WHen Dr. Temple explained the Neuro difference

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She bascially said all of our social wiring isnt there, ITS ALL MESSED UP, bad connections and stuff, so basically, our heads are F**cked up right?

Not that I remember. I think she did a lot of talking about sensory issues; how we process things at a lower "level" than other people (that is, we manually sort through details rather than being consciously aware only of the summary). She also mentioned that she had to do a lot of learning to socialize "manually"--rather than instinctively, she learned to do it like you might learn your lines in a play. The "all messed up" idea is not something I remember. If anything, our brains simply aren't specialized for socializing the way NT brains are.

Anyway, remember that she's not a neurologist; she's an animal behaviorist. Her perspective as a person with autism should be taken on about the same level as that of any autistic person's, or at least any autistic person who has studied autism about as much as she has.

I've used this analogy before (and, in fact, kept part of it as my sig line):

No one considers a Ford F-350 pickup truck "broken" because it can't do 0-60 in 5 seconds. Nor does anyone consider a Porsche Carerra "broken" because it can't haul two tons of cargo. Each vehicle is operating properly - within its design specifications.

My design specs are not "standard" - I don't process social information as well as the so-called "normal" person. On the other hand, the "normal" person doesn't have my memory or attention to detail; the "normal" person can't look at a page of text in English and spot the typos without even trying; the "normal" person finds logic puzzles confusing, not relaxing. The "normal" person isn't "broken" - and neither am I.

I agree that there's something very much missing in my social wiring, but I don't agree that that makes my brain messed up. It works well in the way that it works, which happens to be a different way from most people's.