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Sweetleaf
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01 May 2021, 3:02 am

Probably not but autistic people can probably still be conditioned.


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10 Jun 2021, 10:57 am

magz wrote:
Could deafness be conditioned out of a person?
Some people likely can be conditioned to behave like they weren't deaf in some situations if they can compensate with other senses. But, I hope, you see my analogy?


Unlike deafness, autism is usually just a series of symptoms with no clear root cause. Without the symptoms there is no autism. It's like pruning the branches of a tree with no trunk. In theory, provided someone is given incredibly good help, autism might be possible to condition out of very mild autistics.

Lets use another analogy of depression after failing some exams. While being a mental health problem it has a clear cause and a clear solution. In other words, study harder next year and pass them.

Lets use a second analogy of depression that appears seemingly out of nowhere without any cause. The treatment for it will be tricky but assuming somehow a magical pill removes all symptoms of depression and makes the sufferer feeling happy and bubbly again like they were before, does that mean the depression is gone as no root cause for it was dealt with? Some might argue yes of course, all the symptoms of depression are gone. Some might argue no as there was no clear cut cause or beginning of the depression to address in the first place and depression that appears for no reason can be a sign the sufferer is just predisposed to it and nothing can be done to stop it reappearing from time to time.

It's a subject that can be seen as philosophical as psychological but boils down to does removing the symptoms of autism "cures" it or does it have a root cause somewhere in the body that is yet to be discovered making it currently untreatable until it is?. At the moment there is extremely little in the way of evidence to suggest autism has a cause.



magz
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10 Jun 2021, 11:15 am

Symptoms of autism are not just behavioral. Even if there is no identified one "cause of autism", the differences in how the brain processes information are not something you can condition out of a person.

Sensory issues are not behavioral.
Hyper-focus is not behavioral.
Deficits in social intuition are not behavioral.
Attention to details and overlooking contexts are not behavioral.

You can learn to cope and have happy life in the society, with some luck maybe even without any official diagnosis - but you won't have NT brain no matter how hard you try.

PS - don't confuse feeling down or even grief with depression. Feeling down sometimes is normal, grief can be the healthiest reaction to some situations.


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12 Jun 2021, 11:55 am

magz wrote:
Symptoms of autism are not just behavioral. Even if there is no identified one "cause of autism", the differences in how the brain processes information are not something you can condition out of a person.

Sensory issues are not behavioral.
Hyper-focus is not behavioral.
Deficits in social intuition are not behavioral.
Attention to details and overlooking contexts are not behavioral.

You can learn to cope and have happy life in the society, with some luck maybe even without any official diagnosis - but you won't have NT brain no matter how hard you try.

PS - don't confuse feeling down or even grief with depression. Feeling down sometimes is normal, grief can be the healthiest reaction to some situations.


There are a lot of non autistics with those issues you listed though. Each of them, other than the difficulties is social intuition are not prerequisite for autism. Autism in a nutshell is just underdeveloped social skills. It's essential to have underdeveloped social skills for a diagnosis of mild autism (I say mild as condition it out of someone implies it needs to be mild). In theory, it might be possible to condition autism out of a very mild autistic on that basis alone.

Sensory issues, hyper focus, attention to detail and overlooking context are separate issues to autism from my perspective but seem to often go with autism but many autistics escape some or all of those problems.