So, you had to read the Macbeth candle monologue in grade school, too, eh?
Shakespeare; are you kidding? Around here they don't even make you read Dickens anymore, because it's written in a dead language that nobody can penetrate:
In future you will not be considered normal until you have collected the minimum requisite number of abnormal diagnoses.
This will be pretty easy since every spectrum extends infinitely; and everyone exhibits some degree of every symptom of every disorder. It will just be a question of paying the proper administrative fee to insure having all the "cool" syndromes with the best emo potential.
Anyone who indicates as being "well adjusted" will be deemed a real "sicko" (yes, that will be the actual term used in the DSM) and subjected to electroshock therapy until they can at least manage to be a bed wetter or something.
Yeah, welcome to the club. I got troll modded the last time I pointed out that most of psychology was unscientific hoodoo voodoo too, even though one can easily demonstrate that as fact scientifically. If it's any consolation to you Feynman would get troll modded in here as well, having had some rather pointed things to say about the "scientific" basis of psychology.
But then I have been informed that "science" is now some shit we make up as a "consensus," rather than what can be measured whether the consensus likes it or not. I got the memo late because I studied science back when it was taught in the science department, rather than in poli-sci as it is nowadays.
. ..regardless of the shape and movement of the container, it contains all the same pieces.
This is why I am a vegetarian. Pigs are people too. I've even been on quite friendly terms with one that picked me out and started following me around town. No, it was obviously not your typical American town.
Come to think of it, it was a much better peer object than most humans, although I get along best with cats.
What aspies, and everybody in general, do not lack is awareness. What is different, is where they choose to focus their awareness. Read that carefully. It's very important.
In other posts I have been more careful to say apparent lack of awareness.
Yes, i knew people look each other in the eyes.
A question to ask is why you knew this when it isn't true. In fact the easiest way I know of to make people very uncomfortable is to look them in the eyes. When a woman says "My eyes aren't down there" she doesn't really mean you to look her in the eyes, she means you to stop looking her in the boobs.
The goal is to teach EVERYONE how to first free their awareness and then focus it on whatever they wish.
As a Zen Buddhist music teacher I can agree with this whole heartedly. The heart of learning to play music is learning how to be aware and of what. See also Keith Code's book on the soft science of motorcycle road racing, which I have refered to before. It is about the limitations of awareness engendered by focus. If you are focusing on the wrong thing when playing an instrument you might play badly and suffer an RSI. If you are focusing on the wrong thing when road racing a motorcycle you might suffer an HDI (Horrible Death Injury. See the Encylopedia Dramatica for a photo, but only if you have a strong stomach for looking at stomachs).
The researcher and the patient perceive the world in totally different ways, and until each understands how the other perceives then no real dialogue can take place.
Limited by the fact that what we can perceive is limited by what we can perceive. See Philip K. Dick.
See Philip K. Dick run. Run Philip K. Dick . . . ummmmmmmmmm, sorry. I got carried away; and should be.
I'm still trying to learn what I need to do to help him to be more aware of the needs of others. If not empathize, at least recognize that they have the same rights as him. I've been trying for several years, and it isn't getting any easier.
You may have to come to terms with the fact that this may not be possible. You have to remember that it is a form of autism. He is not aware because he is not aware. Although he is not the same, he is kin to the child who sits in the corner and does not even react if you approach him from behind and poke him with a pin. There is nothing you can do to help that child be more aware of the pin. Think about that.
This is not a happy thing to come to terms with, but fighting against coming to terms with it will only make life all the harder for both of you; and it's going to be hard enough as it is. Do what you can, but do not drive both of you crazy over what you cannot, because he cannot.
Reading many of the comments in this thread... Why are people so unwilling to accept that Asperger's Syndrome *is* a real condition?
For every person who actually suffers from Asperger's Syndrome there are at least a thousand who have self-diagnosed themselves as such, when everyone else can plainly see they are just assholes. They muddy the waters I'm afraid. Perhaps the DSM-V should add an Asshole Syndrome to keep the issue more clearly defined.
. ..or somehow know an awful lot about Aspergers. ..
I repeat, I have maintained a friendly relationship with one for decades, a man other grown men will literally hide from if they see him coming. I also tutor them in math and music, because they want me to, because they can be at ease around me, something they aren't used to and they like it.
. ..since I (without any form of autism, to my knowledge)can analyse social interactions analytically, and fake them.. ..
