Autistic People Are Not Sociopaths

Is the Asperger troll back?

Yes he is r1. And he’s wrong. They are.

Does it even exist? Where was it in the 50's?

R2 They emphatically are not. They have emotions and feel empathy, almost to a fault. They have trouble understanding other peoples' feelings and often their own feelings. They need to be told how someone feels point blank to understand because they are blind to non-verbal communication. They have trouble inferring how other people feel, which is not the same as being a empty, ruthless psycho.

Uh huh r4

OP do you know so much about sociopaths because you are one? You don't seem to have much empathy.

Not understanding feelings is basically sociopathy.

Sorry. This is based on experience.

R7 You sound stupid. Do you have a degree in psychology? Of course you don't.

I think most people know this. Also autistic people who are high-functioning can pass for neuro-typical and live independently though they may feel alienated and frustrated by not fitting it. Autistic people have empathy and feel emotion, they just have difficulty reading emotional cues and expressing their emotions.

Autistic people are bad at lying and scheming. Neurotypicals are much closer to sociopaths than autistic people.

They don't exist really. Autistics are very rare if they truly exist. It's like multiple personalities. That, if it does exist is extremely rare.

Autism is over self-diagnosed as a face saving technique for bad social skills.

My bf claims he is autistic, but really he just can’t understand how to navigate things that require social intelligence.

R11 It's about 1/100 people. It is over diagnosed, though. People with actual Asperger's tend to have auxiliary problems like sleep disorders, epilepsy, and digestive problems.

99% of it only exist in America. Just think about it.

R12 This reminds me of a sociology professor I once had twenty-five years ago. She was of the opinion that what we used call the “weird kid” was now going to be medicalized as “autistic.” I think high-functioning autistics really aren’t. Truly autistic individuals have tons of developmental and speech delays.

Exactly r12 and r15. It’s a fallback for people who can’t be bothered to give a shit about someone other than themselves.

Autistic people are not sociopaths.

They are special, brilliant, otherly-wired, perfectly normal people who need to live in the general population so that they can show us a better and more honest way to live and be and think and feel and behave,

but at the same time how dare you suggest they are "different." Shame on you!

I think they did away with the Aspergers label.

Wasn't that guy who shot those children at Newton autistic?

Like anybody else, they can also be sociopaths. There are other examples - the cinema shooter with the orange hair?

* Newtown - not Newton

R3. Asperger syndrome existed in the 50s—it wasn’t yet distinguished from autism (and now is again diagnosed as a variation—hence, the spectrum diagnosis designation. Asperger, after whom the syndrome is named, described a group of his child patients back in the 40s.

Imagine what you might learn if you bothered to read!

R15 R16 Like I said in R13, it's easy to separate the actual diagnosed ones from the "weird kids". There are a lot of people claiming to be autistic who have never been formally diagnosed. It's usually apparent from childhood because of speech and communication problem and something like 40% of autistic people have epilepsy. That can't be faked.

R13 true. I have Asperger's, and with that comes severe GERD/food allergies (my daily diet is so bland, you would all freak), insomnia, and the tendency to fall into trances.

Growing up I also had odd physical tics like clenching certain muscles, and noticeably talked to myself or mimicked things I heard out of context and not understanding it like a parrot does. People would go to touch me and I'd flinch or squirm away, getting upset. Sometimes I had crying fits of rage or would spend days locked in my room feverishly writing out the same words over and over when I couldn't express how I was feeling in words. I recall just blacking out from stress a few times in high-school and College. I grew out or retrained myself out of most of this, but in times of intense stress the symptoms can flare up.

ASD is not just having weird hyperfocused interests, giftedness, or shyness/anxiety/impaired social skills. That's all part of it, but not everything.

Austistic people seem to be today's protected class, as if they're not responsible for the content and consequences of their actions. I lost a job to the fact that my boss was autistic, a fact detected by two colleagues before I saw it. Fick that guy forever.

Autistic people are still people. So they have different personalities and interests which are innate to the individual. Autism itself is a communication disorder and usually comes with symptoms like difficulty socializing, repetitive movements and habits, difficulty making eye contact, sensitivity to sound, light and texture and rocking back and forth. All people have to learn and practice social skills as they are cultural. However, autistic people have difficulty to grasping concepts of social etiquette though many can learn to mimic social cues and present themselves well in adulthood.

R24 Yes indeed. I once heard someone say that if you've met someone with autism, you've met THAT person with autism. Meaning each person with autism is very different. No two are exactly alike. Many have common characteristics, but it always presents itself in different ways with different people. Each autistic person has their own set of strengths and weaknesses. And some have learned to mask their condition so well by copying others that you'd never in a hundred years guess they have it.

R25 fantastic comment, wish more people looked at ASD that way.

[quote] some have learned to mask their condition so well by copying others that you'd never in a hundred years guess they have it.

This is especially true of women. It’s thought that more women & girls with ASD are undiagnosed or undetected than not, because the diagnostics do not address how the condition presents differently in women. Most of the female eccentrics, geeks, wallflowers, obsessives, and spinsters you’ve all met could easily have had it, and they just didn’t realise because a Doctor never suggested it. There’s likely even many ‘normal’ seeming women you know who have it, too, thanks to masking.

It’s also been theorised that a high percentage of these teenage ‘gender dysphoria’ cases/FTM hopefuls with what looks like social contagion, are in fact just traumatised young women with undeterred ASD.

^^*unDETECTED ASD.

[quote]Autistic People Are Not Sociopaths

In general they're not. But they [italic]could[/italic] be. The one doesn't rule out the other.

R26 I agree about the FTM transexuals, but there is no way that there are just as many women with severe ASD as men. Autism is pretty much understood as an extremely 'male' brain by researchers.

R28. In the rare case, I'm sure it's possible, but Autistic people tend to lack the tools to be truly dangerous sociopaths. They tend to be candid and literal and can't play the mind games that most sociopaths partake in. People on the autistic spectrum have varying degrees of mind blindness, so they have trouble deceiving people.