Does Dr Brennan in 'Bones' have Asperger? Or something else?

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13 Jun 2011, 6:53 am

Just curious, while she has facial expressions she does display some symptoms.



thewrll
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13 Jun 2011, 7:02 am

Nope just bluntness. Zach had aspergers.


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13 Jun 2011, 7:19 am

thewrll wrote:
Nope just bluntness. Zach had aspergers.


Are you sure? There's many concepts and emotions which she doesn't understand.


What about Dr House?



thewrll
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13 Jun 2011, 7:42 am

No and Wilson agrees that House doesnt have aspergers. He has just been that way since his wife didnt have his leg amputated. The creator explains that Brennan doesnt have aspergers. I dont know the article.


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tek-trek
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22 Apr 2012, 6:18 pm

Yes, Dr. Temperance "Bones" Brennan PhD PhD PhD, and Dr. Zack Addy PhD were both written to have Asperger's Syndrome.

Search Google, with the quotes, for:

"ellen gray boreanaz says bones is not procedural"



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22 Apr 2012, 8:18 pm

I think so I mean not even NT can be that logical all the time she is very logical and that makes me think she is a aspie.



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27 Apr 2012, 5:00 am

I think Bones could be. Most notably, she often chooses logic over emotion which gets her into minor trouble with her friends. I had forgotten about Zack until the other poster mentioned it. He also had a very logic driven personality.



Laney2005
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02 May 2012, 8:07 pm

Ahh, the question arises! I think a good friend of mine put it very well when he said that she has chosen to have autism. She closed off her emotions when she was separated from Russ and she thought both her parents were dead. Abandonment will do that to a person. Max is very clear that she wasn't the way she is now when she was a child. Although she may have some traits of AS, I don't think it's far enough back in her history to really count. That being said, I certainly do understand her!



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02 May 2012, 8:19 pm

I thought they confirmed in one of the early episodes that she does have Aspergers by straight out saying it?



TM
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03 May 2012, 12:35 pm

thewrll wrote:
No and Wilson agrees that House doesnt have aspergers. He has just been that way since his wife didnt have his leg amputated. The creator explains that Brennan doesnt have aspergers. I dont know the article.


House has more sociopathic traits than he does aspie traits.



gromm
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16 May 2016, 11:54 pm

I've read elsewhere that the director of the show did intentionally base Dr. Brennan's character on "an aspie friend" as he put it. And the actress who plays the character does appear to go out of her way to portray Dr. Brennan as someone on the Autism spectrum, in certain specific ways:

1. She's clearly uncomfortable with eye contact. On the show, she's typically looking everywhere but the other person. The way she moves her eyes is very common with Autistics.
2. The tone and tempo of her speaking is unusual to neurotypical people.
3. Her social awkwardness in detecting and understanding nuance in other people's emotions. Sarcasm usually goes right over her head, but I seem to recall a few lines in there about her struggle to understand it better.
4. She has her core obsessions in her field, but like a lot of TV scientists, she "knows everything about science". This is more of a TV Trope than it is an aspect of her Autism. Most Autistics are the exact opposite, and hyper-focused.
5. Scientists and engineers are more likely to be autistic than the rest of the population, or Autism Causes Vaccines (I wish I could post a link to that SMBC strip, but the board won't let me). ;)

Other people have said that she can't be autistic because she *does* have friends, but that's a red herring. Lots of Autistic people have friends, especially when they're very smart and they work in a field that highly values intelligence. Like science or computers. Her social awkwardness does strain these relationships, but nerds (and I mean that in the most loving way, as I identify as such) have a tendency towards being quite accepting of other people's eccentricities.

Another way that people think is evidence that she's not autistic is her own capacity for feeling or expressing emotion. Again, this is just a common misconception. Many (most?) people on the spectrum actually have trouble with emotional regulation. They either feel their emotions much bigger than everyone else, or they have trouble expressing it appropriately.