Perhaps you should change your user name to Clever Hans. You are actually observeing and reacting to extremely sublte clues that you are not even aware of, all while drawing on a wellspring of "innate" understanding of what is and is not appropriate behavior. An autistic spectrum person does not have that wellspring and may not even be able to recognize the look of extreme horror on the face of the person they are talking to and continue to blithely "fake" it "successfully", where you would realize that your faking it wasn't working and adopt a new strategy of faking it until you found one that worked.
Which isn't faking it. That's how it's really done. Your toolkit for "faking" it is different from theirs. You have bash, sed, awk and perl; and know how to use them.
They have Gnome, and do not. They can, with a bit of work, at least learn to use Gnome better, but they cannot learn to use command line. Because that is what autism is. A disfunction of certain kinds of perception/interaction. An apparent inability to understand the very tools.
The only way for you to know whether what you see is true is to actually observe the effects of someone with the syndrome talking with someone else - and I somehow doubt you've done that.
Someday you'll have to do lunch with me and my Aspie friend, but you'll need a very high embaressment tolerance for the way he interacts with the waitress. Seriously. The behavior of Aspies is chronically inappropriate, because they do not see what you see; and never have. They do not see and do not see that they do not see, because they have not seen. To one degree of another their world is closed in upon themselves. They are insensate. Yeah, they can often learn to mechanistically get through a first date with a chance for a second, so long as the date follows the script. You can only keep that sort of thing up for so long before the cracks start to show.
Thus to interact "positively" with an autistic you must entirely abandon your concept of appropriate behavior, accept them for what they are, and follow their lead (which often leads straight to a double bind).
In point of fact, you must fake it. They live in an alternate reality you have not, because you cannot, visit. Just as they have not visited yours. They are more alien than a cat or dog. They are rather like shark. They understand you like a shark understands a cat.
Yes, I have interacted with shark in the wild; and helped the crew of the Calypso haul the carcasses of the ones where the interaction did not go smoothly up on the beach. They never show you that part on The Undersea World of.
Came as a bit of shock to me, but then I didn't know any Aspies at the time. I was young and naive.
Better eating on a hammerhead then on an Aspie though. I wasn't a vegetarian yet. Just so you know, iguana tastes like . ..lizard. So much for the old saw.
Good though.
And remember, always act appropriately here on Slashdot (with the highest density of Aspies on the web), because the Webernets are serious fucking business. Fortunately we have the GNAA Frist P0sTerS to show us how it's done right.
. ..he absolutely cannot recognize the subtle signs that people show to indicate that he's not being recieved well.
Like screaming and running from the room, or threatening to beat the crap out of him? You can't be that subtle. They don't get it. People should be more direct with him.
"Oh, she is smiling, but her knuckles are white and her tendons are standing out on her hand and she is hunching her shoulders and she hasn't said anything except to nod and look around so I think she is nervous and wants to get away."
You have just described every waitress my oldest friend has "charmed." You can't clue him in. If you try to be tactful and subtle about it just goes over his head. If you try to be direct he gets mad and then goes off on a 15 minute monolog full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. What woman wouldn't get in line for a bit o' that?
He really is a good friend in other respects, but there's no way in hell I could ever share living quarters with him.
But you're taking an extreme case of Aspieness, that has to be the MOST extreme Aspergers. ..
Extreme enough that he died young of it. That is fairly uncommon, at least these days; and the example was meant to be illustrative, not definative, although I actually know a guy like that. The flip side is his history as a blues player, also indicative of Asperger's. I'll take the blues, since I didn't actually have to put up with him.
Think of it this way... Imagine there are many ways to express social information, in Aspie land we need it broken down to us and explained logically, we CAN understand socializing. ..
The essential problem being that socializing is really only logical on the evolutionary scale, not the street level scale. When you can only approach it logically you cannot really approach it, only "fake it" as another poster puts it. Learning tricks to give the similacrum of interacting normally. If you don't feel it, you don't really get it. Try to think about clutching a car through a purely logical process. I have maintained the decades long relationship with my oldest friend by accepting him at his level, but it can take a tremendous amount of social energy on my part (including a bit of sureptitious apologizing to waitresses he has been particularly "charming" to) and very much limiting the way we socially interact. Joint projects - right out. Of course he can't even approach it logically, he just keeps bouncing off his own mirrors. He is a clueless jerk (without an Internet connection) who's becoming rather more than a bit misogynistic in his old age. Other than that he's actually a good friend and smarter than some of the Nobels I've known. Go figure.
