Does Lori have Asperger's?

[Krill]

No, you don't because Aspergers doesn't exist. Truth be told the whole Autism angle is overblown by society as an excuse for the behaviour and values of the majority.

[Lorizael]

Yes, my problems are all in my head. But that doesn't make them any less real.

[Lorizael]

No, you don't because Aspergers doesn't exist.

Don't you work in the mental health field? I'm curious as to why you think it doesn't exist. (This isn't me saying you should believe it exists; I'm genuinely curious as to how you arrived at that conclusion.)

[DinoDoc]

You're not DD. ... These thoughts alone allow me wake up with a smile each morning.

How odd. I often imagine how people who aren't me can face waking up at all. Being me is awesome IMO.

[DaShi]

You do whatever it takes.

[Krill]

Have you ever read the DSM? A good chunk of the diagnoses are defined as differences to the actions and values of the majority. Those diagnoses (as opposed to the obvious stuff like the different diagnosis of dementia and ****) are nothing but labels, as you stated above. The labels are ascribed a value purely by society. If you, personally, are concerned by your behaviours, values and thoughts, then I agree that you've made a good choice in trying to access help to change, to improve your life, but being defined by society by a constellation of symptoms rather than valued as the individual for who and what you are is both patronising and stigmatising. In fact there is research from 2012 that shows that children "diagnosed" with Aspergers can end up in early adulthood in no longer meeting the diagnostic criteria, calling into question the whole concept of "lifelong disability". I'll go find the research now...

Also, yes, I work in this field, and I've had the argument with other professionals about this topic.

[Colon™]

Lori, I believe the issues you have are very real. However, the way psychologists give tags to a bundle of personality traits and call it a disorder is just arbitrary. For the most part they can't find anything biological that's specific to Y or Z disorder as defined by DSM.

[Tupac Shakur]

You don't have Asperger's. You're an intelligent and well adjusted person who lives in a ****ed up world. There's nothing wrong with retreating into your mind and avoiding connection with the idiots who are only going to drive you crazy.

[Krill]

Here Is the article. It says minority, but I call bull**** on that, as Autism is diagnosed by a triad of symptoms, and all three of them can be caused by different sources. For example, poor social skills is regularly caused by the child not being given the opportunity to socialise with peers from a young age and bad parenting, which is the abnormal social interaction symptom. Being interested in few areas is purely a value judgement, that's the second triad of symptoms and the third is a communication impairment that isn't always a straightforward issue - a treatable speech impediment can be considered to fulfil this criteria, amongst other things.

I'll note that I'm not saying Autism doesn't exist, that is something that people will argue over for centuries. Asperger's though, I consider that nothing more than a label.

[Elok]

The argument here doesn't seem to be "Asperger's doesn't exist" so much as "the diagnostic criteria for psychological disorders are ridiculously hazy and subjective." I'm sure there's something very weird about me, and my father, and a handful of other people I've met over the course of my life. And we're all weird in very similar ways. You can call it Asperger's or HFA or just being a certain type of nerd. I didn't get a strong impression of the same peculiarity from Lori the one time I met him--but that was brief, and he didn't have an opportunity to show classic symptoms like long, enthusiastic discourses on obscure subjects his interlocutors plainly didn't give a damn about.

[Lorizael]

The argument here doesn't seem to be "Asperger's doesn't exist" so much as "the diagnostic criteria for psychological disorders are ridiculously hazy and subjective." I'm sure there's something very weird about me, and my father, and a handful of other people I've met over the course of my life. And we're all weird in very similar ways. You can call it Asperger's or HFA or just being a certain type of nerd. I didn't get a strong impression of the same peculiarity from Lori the one time I met him--but that was brief, and he didn't have an opportunity to show classic symptoms like long, enthusiastic discourses on obscure subjects his interlocutors plainly didn't give a damn about.

I don't do the long discourses in public. At some point in the past I learned that talking in public was a bad idea, and I almost universally don't do it. My therapist knows this, so theoretically she took that into account when proposing this diagnosis. But she's only interacted with me in the confines of therapy, so who knows.

