Was the young doctor autistic?
He didn't think so: "I don't walk on tippytoes or get hypnotized by Wheel of Fortune," he explained.
But he did get upset when people didn't say what they mean. He loved math. "And then there's this odd thing I do with my hands and my nose when I'm excited and I think nobody's looking," he once wrote in the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
He thinks he may be on "some distant end" of the autism spectrum.
At the other end are people like the man who organized his wife's CDs by the composer's date of birth and fell asleep on the floor during social events; his wife thought he was eccentric.
Or the office clerk who beat up a woman on his way to the bus stop one morning for the simple reason she was in his way. He was obsessed with not walking on the cracks between the tiles on the sidewalk.
Autism in children has never been more in the news. But few are talking about the adults, experts say, and few therapists are available to treat the illnesses in adults just as more are seeking help.
The official criteria for diagnosing autism spectrum disorders apply to children. Some adults only recognize autism in themselves when their child is diagnosed.
I think it should be pointed
1) "They [referring to adults with Asperger's] may be able to get an advanced degree, but once employed they can't interact with their co-workers in a normal way."
To me, this statement seems to be overtly defeatist and may discourage employers from considering hiring employees with Aspergers. In reality, most people with Asperger's regularly interact with their co-workers in a multitude of normal ways" although some may find it challenging to do so. Many people with Aspergers, however, regularly rise to the challenge with only infrequent breakdowns in communication - and let's face it, breakdowns in communication happen to EVERYONE.
2) "There's no normal coffee chit-chat, Elliot explains. They sometimes ask embarrassing questions and easily lose their tempers. 'A disagreement with a co-worker or a boss, or someone looked at them wrong, or it was a cloudy day instead of sunny like the weather man said, or you gave them the wrong sandwich.' says Karen Rodman, founder and director of Families of Adults Affected by Asperger's syndrome, Inc., or FAAAS."
This seems to accurately describe the "normal" coffee-room chit-chat at most places I've worked; yet it seems to be used here as a means of defining Asperger's. The article seems to hold people with Asperger's to a higher standard of accountability for the nature of their "chit-chat" than "normal."
3) "'There's no rhyme or reason. And the problem is with everyone else around them. It's never their fault.'"
The whole article though seems to indicate that the social difficulties rest solely with the people with Asperger's without considering society's failures to adapt its social structure to better accommodate all sorts of human diversity, including people with Asperger's? My son (who has a form of high-functioning autism) was ostracized and bullied throughout his school years, but few of his teachers ever questioned the "normalness" of the clique that was responsible for much of his torment. Furthermore, my son has spent much of his life trying to adapt his own behavior in order to fit in (which is not the way a person behaves if they are just bent on blaming the "Other" guy for their troubles).
4) "Far more men than women are affected. Asperger's and high-functioning autism has been described as the extreme of male thinking, says Dr. Rutger Jan van der Gaag, a professor of clinical psychiatry at Radboud University Nijmegen in The Netherlands. 'Very much detail, very little empathy.'"
I'll leave the guys, gals, feminists and ex-feminists to pick up the debate on that one.
I am concerned that even as society endeavours to find a scientific explanation for Asperger's and autism, our society is becoming less and less tolerant of any sort of variations in behavior among the general population. Our definition of the "norm" is systematically being reduced by commercialized ideals (like "Barbie" and "Ken"). Real people are more diverse and complex, but society seems to have developed an abnormal sense of what is within the acceptable range of "normal."
I put this out just as food for thought as we all maybe look in the mirror.. As someone very wise once said - we need to take the plank out of our own eyes before we can help our brother take the splinter out of his. My son, with his special take on the issue, innocently asked me awhile ago - "Does God intend to eventually make the entire world autistic?" We couldn't come up with the answer, but mt son doesn't necessarily see it as a bad thing... and neither do I.
Link to full article by Sharon Kirkey of July 20, 2008: http://www.canada.com/topics/news/national/story.html?id=90e8fe76-aac4-48e0-819e-f8816f722954
You make some very good
You make some very good points!