I've got a narcisist friend I've been able to handle for a few years the same way, but I don't know how much longer I can keep it up. The "safe" topics of conversation keep shrinking. I don't know any way to deal with borderlines; sooner or later they're going to shoot themselves - or you, if you don't shoot yourself first.
There are worse things in this world than Asperger's. But I'm afraid I still wouldn't want you as a roomate; and that's the way it is.
My friend was in his 40s before he was diagnosed, but we "all" knew there was an austitic spectrum problem all along.
I think more people could learn to deal with us.
I don't know. You really don't understand how hard that is. It is very, very hard, even if totally accepting of it.
human... The more closely we can approximate neurotypical reactions and behaviors, the 'creepier' we seem to get, because the subtle differences stand out in contrast.
Yes. My friend who thinks he is charming tries to be charming. The harder he tries, the creepier he gets. He often tries very hard.
You, sir, are a jerk. You can empathize with an animal because you concede that they will behave differently. By making no concessions for differing behavior from other human beings, you will find yourself unable to interact with a tremendous number of people.
Did I not mention that he is my oldest friend? We're talking decades here. I get along with pretty much anything that is willing to get along, not only across social boundries, but across the boundries of species. The essential problem is that people in the autistic spectrum do not know how to get along. Cats and dogs do, so long as you follow their rules for getting along (although I actually know one autistic spectrum cat).
How does one go about getting along with someone who does not know how to get along; and does not really understand that he does not know how to get along? Someone who can be a complete fucking asshole to someone and yell at them for being a complete fucking asshole?
This very thread serves as example. I don't expect you to understand. That is the problem. IRL I get along with people in the autistic spectrum, to the extent that such is even possible, by avoiding this conversation.
Arguing with an autistic is like arguing with someone who has been blind since birth about "red." I'm only doing it because this is the Internets. The Internets are not a place free of social rules, but they are certainly a place where they are modified and can be experimented with.
I don't have to like you, you don't have to like me; and that's ok too. I prefer to get along, but I don't get all angsty if I don't.
. ..there is a reason why one speaks of the "autistic spectrum" of which the asperger [spectrum] is a part.
Everything that isn't quantized is a spectrum; and there is nothing more spectrumy than human behavior. The question becomes when to define a behavior as clinical and there is certainly a distressing tendency to clinicalize everything.
The DSM has jumped the shark with ODD, for instance. The spectrum is being slowly schmeared across the entire population that doesn't simply conform to autocratic control.
On the other hand one could well argue that my friend with the frontal lobotomy is quantized, not part of a spectrum. There is a physically definable malfunction of the brain that can be associated with change in behavior.
Just as there is a spectrum in people's running ability; and then there is the guy with no legs. The question is whether truely autistic behaviors are actually part of the spectrum, or quantizable; have a mechanism. Hence the article in question.
I am not a clincial psychologist and do not treat Aspies, per se, but I do tutor them. I did not set out to do so, it "just happened," because of an ability to deal with them greater than the norm and word has got around that if you have a "problem" child who wants to learn violin or math you might be advised to give me a call.
Perhaps blindness would be a better example than missing limbs. Autistic disorders revolve around certain forms of insensability and there is a spectrum of sightedness.
However, while there is a certain grey area around the line where the sighted vs. blind may be drawn there comes a point rather close to either side of that line where there is a very distinct difference and you know it when you "see" it, even if it cannot be precisely defined.
To the extent that I "get along" with people in the autistic spectrum it is because "other" does not bother me and autictics are "other."
Thing is, even their other is other. It is not just that they are outsiders, it is that they are outside.
If you are an outsider and have a small social clique of other outsiders you aren't autistic, you're just a "weirdo." That's ok, so am I.
I'm not happy with my original post. I'm even more unhappy with this one. I'm not sure how to do better. Such is the nature of dealing with autism. It is not a happy thing to do.
. ..it seems like you're being pretty rude towards him.
You are confusing something you call "civility" with social skills. Rudeness does not imply a lack of such social skills.
If you didn't mean to be, then maybe you don't have the greatest social skills either.
In fact, only those with good social skills can deliberartely and effectively insult someone. The finest point of social skill is knowing when rudeness is socially appropriate and knowing the difference between simply being annoying and actually being rude.
