia as the result of a stroke "crazy", either.

B. "Any acquired non-developmental psychological disorder not due to physical injury or damage."
This category includes everything that you aren't born with and doesn't involve physical damage to the brain. So that leaves out the stroke patients, Alzheimer's, and ADHD, and it also leaves out autism. But it leaves in things like dysthymia (low-level, long-term depression), the phobias, and personality disorders like OCPD (a personality type which is very rigid, structured, and perfectionistic). Most people wouldn't call those things "crazy" either.

C. "Any acquired non-developmental psychological disorder not due to physical injury or damage, which involves psychosis."
And here we are. This is probably the one definition of "crazy" that everybody could agree on. And it's actually a very small percentage of the possible mental illnesses people could have. In fact, I can list all the possible diagnoses that could be called "crazy" under this criterion:
1. Schizophrenia, except for exclusively catatonic schizophrenia
2. Bipolar disorder, Type I only, manic state only
3. Major Depressive Disorder, Severe With Psychotic Features
4. Schizoaffective Disorder
5. Brief Psychotic Disorder (like schizophrenia but too early to tell whether it's true schizophrenia)
6. Delusional Disorder (delusion without the other symptoms of schizophrenia)
7. Borderline Personality Disorder, during "transient, stress-related paranoid ideation or delusions" only

There we go. Only seven of 'em, and most psychological disorders are excluded. So is autism "crazy"? Probably not, by the strict sense of the word. But we still ought to remember that distancing ourselves from "crazy" people is only going to make it worse for the people who do have the psychosis and get hit hardest by the prejudice involved.

My insanity has nothing to do with autism.
People usually think of me as a bit weird though.