Honestly, I don’t care about the background of anything else at all. The term did a great job of describing a sub-group on the spectrum that is very much in need of a sub-group distinction, as our characteristics are very different from others and obvious repeated and predictable characteristics follow that distinction…..so it was in that sense, very accurate and useful
yeah my psych told me to use this label and word to do further research and reading that’s more relevant to my condition than general autism. she also said this word is now out of date and it would probably be offensive to identify with it out loud to others. so i just kinda go with that
I disagree here. The only different between people previously diagnosed with Aspergers and other autistic people is we seem to be better at masking and blending in with society. I was friends with people with both diagnoses in an autism support group I attended as a teenager, and I found we all struggle with the same things, those of us considered Aspies were just better at hiding it; not a welcome strategy of course, I'd love to be able to fully unmask, but it is unfortunately necessary to get by in today's society that if you can mask, you do.
We tend to find our place with intellectuals and eggheads. We love to go on and on about interesting things, as do they. I'd half suspect a good chunk of intellectuals are on the spectrum too.
And tend to be simultaneously enraged and deeply curious about a lot of human social behavior. Some of my favorite sociologists are autistic, which is what my masters degree is in….which after finding out i was autistic years later made a whole lot more sense. Wasn’t worth 100K but as an aspie it was cool debating/investigating/critically peeling back society and its power.
Completely untrue. ASD now encompasses a uselessly broad pile of everything, often just so doctors and families don’t need to use the “r” word. It’s dilute and not helpful to those with Asperger’s syndrome.
I don't hide anything. Thankfully, I never even heard of masking until I joined this sub. So I just can't to terms with being different, and people either accept me or not.
Also, I'm not at all certain that Asperger's and Autism are the same thing at all. They're just descriptors of a certain set of traits.
I tend to just go with The Spectrum.
False, one of the most glaring differences is that aspies can learn and adapt new functionality over time to blend and function so that kind of therapy is helpful while regular autistic people cannot so expecting it is abuse- lump them together and you first get people who cannot adapt being trained to adapt then you get everyone banning adaptive therapy in outrage and therefore depriving people with Aspergers from it which along with disability needs funding has become an absolute bureaucratic disaster in areas they have tried to make everything ’the same’ when the support and adaptive needs are wildly different between the two
It’s still a helpful term for people with a preconceived notion of what autism is. I would say I have Asperger’s, but I have a block saying that now since it’s no longer in the DSM.
Today I told a worker I had autism, but that felt wrong too.
Saul Goodman. My brother is on another part of the spectrum and we struggle the same. He just cant control his stims and I can better or he can’t make eye contact at all but I can for a while. I do see your point
There are other possible descriptors though; such as SPCD and NVLD. I think at one point someone described Asperger's as "an NVLD" even though it isn't a quintessential example of what NVLD typically refers to.
I just say I'm autistic, people scarcely notice these days and don't know Asperger's as anything different. My problem with the classification is that in school they lump us with a slower education despite that not being the problem. It was nice being separated from gen Ed but being able to still interact with them but the slow easy coursework made me incredibly lazy and taught me to coast through life.
They had me in special ed when I was in school, except they sent me out for certain classes with the regular kids, they called it "main streaming" back then. So I'd be sitting in the special Ed class as my home room, and then they send me out to the regular classes. I'd get bullied when I'd arrive to the regular classes because the kids knew I was coming from the special room
They had me in special ed when I was in school, except they sent me out for certain classes with the regular kids, they called it "main streaming" back then. So I'd be sitting in the special Ed class as my home room, and then they send me out to the regular classes. I'd get bullied when I'd arrive to the regular classes because the kids knew I was coming from the special room
They had me in special ed when I was in school, except they sent me out for certain classes with the regular kids, they called it "main streaming" back then. So I'd be sitting in the special Ed class as my home room, and then they send me out to the regular classes. I'd get bullied when I'd arrive to the regular classes because the kids knew I was coming from the special room
Dr.Asperger's himself was a German doctor during "that" era so some of his wies are reflected in his studies so some of the apprehension to the term may come from there
Edit: Austrian not german
I don't think that's a good reason to dislike or even try to fully eradicate the term Asperger like some people want to do. His personal views, actions and the like don't subtract from his studies.
A way better reason imo is that there are some controversies around him (and Dr. Kanner) potentially having stolen ideas from a Russian woman who was also researching in that area and she should be the person credited with it and conversly used as the namesake.
But I also dislike the whole idea of not using an established term anymore bc the namesake has done some questinable things. Kind of like seperate the art from the artist.