Even ants cannot simply all get along, and that's the way it is.
. ..such as the tendancy to walk on tip-toe instead of with feet flat on the floor. ..
Have you considered the possibility that you might just be a ninja?
You can study that with scientific rigor - and whilst it won't ever be a 'natural' thing - you'll be able to fake it pretty well.
No, you can't and no you won't. The irony is that you think this because you are an Aspie. You do not percieve your failure. Stuff you don't even know is happening gives you away quite quickly. It is really the social skills of the other person that makes your interactions appear to be more normal. They are working very hard at fitting you in.
Make sure that people who are close to you know that you don't do well at picking up subtle cues from speech. It's no use someone dropping subtle hints that they want you to do something - you'll never notice them.
Q.E.D.
Conversely I cannot really study you with any scientific rigor, except from the outside as I would a shark. I can define your behavior, but cannot "get in your head." I can sympathize, but I cannot empathize, because I can empathize. I can empathize with a cat, or dog, or hamster, because although their social structures may be a bit different from the human, they have them.
I will always be outside of your world; and you will always be outside of mine.
Slashdot Mirror
"Excellent, some piece of technology that can magically make my problem go away without me expending any effort to try and actually solve it."
That's how we ended up with all these fucking computers in the first place.
KFG
So, you had to read the Macbeth candle monologue in grade school, too, eh?
Shakespeare; are you kidding? Around here they don't even make you read Dickens anymore, because it's written in a dead language that nobody can penetrate:
Late Modern English.
KFG
If your customer is not the #1 thing on your mind at all times, don't even bother!
Didn't you get the memo? We replaced all the customers with consumers.
KFG
But society made them do it.
KFG
In future you will not be considered normal until you have collected the minimum requisite number of abnormal diagnoses.
This will be pretty easy since every spectrum extends infinitely; and everyone exhibits some degree of every symptom of every disorder. It will just be a question of paying the proper administrative fee to insure having all the "cool" syndromes with the best emo potential.
Anyone who indicates as being "well adjusted" will be deemed a real "sicko" (yes, that will be the actual term used in the DSM) and subjected to electroshock therapy until they can at least manage to be a bed wetter or something.
KFG
Yeah, welcome to the club. I got troll modded the last time I pointed out that most of psychology was unscientific hoodoo voodoo too, even though one can easily demonstrate that as fact scientifically. If it's any consolation to you Feynman would get troll modded in here as well, having had some rather pointed things to say about the "scientific" basis of psychology.
But then I have been informed that "science" is now some shit we make up as a "consensus," rather than what can be measured whether the consensus likes it or not. I got the memo late because I studied science back when it was taught in the science department, rather than in poli-sci as it is nowadays.
KFG
. . .regardless of the shape and movement of the container, it contains all the same pieces.
This is why I am a vegetarian. Pigs are people too. I've even been on quite friendly terms with one that picked me out and started following me around town. No, it was obviously not your typical American town.
Come to think of it, it was a much better peer object than most humans, although I get along best with cats.
KFG
"It's way more complicated than that."
Ain't it always?
KFG
Now it's a comfortable balance of both society and i being screwed up.
Society is fucking psychotic. Almost by definition. It is mass hysteria.
KFG
I think you should talk to a professional about your feelings and thoughts about your son.
If I had any feelings at all about my son I would agree with you, because I would be psychotic.
KFG
Well, catch me when you do. I'm sure I'll give you sufficient opportunity and I don't mind.
KFG
I thought Robert Johnson got slipped a poisoned drink, not knifed by someone screaming at him...
I was trying to protect the reputation of the poisoner. It was a girly thing to do. A real man would knifed him while screaming.
KFG
What aspies, and everybody in general, do not lack is awareness. What is different, is where they choose to focus their awareness. Read that carefully. It's very important.
In other posts I have been more careful to say apparent lack of awareness.
Yes, i knew people look each other in the eyes.
A question to ask is why you knew this when it isn't true. In fact the easiest way I know of to make people very uncomfortable is to look them in the eyes. When a woman says "My eyes aren't down there" she doesn't really mean you to look her in the eyes, she means you to stop looking her in the boobs.
The goal is to teach EVERYONE how to first free their awareness and then focus it on whatever they wish.
