Why is original Aspergers' is different from modern version

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I find that I could fit in Hans Aspergers' original article but modern descriptions of Aspergers does not resonate with me at all. How is this possible?

Original article:
https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid= ... E3ZGRhZGVk

The definition has been greatly expanded.

It brings in several contradictions.
For example
In original article abstract reasoning skills were enhanced but in modern version it is depicted as lacking.

Therefore if I want to be honest person I can not describe myself as having Aspergers' under modern system.
Honesty is about having integrity and modern depictions tends to shatter it.

Like everything else our knowledge improves the more it is reserached. Leo Kanner said that he has only ever met 150 with "geniune autism". Epilpsey beleive it or not was a disqualifier, you also had to be a savant to qualify for diagnosis. Much good work was done orginally by Judith Gould and Laurna Wing circa 79/80. Once Uta Frith had translated Aspergers work everything kinda took off from there. Many theories have been ammended since then, Theory of Mind being but one of them. You have to remember that Asperger Sydrome only came into excisitance in 1981 and even now its slowly slipping out of useage.

The problem that arises from this perspective would be similar as classifying myopia part of blindness spectrum. It doesn't serve science it serves merely social causes. I don't have anything against promoting social causes however it deserves own label.

From treatment perspective:
Those guys seemed to have perceptual issues and social blindness was not really about theory of mind. This the gist I got from it. I never had issues with ToM. It's been more than clear for me. I have serious issues of seeing world in details. For example I see a person but I won't notice the height their hand reaches towards me. I see forest but I don't see trees.
Can you see where this leads us? It is quite simple: wrong practices.

Read "Neurotribes" - a book that gives the full history and how it developed over time.

That is sound advice.

With respect might I suggest there is also often some confussion between the relationship of context blindness and theory of mind. Context blindness help to explain some aspects of weak central coherence (something which Fran Happe is looking at again)

Hans Asperger gave us the core traits. We expanded upon those traits via research and real-life observation.

Like Eriksson expanding from core Freud.

Like Martin Luther King expanding from core Gandhi.

He thought that only boys were afffected originally - and a lot of the research since fell into the same error, using all male samples and making conclusions based on what was (later known to be) sampling error:

http://www.autism.org.uk/about/what-is/gender.aspx

Asperger's appears to me as another fad diagnosis. Targeting every socially shy Star Wars nerd. Than there is trendy term people bandy about. Aspie.

All of this does nothing to help people truly affected by Asperger's. Introversion is not synonymous with any form of autism.

As you say it is not synonomous, though introversion seems very common on the spectrum, as many members here have attested over the years.

That's true. It was considered primarily a "male" disorder until quite recently.

That you as introverted is the autistic person realizing it's pointless to be talkative. We aren't shy and we don't all want to spend our Friday nights with a book and a pot of tea. We can be just as boisterous with the right people.

LOL...I'm not a tea drinker.

But I do like to hang out at home with a good book or a good ballgame. Or YouTube.

If it ever was a fad diagnosis it is not anymore as it not even a diagnosis in the DSM anymore. It is still in the ICD but what from what I understand in locations that use the ICD they are moving away from Aspergers with the expectation that it will be dropped in the next version of the ICD.

"You are looking for excuses", "you are lazy", "you are weak", "you do not have real autism","Aspergers is a fake disease", Aspergers/Autism is a fad diagnosis etc and similar attacks have been used to malign not very obvious autistics forever.

When there was no knowledge of autism, then later when there was no knowledge of anything that was not severe this was somewhat excusable. Now, all it does is harm. IMHO there never was a mass phenomenon of Aspie/Autism wannabes and clinicians giving out diagnoses like candy. The problem is the large scale PERCEPTION of Aspergers/Autism as a trendy excuse for bad behavior and a fad diagnosis.

IMHO the large increase in autism diagnosis comes from the expanded diagnostic criteria identifying autistics that were not or would not have been recognized in an earlier time and society becoming more autistic unfriendly causing people who would be gotten by to be impaired. We live in a cynical era so a lot of people believe the sharp increase in Autism prevalence happened for nefarious reasons. A big pharma vaccine conspiracy or Autism is a trendy fad are two of the most popular explanations.

IMHO if there is overdiagnosis it is in the very young. Helicopters parents can not accept that if their little one misses a few markers that most often it is a perfectly normal thing called people mature at different rates. There is little patience for waiting a little longer for a kid to mature. That is one reason why you see this massive push to discover autism in infants in order to give them ABA.

IMHO Autism is still quite underdiagnosed in middle aged and elderly adults. They were not diagnosed with autism as a kid because knowledge of anything not severe was not known. This group has bumbled through life undiagnosed with anything but weirdness or they were misdiagnosed.

The perception of autism as a trendy diagnosis has been very harmful. It means the older autistics will not be identified by clinicians not wanting to contribute to a fad. I have read countless posts here from professionally diagnosed people wondering if they were misdiagnosed or worse a fooled themselves so effectively they fooled their clinician in a desire not to think of themselves as a bad person.