| > I maintain that they are not the same. I didn't say they were the same, I said they were different. Only the behavior is the same. For a given behavior -- intense focus on a few activities or one activity -- the Grit contingent will celebrate it, and the Asperger contingent will issue a mental illness diagnosis. > Asperger's behaviour - social inability. Says nothing about passion for long term goals. First, Aspies achieve more than average people because their focus produces long-term results as an effect of their focus. You're confusing causes and effects. Being a world-class concert pianist or violinist is not a symptom of ASperger's, it's an effect, an outcome, that springs from intense focus, and intense focus is a symptom of Asperger's. Second, are you really not getting this? Psychology is driven by opinion, not evidence. For a given behavior, you will get two (or more) assessments from different psychological camps. Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Thomas Jefferson, Bill Gates are (a) famous, creative people, and (b) Aspies, based on the same set of behaviors. All that's different is which mental health expert is speaking. "Famous People with Aspergers Syndrome": http://www.disabled-world.com/artman/publish/article_2086.sh... "Famous People with Aspergers Syndrome": http://www.aspergerssyndromeparent.com/famous-people-with-as... The Grit theory is an obvious acknowledgment that restricted interests sometimes produces amazing results, but the Asperger's people already knew that, while telling Aspies how mentally ill they are. It is all about how one chooses to interpret the same behavior. > I believe only ONE of them describes intense focus - grit. The other, Asperger's, describes social inability. You're mistaken: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asperger_syndrome Quote: "characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction, alongside restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests." Note "restricted ... interests" in the above definition of Asperger's. The Grit contingent emphasizes the achievement of long-term goals, the Asperger contingent emphasizes social ineptitude. Both are describing the same behavior in different ways. It's not as though this is an original idea -- it's why Asperger's is being abandoned as a diagnosis (too many successful people are being stigmatized with a pointless mental illness diagnosis). "A Powerful Identity, a Vanishing Diagnosis": http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/03/health/03asperger.html?pag... |
Yes, I really am not getting this. Earlier I thought you were saying that the two were in fact the same thing, but now you seem to be saying that they are different and they happen to have similar symptoms; although, frankly, the difference between an Aspergic obsessed with something and a passionate non-Aspergic obsessed about something are like chalk and cheese; a few minutes spent with each talking about their interest makes the two unmistakable - if it's identical behaviour, how come I can tell the two apart? How come I can think of heaps of people with grit who are not Aspergic and would not be described as such by even the most diagnosis-happy psychiatrist?
I think what you're saying is that they are different, and that it's possible to sometimes mistake one for the other, and some psychiatrists make this mistake. Is that what you're saying?