Understatement of thte history of the human species, if you ask me! You will NEVER, EVER find a serial killer that lived a so-called normal life with a so-called normal family. Granted, some of them suffer from brain injuries and other afflictions that are beyond their control, but nurture goes such a long way.

As Dr. Ralph Welsh once said, ”

By the way, I, too, have similar fascinations. Two of my favorite shows are Most Evil and Deadly Women that deal with those issues, although I tend to focus on unusual sexual orientations, many of which I have. Anyway, I am angry Aspie youth, and often find myself only willing to be with other angry people, and have never been a perky person and could not stand those who were. But I have my happy moments, and at least I try to channel those pesky imps that I have into something good.:) Also, I admit to being comforted by discussion of or images of suicide, murder, drug use, or anything else like that because I sympathize with the pain, the anger, the desire to ‘get away,’ and everything else. But I would never hurt someone else intentionally, no matter how angry I was, and I have been suicidal before, but never seriously, and I knew I could not do it because who knows what damage I would cause? I would never get to do or get to be all the things I wanted, I could not change my mind the next day…so yes, I very much understand what this man is saying and I love that he is willing to not be squeamish and to explore it.

Having an ASD does not exclude one from developing an identity disorder just as one can have autism AND diabetes or autism AND a mood disorder etc.

There is also a neurological condition called Anosognosia in which someone can be unable to face or accept the realities of their own condition. It’s actually a feedback problem in the brain, but they actually believe they don’t have the condition whilst all functioning evidence proves daily that they do. Anosognosia is common in people with bipolar and schizophrenia, for example (also happens in some blindness due to ABI where the person is certain they can see but can’t), and the stats are that around 30% of people with ASD may have mood disorders, including bipolar. One study I saw said that 20% of those with Asperger’s had co-occurring schizophrenia, so its easy to imagine that for a range of reasons SOME people with ASD very much DO identify with and imagine themselves without ASD, however dysfunctional, delusional or ultimately distressing that may be for them.

I have certainly been specifically asked to work with a number of people clearly in this group where THIS was their primary problem - that this over identification was putting them at risk.

It is not always that they’ve been taught to hate their ASD, for some its PTSD, sure, but for others its more about a pathological idealisation of non-autistic people and their functioning and world and in other cases its about extreme isolation due to things like Exposure Anxiety and Social Phobia in which the only way they can function outside of their anxiety is to imagine constantly they are not themselves.

I also knew you were on the spectrum and this certainly doesn’t exclude any person on the spectrum being a theorist or scientist. Temple Grandin is very much the theorist and does lectures but hasn’t worked as an autism consultant seeing a vast body of clients so she hasn’t had the chance to test her theories against the day to day clinical work with people with ASD.

The autism forums are full of people on the spectrum who spend much of their time theorising and being lay-scientists. Whilst many on the spectrum are far more towards the arts and physical activity, others are very much intellectuals thriving on theorising and finding others who share and support their theories. I’m certain that some of these folks can’t tell theory from fact and are so certain of their own observations and exclude all info that doesn’t fit their theories so they perceive them as facts. It’s fine to say “I believe” or “in my experience” but this is not to confuse belief or theory with fact.

That’s all fine except if those theories aren’t tested in REALITY against the DIVERSITY of people on the spectrum it leads to rhetoric and prescriptive modern stereotypes and isolates those who don’t fit them as well as limits professional awareness of how to help those who don’t fit the neat boxes. So words like ‘impossible’ should really be used very sparingly.

… Donna Williams
http://www.donnawilliams.net

There is a very clear disctinction between the two. My other point is that in order to accomplish what I am talking about, it is NECESSARY for the autistic person to experience THEMSELVES without autism, and this doesn’t happen with autism, that is, there are no remission periods in their lives — remission into being normal (by which I mean, non-autistic).

Simple point. I do understand your position though.

I didn’t mention I have autism at the start because I didn’t think it was that relevant, but you seem to think I’m a theorist or scientist trying to prove a point. I wouldn’t do that on a website of an autistic person, this blog seems to be mainly for autistic people and their families.

Could they have such extreme idealised intense identifications and imaginative ‘playing out’ if not for such reinforcement and modeling via TV, cartoon or book characters? I don’t know, maybe not, at least I imagine it’d be a big struggle. At the same time many quite disabled people with more severe autism have typed about imagining themselves speaking, having social interactions they are actually not functionally capable of at the time etc, and these imaginings are based on being surrounded by modeling of non-autistic ‘normalities’, not TV characters.

Again, one must get away from theory and stereotypes and look at real people.

The rest is just convenient beliefs that justify mental theories.

To test a theory, become a consultant and listen to people ask you about struggles they have with things you may never imagine they could struggle with.

You can’t test a theory in a theoretical manner. Theories are tested against diverse lived realities. Presumptions of what’s IMPOSSIBLE become proclamations of mindsets set in stone and are not useful though may self serving to the person with the pet theory who doesn’t wish to revise it.

… Donna Williams
http://www.donnawilliams.net

as for vaguery, (imaginative) identification versus reality is vague by definition.

Donna *)

In the example you gave above, yes the Aspergers person can wish he has that extensive social life, BUT, it is impossible for him imagine himself being a person with extensive social abilities. Yes he can wish he was like others who he admires, and imagine being that person. But as for he himself, it is impossible for him to conceive of himself any different with respect to his current core Mental abilities. The only way this would be possible, is if he in his past had social abilities but now does not. This is the only basis for him to imagine himself without Aspergers. Sorry to say, as sad as it is.

