Jerry Seinfeld thinks he is on the spectrum

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I'm willing to accept he has mild autism to go along with his OCD

Thanks Cyberdad I didn't know that about the real Rainman, that is really interesting information.

http://www.wrongplanet.net/article450.html

Yep...to reiterate a previous post:

It turns out the "real Rainman" wasn't autistic at all. He had a total absence of the carpus callosum section of the brain, I believe. I forgot the name of the syndrome which he had as a result.

He was an extreme savant--yet he had intellectual challenges. He loved the fact that he was famous; he made a concerted effort to be charismatic--and he succeeded somewhat.

The character wasn't based entirely on a single real individual with autism. I know there were at least two people with autism who the creators used as inspiration.

Interestingly, the movie was originally not about an individual with autism. This was changed at a certain point.

True.....Peek was portrayed, in the media, as the primary inspiration, though.

Yes, Rain Man in fiction is different to the the "real" Rain Man.

As said above, the movie depiction was based on several people with autism. Plus, they had a doctor helping them with it too.

It's an accurate portrayal of a moderate case with savant abilities.

My .02 on the idea that ASD is common (which may or may not be what you're saying, but I want to say this anyway).

The premise of a developmental disorder, or any sort of clinically significant condition or disorder, is that a person is positioned near the edge of the bell curve in the respective trait(s) associated with the condition. If this American culture is hopelessly nearing an epidemic of social awkwardness and and short attention span (alluding to two DDs), then someone with moderate social awkwardness has no basis for extra considerations for his or her respective afflictions, that person is simply running along side their neighbors in their struggles, they are not behind, and would not struggle so much to integrate with society. Everyone is technically on the spectrum, not everyone, inherently, can be at the edge of the bell curve, someone struggles are either typical or atypical, more or less. ...so unless you're implying that our digital saturation has caused an epidemic of poor, autistic-like social skills, in which case, is merely self-inflicted by someone by people with NTs brain...that is the only context you could say autism isn't that uncommon.

On Jerry Seinfeld:

If Jerry Seinfeld has researched ASD in it's entirety (I would say reading Tony Attwood's book in full as meeting that criteria), then society owes him the benefit of the doubt. If it's wrong of me to deny him the benefit of the doubt by what I know right now, fair enough. However if he is one of the many casually hearing this buzzword with connotations of awkwardness and being misunderstood, which caused the proverbial light bulb to go off, and that alone is enough grounds in his mind to publicly associate himself with autism, then in principle, he is being unfair to the autistic community... that would be generalization and laziness on his part, plain and simple.