...

I'm also not unsympathetic to the idea that a number of high-functioning mental disorders are just not neurotypical behavior. And it's certainly possible that some non NT behaviors are just not normal (and thus interfere with interacting with normal people) rather than objectively harmful. But that doesn't mean the objectively harmful behaviors don't exist. And it also doesn't mean that relatively harmless but different behaviors don't arise from some common genetic component. After all, some people can be born with different eye colors, and those differences aren't objectively important, but they still exist. The same can be true of non typical behaviors.

[Krill]

The argument here doesn't seem to be "Asperger's doesn't exist" so much as "the diagnostic criteria for psychological disorders are ridiculously hazy and subjective." I'm sure there's something very weird about me, and my father, and a handful of other people I've met over the course of my life. And we're all weird in very similar ways. You can call it Asperger's or HFA or just being a certain type of nerd. I didn't get a strong impression of the same peculiarity from Lori the one time I met him--but that was brief, and he didn't have an opportunity to show classic symptoms like long, enthusiastic discourses on obscure subjects his interlocutors plainly didn't give a damn about.

No one disagrees that the symptoms don't exist. The issue is about why they exist and if there is 1 specific reason that people have that constellation of symptoms. I don't agree that there is enough proof to support the concept that Asperger's, a single cause, creates all of those effects. It's just that the reasons those symptoms exist are complex and manifold, and so Aspergers becomes less a diagnosis, and more a label, a generic name, that gives no relevant meaning to people to explain why you are the way you are. It ends up causing stigma simply by existing, and acting for some people as a barrier to existing in a society.

In many ways, Asperger's can be compared to cluster A personality disorders, in that the reason people act a specific way is because of how they were brought up by parents and life experiences, rather than any genetic or biological reason. However, the reason that a lot of cluster A personality types need the diagnosis is for societies safety, whereas that doesn't exist for "Asperger's".

[Elok]

I'm not sure about "objectively harmful." Plenty of "normal" behaviors are objectively harmful, albeit most are not drastically harmful--overeating, binge-drinking that doesn't . In my psych classes I was taught that there are two criteria for classifying something as a disorder: behavior differs significantly from the norm, and this difference causes significant impairment to the individual. Obviously, both of these depend heavily on what society considers to be the norm--and how much deviation from that norm it is willing to accommodate/tolerate. Hence homosexuality was a disorder for some time, because society was not willing to tolerate that deviation. It ceased to be a disorder when the prevailing values, at least in academia, shifted, and is likely to remain a non-disorder until such time as the APA starts reading MrFun posts.

In a culture with very strict social etiquette-e.g., Japan, from all I've heard about it--your reticence might not be at all conspicuous. It's normal to be highly self-conscious there. And I could imagine a society that could accommodate even sociopaths. Not a very pleasant society, but it could exist and function.

XPost--sort of.

[Elok]

Krill, given the number of "self-diagnosed" poseurs out there, I don't know how stigmatizing it is. At this point it is more of a subset of the general nerd subculture than an actual disorder. I'd welcome the discovery of an actual biological cause, if only so I don't get mistaken for guys who just watch too damn much SyFy.

[Lorizael]

I'm not sure about "objectively harmful." Plenty of "normal" behaviors are objectively harmful, albeit most are not drastically harmful--overeating, binge-drinking that doesn't . In my psych classes I was taught that there are two criteria for classifying something as a disorder: behavior differs significantly from the norm, and this difference causes significant impairment to the individual.

This is kind of the point I was making in my long post to Drake. Yeah, a lot of people can check off individual symptoms to a mental disorder, but the important part about DSM diagnoses is the, "Does this **** with your life significantly?" criterion.

In an ideal world, we should be thoroughly accomodating of behaviors that are weird and behaviors that are relatively harmless, but there needs to be a line (hazy though it may be) for behaviors that cause significant harm. The tricky part is when a person engages in self-harm (via some behavior, not just things like cutting) but doesn't want treatment. Is there a point at which society should step in to protect people from themselves?