So this one question to Tom in your larger article “Do you feel, as Temple Grandin does, that if you didn’t have Asperger’s you wouldn’t be you? is not really a coherent question, in the sense of being conceptually coherent: it expresses something that is not coherently conceivable, it asks someone to ask what they would be like without the condition they always have had, and while they have never experienced a difference in the CORE MENTAL ABILITIES that are a part of the condition. Yes they may have had some improvements, but not in these core abilities.

The statement Grandin gives is also incoherent — it expresses essentially nonsense in the sense of something that is minimally coherent/complete. I don’t find much value in this level of vaguery, incompletness, etc.

actually diversity isn’t that simplistic.
There are auties who’ve never flown but imagine themselves as Superman
There are blind people who imagine things they’ve never seen by parallels with what they know through touch.
There are those who’ve never walked who will tell you what they’d do if they could
There are those who have no social desire who have watched so many others with it, even wished they had it, who can say what they might of done if they had it.

people simply aren’t text books, they are far more surprising and odd.

There are many things I struggle to imagine but I certainly have enough examples around me of people who can do many thing I can’t and yes, this make me sometimes imagine how life would be if I were like them and not like me.

and many people lack ability and have desire in abundance. Read Autism and the Myth of The Person Alone and books like it. You will find many have desires to experience things they have no ability in. Others, of course, are not such idealists at all, and idealism is simply part of things like personality and, sometimes, mania, two things which having autism does not make anyone exempt from having though very many won’t have either.

There are also many people with autism I’ve worked with who had abilities but extreme deficits in desire. I have put many of my clients in positions their carers imagined them incapable to help themselves, and they always suprised the carer. Those who seemingly couldn’t climb stairs, open doors, get out of a swing by themselves, crawl, and then suddenly did at late ages 6, 8, 10, 12. Children who didn’t speak who began to after age 6, adults in their 30s who’d never spoken who asked verbally for cake when it was finally not just given first, those who typed for the first time in their 30s and 40s but only with assistance and insistance… so really the idea that ability naturally leads to desire is simplistic. There are many reasons the two don’t go together at all… have a look at The Jumbled Jigsaw for examples, severe social phobia, exposure anxiety, learned dependency, dependent personality disorders etc etc…. all very REAL obstacles, but obstacles to desire more than ability. The techniques used to trigger ability were those which countered natural anti-motivations, freeing up the motivations to get into sync with ability.

We need to move on from narrow stereotypes. 12 years as an autism consultant knocked out every presumption and stereotype I could have imagined about anyone on the spectrum. I’ve been surprised more times than I can count.

And yes, I have a blind friend, blind since early infancy, and he imagines the things others see based on their descriptions and his own translations of those in his perceptual reality but he can also very much hear and feel their excitement and imagine it over their sensory experience of vision.

Beethoven, too, composed music whilst deaf.
Blind people have driven cars.
people in wheechairs have done abseiling.

presumptions and stereotypes are simply too convenient and harmfully prescriptive.

Donna Williams *)
http://www.donnawilliams.net

Donna *)

You mentioned you’ve received benefits from those various treatments, but how have they helped your core autism symptoms. Can you imagine yourself without autism, which would be a person with normal/extensive social abilities (in contrast to what you mention above), the ability to relate directly with people and the desire to do so (although, desire usually follows ability, so if you have the ability you usually have the desire, and if you lack the ability, you usually lack the desire (and many then ignore why it is they lack the desire)).

I think the issue is similar to asking someone with congenital blindness to imagine what it is like seeing.

But also, some parts of my autism ARE inherent parts of who I am. So, my personality traits are very autistic… I’m vigilant, solitary, idiosyncratic and artistic - all solitary traits, so I can spend days, weeks, months alone, I’ve even spent 18 months mostly alone and hardly got bored or even registered lonliness. I love people, I just love them out there and I like to observe them, hover around, but I don’t need them much, I feel I’m in parallel with them, I don’t naturally desire entanglement (in fact it feels alien and I detest fuss). So THOSE parts of my autism ARE me.

And I’m also not at all a details thinker. I’m utterly global in my thinking, feral, improvisational, a systematician and an utter artist with little technological skill (I struggle to tell the can opener from the garlic crusher). And whilst that’s totally unlike Asperger’s its very usual in some pretty non-verbal autistic people who rely on sensing their world and people more than interpreting. So I guess this extreme could be pretty autistic and yes, I find THIS PART very much part of ME.

So the situation is pretty complex and clearly a person with Asperger’s isn’t necessarily like all ‘autistics’ nor is every ‘autistic’ like an undeveloped version of someone with Asperger’s.

I have skills many Aspies don’t have at all and they have some I couldn’t have in my wildest dreams. For example I have an IQ apparently under 70 but I am very innovative and improvisational so I compensate great. But most Aspies have extremely high IQ and can’t improvise at all like me. Everything in my world is fluid and meaning is irrelevant and doesn’t gel much of the time but the Aspie world is completely about intellect and meaning. Different, but equal worlds. My husband is quite Aspie. I find him awesome and inspiring.

Donna Williams
http://www.donnawilliams.net