You are all mechanical intellect-robots

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Intelligenz-automaten would translate into intelligent automatons (machines), right?

Yeah that would be a literal and very modern translation but one that pays no mind to the era that Asperger wrote the text in and more importantly, it completely dismisses the context in which he used to word "automaten". Admittedly, Asperger had his own eccentric way with words that does take some to get used to.

Today, Automaten would usually translate to the robot-like automaton, a machine.

Automaten has another meaning that's rarely ever used today anymore - and I assume most young/middle-aged people wouldn't think of it before looking it up - but one that describes the way of act of automatising/learning something by root/intuitive stuff and is derived form the root of the word, meaning something like "happening/moving on it's own/by itself" - or something very similar to that, at least. It's really old-fashioned though. Maybe what added to it getting out of fashion is that the term became massively popular for machines and comparing anyone to a machine is kind of rude according to most people.

But Asperger didn't talk of machines, he meant that we're lacking (social) instinct and can only automatise by use of our intellect all those things that normal people automatise intellectually. Almost all the social rules and adaptive skills that normal people pick on intuitively we can only manage to pick up intellectually. That's the context he uses that word in and how he explains our impaired social intuition.

Why it was sort of rude even back then anyway is that Intelligenzautomaten is an oxymoron. Automatic behaviour (you know, spontaneous + intuitive/subconscious/unconscious behaviours) cannot possibly be acquired and performed intellectually as that would automatically make any such behaviours non-automatic behaviours. That's why calling us that is crude even if it's not meant to compare us to machines. It makes our (social) intuition/instincts sound defective... which they might very well be but that's besides the point now.

We're intellectual "automatise-ers" and Asperger thought that was a core feature of the disorder. Well, I don't know about that at 2 am on the morning but that's what he talked about in length when comparing autistic people to normal people in respect to instinctual and intellectual automatising. Not about machines.

(Of course, my genius idea of calling normal people Instinkt-automaten doesn't work either because the two words represent the same concept (one of intuitive social ability) which makes this a tautology but it's fun anyway because of how that relates to oxymorons.)

Still better than what people call us nowadays. Intelligenzautomat(en) klingt mir lieber als "Behindi" (tard/ret*d).

Beep-boop-bop. Does not compute.

His original studies were done way back in the 1940s. Think of how much has been learned since then and give him (Hans) the benefit of hindsight.

Sora, thanks a lot for the quotes, translations and feedback.

I identify perfectly with the quote in the OP, that's how I learn indeed. NTs learn immediately and keep mistakes forever, while at the beginning I look very slow and then it becomes second nature to me (eg driving, tying shoelaces).

I think that it is important to take an overall perspective on Asperger's life rather than pick apart a few possibly poorly chosen words. His work was done to try and save people with this disorder from the Nazi eugenicists and that alone should show where the man's heart was. Additionally, we are reading a translation from a language most of us do not speak and from a time when cultural sensitivities were much different from how they are now. It may well be that he was searching for the right words to use to describe this idea in much the same way that most of us also struggle to put words to ideas at times. In the end then, if Asperger indeed had the syndrome that bears his name, it is entirely possible that this was an example of using language to express an idea rather than dealing with the emotional reaction that some may have had from his words. We hate it when others do this to us and so I don't see why we would wish to visit this upon the memory of the man who initially discovered the disorder.

See that a lot, people saying he painted AS in a positive light so they weren't gassed, and I even recall someone mentioning his daughter said such. Never seen a quote though.

Picked out that one point, intelligent automatons, because I thought it was hilarious. I also think it's correct for a large subsection of those with an ASD (I, for one, identify completely with the text I quoted).

There's far "worst" ones in the paper itself, but that's not my point.

Sometimes I can even identify with the term of being an intellectual robot, but I also feel very often as the total opposite of that.
The problem is that I can be like a intellectual robot, but being at the same time the total opposite of that.

Intellect-robot?

Nah. I prefer to think of myself as a Illogic-Seeking Terminator sent from the future to rescue our savior so she can lead us in rebellion against the tyranny of the overly-emotional fleshy ones.

Yeah, thanks for the illustration and background information, Dillogic and Sora.

I was gonna say more in this post, but I got a case of brain constipation, so I'm leaving it at this.