As a Zen Buddhist music teacher I can agree with this whole heartedly. The heart of learning to play music is learning how to be aware and of what. See also Keith Code's book on the soft science of motorcycle road racing, which I have refered to before. It is about the limitations of awareness engendered by focus. If you are focusing on the wrong thing when playing an instrument you might play badly and suffer an RSI. If you are focusing on the wrong thing when road racing a motorcycle you might suffer an HDI (Horrible Death Injury. See the Encylopedia Dramatica for a photo, but only if you have a strong stomach for looking at stomachs).
The researcher and the patient perceive the world in totally different ways, and until each understands how the other perceives then no real dialogue can take place.
Limited by the fact that what we can perceive is limited by what we can perceive. See Philip K. Dick.
See Philip K. Dick run. Run Philip K. Dick . . . ummmmmmmmmm, sorry. I got carried away; and should be.
KFG
I'm betting that it isn't even your son, but probably your step-son you're talking about.
I'll put down $100 against $20 that I don't even have a son or step-son and Robert Johnson was dead before I was born.
KFG
I'm still trying to learn what I need to do to help him to be more aware of the needs of others. If not empathize, at least recognize that they have the same rights as him. I've been trying for several years, and it isn't getting any easier.
You may have to come to terms with the fact that this may not be possible. You have to remember that it is a form of autism. He is not aware because he is not aware. Although he is not the same, he is kin to the child who sits in the corner and does not even react if you approach him from behind and poke him with a pin. There is nothing you can do to help that child be more aware of the pin. Think about that.
This is not a happy thing to come to terms with, but fighting against coming to terms with it will only make life all the harder for both of you; and it's going to be hard enough as it is. Do what you can, but do not drive both of you crazy over what you cannot, because he cannot.
Reading many of the comments in this thread... Why are people so unwilling to accept that Asperger's Syndrome *is* a real condition?
For every person who actually suffers from Asperger's Syndrome there are at least a thousand who have self-diagnosed themselves as such, when everyone else can plainly see they are just assholes. They muddy the waters I'm afraid. Perhaps the DSM-V should add an Asshole Syndrome to keep the issue more clearly defined.
KFG
. . .or somehow know an awful lot about Aspergers. . .
.since I (without any form of autism, to my knowledge)can analyse social interactions analytically, and fake them.. . .
.lizard. So much for the old saw.
I repeat, I have maintained a friendly relationship with one for decades, a man other grown men will literally hide from if they see him coming. I also tutor them in math and music, because they want me to, because they can be at ease around me, something they aren't used to and they like it.
. .
Perhaps you should change your user name to Clever Hans. You are actually observeing and reacting to extremely sublte clues that you are not even aware of, all while drawing on a wellspring of "innate" understanding of what is and is not appropriate behavior. An autistic spectrum person does not have that wellspring and may not even be able to recognize the look of extreme horror on the face of the person they are talking to and continue to blithely "fake" it "successfully", where you would realize that your faking it wasn't working and adopt a new strategy of faking it until you found one that worked.
Which isn't faking it. That's how it's really done. Your toolkit for "faking" it is different from theirs. You have bash, sed, awk and perl; and know how to use them.
They have Gnome, and do not. They can, with a bit of work, at least learn to use Gnome better, but they cannot learn to use command line. Because that is what autism is. A disfunction of certain kinds of perception/interaction. An apparent inability to understand the very tools.
The only way for you to know whether what you see is true is to actually observe the effects of someone with the syndrome talking with someone else - and I somehow doubt you've done that.
Someday you'll have to do lunch with me and my Aspie friend, but you'll need a very high embaressment tolerance for the way he interacts with the waitress. Seriously. The behavior of Aspies is chronically inappropriate, because they do not see what you see; and never have. They do not see and do not see that they do not see, because they have not seen. To one degree of another their world is closed in upon themselves. They are insensate. Yeah, they can often learn to mechanistically get through a first date with a chance for a second, so long as the date follows the script. You can only keep that sort of thing up for so long before the cracks start to show.
Thus to interact "positively" with an autistic you must entirely abandon your concept of appropriate behavior, accept them for what they are, and follow their lead (which often leads straight to a double bind).
In point of fact, you must fake it. They live in an alternate reality you have not, because you cannot, visit. Just as they have not visited yours. They are more alien than a cat or dog. They are rather like shark. They understand you like a shark understands a cat.
Yes, I have interacted with shark in the wild; and helped the crew of the Calypso haul the carcasses of the ones where the interaction did not go smoothly up on the beach. They never show you that part on The Undersea World of.
