[fein]

I find it rather annoying that people like myself get lumped into this as well when such broad definitions are being used.

Do I prefer to be alone/ in a small group most of the time? Hell yes! It's more exclusive and I get more work done. In a social situation, less people means more signal, less noise.

Do I sometimes completely avoid social situations? Of course! But it's solely due to the fact that sometimes, I just can't be arsed to care about dealing with someones trite problems.

When push comes to shove and I need to be social with large groups, there isn't an issue aside from the usual inherent "stage fright", but this is a quality that can affect anyone that doesn't spend the majority of their time as a public speaker.

Some of us exhibit the "qualities" in the article purely by choice, not by challenge. I'm pretty sure at some point in my youth, some poor misguided soul tried to diagnose me with some placement on the spectrum, but I would say that nowadays this incorrect classification is more common than not. Had someone told me every day that I was an autist, maybe I would have ended up exhibiting more of those behaviors simply by association. Maybe we should make a slight effort to stop telling schoolchildren that they're special or different, and more time letting people fend for themselves a bit first.

[a_c_s]

You clearly don't understand how the diagnosis of these things works.

There is a spectrum of behaviors, raging from healthy to problematic.

Drinking alcohol has a range too: from abstaining to enjoying in moderation to alcoholism. Neither abstaining nor moderate enjoyment are problematic. While the parallel is awkward, just as occasionally having one beer too many doesn't constitute alcoholism, occasionally avoiding social situations is different from always avoiding them (the reasons for avoiding them are important too!).

If you don't understand the criteria for determining when a behavior is problematic enough to warrant a symptom and when it is not, and you read through the DSM-IV (which defines mental disorders), you will think you qualify for many of the disorders listed: in all likelihood you do not qualify for any of them. Why are the definitions written this way? Because mental disorders are often characterized by normal behaviors happening to an extreme degree (being anxious before a big potentially career-altering presentation is healthy, having panic attacks as a result of everyday situations is problematic). Also because the DSM-IV is meant to be used by trained professionals who already understand this distinction.

[fein]

My issue is not with the vetted characterizations of symptoms in DSM-IV, but with the nature of the original article and pseudo psychologists like some middle school counselors. This is a subject that needs to be treated with some form of scientific rigor, not feel good fluff pieces.

[eliasmacpherson]

Perversion also has a spectrum. Calling it a spectrum allows you to talk about two people, one with an extreme condition, and another relatively normal, in the same breath. One would wonder why one would be inclined to use language like that, unprofessional almost.

[tfb]

You really hit the nail on the head here and said exactly what I (and probably others here) have been thinking.

As much as it's a very humanly thing to do, I think it's ridiculous to try to lump people into categories, especially when the differences are so minute that it's almost as if there's one way that people should be, and if someone doesn't fit that mold exactly, they must be classified as different. This leads to unnecessary (and unintentional) segregation and gives common folk more reason to disproportionately view and treat certain individuals differently.

[city41]

It's really not like that though. People with Asperger Syndrome behave and act very different from "normal" people. It's not simply a different personality, an introversion preference or anything like that, they genuinely have a very different brain.

[tfb]

It really is like that though. Most people genuinely do have quite different brains from each other, regardless of whether or not they fall within the autistic spectrum; but that's not reason enough to label them based on some common ground so that people who happen to fall within the majority can have some way to differentiate themselves and explicitly think, "That guy is abnormal because his brain doesn't focus on the all same things mine does."

And I chose the word abnormal because it sometimes has negative connotations and probably best represents the way most people think, i.e., afraid of what they're unfamiliar with. But imagine if the Asperger brain was actually the norm. Would that mean we should label people whose brains focus more on social interaction and reproduction than rules and solving problems?

Maybe I'm just uneducated and the label already exists, but sometimes I feel like we should put some specific label on "normal brained" people (other than the word normal or "neurotypical") to kind of even out the stigma. Perhaps my point of view is distorted but when I see people categorized like they are with Asperger Syndrome, I always get the sense that "normal" people look and treat them like they're aliens or like they're retarded or it's almost as if they're lab rats in some scientific study, all because of the "Asperger Syndrome" label... or even worse now, "Autistic Spectrum Disorder".

[falcolas]

The problem with this is that you're thinking that these symptoms define aspergers. They don't - they're just symptoms, resulting out of other issues which you (and everyone else) can't see.

Just like every other medical and mental disorder, just because you have some of the symptoms doesn't mean that you have the actual condition. Jeff Foxworthy has a great joke about this - seeing a program on a disease, his wife says "I have everyone of these symptoms! I've got it..." To which he responds "No, you do not have testicular cancer!"

If you don't have aspergers, great! I'm happy for you; there are many things about being NT that I wish I had as well. But at the same time, don't classify aspergers as not being a real problem just because you share some symptoms without the underlying cause.

[chrisrhoden]

The unfortunate thing here is that, as you point out, nobody can see the cause. We have some general ideas, but they're not even very good ideas.

The point that the parent was getting at was that our entire diagnostic process is to measure the symptoms. This is the case for almost all disorders of the brain, and it makes your Jeff Foxworthy quote especially interesting - if the only way that we can determine whether someone has a given condition is self reporting, then what's to say she doesn't? Everyone has a brain.

I think that people who beat this drum are missing an important point - it doesn't matter whether or not someone who doesn't need special treatment or attention has the underlying disorder - by definition, they don't. Brain disorders don't become brain disorders until they have an impact on your life or the lives of the people around you. This is spelled out plainly in the DSM. Even if you have exactly the same chemical condition as someone with Aspergers, unless your life can be improved by treatment, you don't have it. This will continue to be the case until we know for sure what's going on. It's impossible to know how someone else experiences pain, as well, but that doesn't make their suffering less valid.

[cbhl]

I agree that the article perpetuates broad over-generalizations about people with Autism Spectrum Disorders.

On the other hand, if you are high-functioning enough for the advice in the article to not apply to you, I would also hope that you are high-functioning enough to tell your manager(s) and co-workers what accommodations you do and don't need.