Came as a bit of shock to me, but then I didn't know any Aspies at the time. I was young and naive.
Better eating on a hammerhead then on an Aspie though. I wasn't a vegetarian yet. Just so you know, iguana tastes like . .
Good though.
And remember, always act appropriately here on Slashdot (with the highest density of Aspies on the web), because the Webernets are serious fucking business. Fortunately we have the GNAA Frist P0sTerS to show us how it's done right.
KFG
. . .he absolutely cannot recognize the subtle signs that people show to indicate that he's not being recieved well.
Like screaming and running from the room, or threatening to beat the crap out of him? You can't be that subtle. They don't get it. People should be more direct with him.
"Oh, she is smiling, but her knuckles are white and her tendons are standing out on her hand and she is hunching her shoulders and she hasn't said anything except to nod and look around so I think she is nervous and wants to get away."
You have just described every waitress my oldest friend has "charmed." You can't clue him in. If you try to be tactful and subtle about it just goes over his head. If you try to be direct he gets mad and then goes off on a 15 minute monolog full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. What woman wouldn't get in line for a bit o' that?
He really is a good friend in other respects, but there's no way in hell I could ever share living quarters with him.
KFG
But you're taking an extreme case of Aspieness, that has to be the MOST extreme Aspergers. . .
.
Extreme enough that he died young of it. That is fairly uncommon, at least these days; and the example was meant to be illustrative, not definative, although I actually know a guy like that. The flip side is his history as a blues player, also indicative of Asperger's. I'll take the blues, since I didn't actually have to put up with him.
Think of it this way... Imagine there are many ways to express social information, in Aspie land we need it broken down to us and explained logically, we CAN understand socializing. .
The essential problem being that socializing is really only logical on the evolutionary scale, not the street level scale. When you can only approach it logically you cannot really approach it, only "fake it" as another poster puts it. Learning tricks to give the similacrum of interacting normally. If you don't feel it, you don't really get it. Try to think about clutching a car through a purely logical process. I have maintained the decades long relationship with my oldest friend by accepting him at his level, but it can take a tremendous amount of social energy on my part (including a bit of sureptitious apologizing to waitresses he has been particularly "charming" to) and very much limiting the way we socially interact. Joint projects - right out. Of course he can't even approach it logically, he just keeps bouncing off his own mirrors. He is a clueless jerk (without an Internet connection) who's becoming rather more than a bit misogynistic in his old age. Other than that he's actually a good friend and smarter than some of the Nobels I've known. Go figure.
I've got a narcisist friend I've been able to handle for a few years the same way, but I don't know how much longer I can keep it up. The "safe" topics of conversation keep shrinking. I don't know any way to deal with borderlines; sooner or later they're going to shoot themselves - or you, if you don't shoot yourself first.
There are worse things in this world than Asperger's. But I'm afraid I still wouldn't want you as a roomate; and that's the way it is.
But maybe we can do lunch.
Nice post, BTW.
KFG
. . .it's worth pointing out that you overstate. . .
/slight/ autism just as likely as one can have severe autism.
.
Yes, I do.
One can have
Although this raises the question of just what is meant by "slight" autism. Or slight ODD. Or . . .
Spectrum disorders are a swimmy kettle of fish.
Just making suring others don't misunderstand your point . .
Thank you. It's a very difficult subject to even approach, innit?
KFG
I'm a brain kept alive in a laboratory in a vat, you insenstive clod.
I wish I were a chicken heart, then someday you'd all be sorry. Especially the New Jersey Turnpike. It deserves to die.
KFG
I'm only 27. . .
My friend was in his 40s before he was diagnosed, but we "all" knew there was an austitic spectrum problem all along.
I think more people could learn to deal with us.
I don't know. You really don't understand how hard that is. It is very, very hard, even if totally accepting of it.
human... The more closely we can approximate neurotypical reactions and behaviors, the 'creepier' we seem to get, because the subtle differences stand out in contrast.
Yes. My friend who thinks he is charming tries to be charming. The harder he tries, the creepier he gets. He often tries very hard.
You, sir, are a jerk. You can empathize with an animal because you concede that they will behave differently. By making no concessions for differing behavior from other human beings, you will find yourself unable to interact with a tremendous number of people.
Did I not mention that he is my oldest friend? We're talking decades here. I get along with pretty much anything that is willing to get along, not only across social boundries, but across the boundries of species. The essential problem is that people in the autistic spectrum do not know how to get along. Cats and dogs do, so long as you follow their rules for getting along (although I actually know one autistic spectrum cat).
How does one go about getting along with someone who does not know how to get along; and does not really understand that he does not know how to get along? Someone who can be a complete fucking asshole to someone and yell at them for being a complete fucking asshole?
This very thread serves as example. I don't expect you to understand. That is the problem. IRL I get along with people in the autistic spectrum, to the extent that such is even possible, by avoiding this conversation.
Arguing with an autistic is like arguing with someone who has been blind since birth about "red." I'm only doing it because this is the Internets. The Internets are not a place free of social rules, but they are certainly a place where they are modified and can be experimented with.
I don't have to like you, you don't have to like me; and that's ok too. I prefer to get along, but I don't get all angsty if I don't.
KFG
. . .maybe get a life, rather than trying to be the playground bully?
That's a good one.
KFG
. . .there is a reason why one speaks of the "autistic spectrum" of which the asperger [spectrum] is a part.
Everything that isn't quantized is a spectrum; and there is nothing more spectrumy than human behavior. The question becomes when to define a behavior as clinical and there is certainly a distressing tendency to clinicalize everything.
The DSM has jumped the shark with ODD, for instance. The spectrum is being slowly schmeared across the entire population that doesn't simply conform to autocratic control.
On the other hand one could well argue that my friend with the frontal lobotomy is quantized, not part of a spectrum. There is a physically definable malfunction of the brain that can be associated with change in behavior.
Just as there is a spectrum in people's running ability; and then there is the guy with no legs. The question is whether truely autistic behaviors are actually part of the spectrum, or quantizable; have a mechanism. Hence the article in question.
I am not a clincial psychologist and do not treat Aspies, per se, but I do tutor them. I did not set out to do so, it "just happened," because of an ability to deal with them greater than the norm and word has got around that if you have a "problem" child who wants to learn violin or math you might be advised to give me a call.
Perhaps blindness would be a better example than missing limbs. Autistic disorders revolve around certain forms of insensability and there is a spectrum of sightedness.
However, while there is a certain grey area around the line where the sighted vs. blind may be drawn there comes a point rather close to either side of that line where there is a very distinct difference and you know it when you "see" it, even if it cannot be precisely defined.
To the extent that I "get along" with people in the autistic spectrum it is because "other" does not bother me and autictics are "other."
Thing is, even their other is other. It is not just that they are outsiders, it is that they are outside.
If you are an outsider and have a small social clique of other outsiders you aren't autistic, you're just a "weirdo." That's ok, so am I.
I'm not happy with my original post. I'm even more unhappy with this one. I'm not sure how to do better. Such is the nature of dealing with autism. It is not a happy thing to do.
KFG
. . .it seems like you're being pretty rude towards him.
You are confusing something you call "civility" with social skills. Rudeness does not imply a lack of such social skills.
If you didn't mean to be, then maybe you don't have the greatest social skills either.
In fact, only those with good social skills can deliberartely and effectively insult someone. The finest point of social skill is knowing when rudeness is socially appropriate and knowing the difference between simply being annoying and actually being rude.
Even ants cannot simply all get along, and that's the way it is.
KFG
. . .such as the tendancy to walk on tip-toe instead of with feet flat on the floor. . .
Have you considered the possibility that you might just be a ninja?
You can study that with scientific rigor - and whilst it won't ever be a 'natural' thing - you'll be able to fake it pretty well.
No, you can't and no you won't. The irony is that you think this because you are an Aspie. You do not percieve your failure. Stuff you don't even know is happening gives you away quite quickly. It is really the social skills of the other person that makes your interactions appear to be more normal. They are working very hard at fitting you in.
Make sure that people who are close to you know that you don't do well at picking up subtle cues from speech. It's no use someone dropping subtle hints that they want you to do something - you'll never notice them.
Q.E.D.
Conversely I cannot really study you with any scientific rigor, except from the outside as I would a shark. I can define your behavior, but cannot "get in your head." I can sympathize, but I cannot empathize, because I can empathize. I can empathize with a cat, or dog, or hamster, because although their social structures may be a bit different from the human, they have them.
I will always be outside of your world; and you will always be outside of mine.
And that's the way it is.
KFG