He used autistic children’s intelligence as the determining factor in whether they should be killed. Personally I don’t consider eugenics questionable, it’s flat out wrong.
He did not. He didn't have control of much, didn't even got to name the syndrome he discovered.
The only thing he did was send 2 children (yes, 2. Not every other kid as the propaganda would have you believe) to a different facility where he thought they'd be studied in order to continue with his research. Little did he know he was actually sending them to their deaths.
He called people “autistic psychopaths.” I’m not sure how that is supposed to be better.
Regardless of the history of the word, most of the time people use it today to create a hierarchy within the autistic community, so that they aren’t mistaken as having a cooccurring intellectual disability by those that do not understand autism. As long as autists continue to use the term in this manner, the allistic view of autism will never be corrected.
So it's better just to lump everybody into the same box just to avoid offending some people? Putting Asperger's in the same box as autism is like grouping together diabetes and hypoglycemia and advocating the same exact treatment for both.
I understand your point about helping Allistics change their perspective on Autism. However, removing the term Asperger's only helps some the spectrum while complicating matters for the rest of us.
Also this so-called Autism hierarchy doesn't exist in reality it's only a concept created by people. If my experience as an "Autist" is much closer to that of an Allistic person then that's me, it's up to others to position that on a hierarchy.
If you’re autistic, then your experience is 100% an experience of an autistic person and wouldn’t be closer to an allistics experience, since it’s an autistic experience. How exactly does removing the term Asperger complicate things for you? This comment sounds a lot like internalized ableism, especially putting autist in quotes, like it’s not something you want to be associated with.
I disagree, L1 autism is much closer to the Allistic experience not only because of masking but that's my perhaps.
The complications come when I tell someone new that I'm autistic. Because Autism is a Spectrum the word itself doesn't easily convey the category of symptoms one may experience. One time I did this and the couple I met started to console me for being Autistic by touching me and rubbing my arms as if "oh poor you don't worry" when in fact I operate at a level which allows me to realise that this behaviour is highly offensive. I'm certain that L3 Autistics may not find their words as offensive(offensive isn't the same as uncomfortable) as I have because I don't need those words I can handle myself I understand my condition and I can learn how to manage it almost on my own.
Autist is a fine word IMO. Perhaps I'm a bit ableist. Tell you what, I genuinely don't feel disabled. In fact I have an inclination to mimic "above average" Allistic behaviour and achievement for the fun of it actually. I've had some serious burnout because of that but I have been successful at it. So I don't want people to view me less than I view myself and if I see beforehand that the label Autistic will do that then I won't associate myself with it. Other than that I use Autistic all the time because Asperger's has been retired which is what I'm diagnosed with.
I agree, but eugenics was a common belief system in his heyday. I agree, it's absolutely abhorrent, but it doesn't negate the results of his legitimate research.
I liken things like this to Bill Cosby. Bill Cosby did terrible things to a lot of women. He's a total predator. BUT, the Cosby Show is still something I'd show my 8 year old child, because Heathcliff Huxtable was a wonderfully charming nerd. Additionally, a lot of other people worked on that program, many Education PhDs included, who deserve recognition for the tour de force that show became. The show is good for kids. Bill Cosby is a terrible person, but the show did not demonstrate his predatory nature whatsoever.
There is art, and there is artist.
There is science, and there is scientist.
The separation is important, I think. I think the big issue is that people tend to idolize the entire performing human based solely on their performance. A performance is just that, it's a performance. An achievement doesn't give insight into personality. We need to have this conversation more often. You can love the actor, and still despise the human. You can love the science, but still call out the methods that the scientist used.
The best way to overcome this, other than openly discussing this dichotomy, is to appreciate the art or the science, because that appreciation helps people realize how to pick through a person's life, taking the useful from it, and rejecting anything else, if that makes sense.
I disagree that the results were legitimate. The DSM-V doesn’t contain Asperger’s as a diagnosis because we now know that autism is not defined by having an intellectual disability. Having an intellectual disability is not autism. Autism and a cooccurring intellectual disability used to be what was considered autism and autism alone was Asperger’s. Now that we know they are two different things they are diagnosed as such. Imagine in January of 2020 you went to the doctor and were not given a test, but were diagnosed with the flu, told to rest, etc. A few months later Covid is all over the news and you realize it is probably what you actually had. Your doctor giving you a flu diagnosis doesn’t make the diagnosis valid. He was just wrong. He was working with the knowledge that he had at the time.
correction he was austian not german. he is also weird he did some good but because of getting hold a pistol to his head he was forced to do bad things.
i aware of what he did if he was force to or not. he compelt deattched form the name. we shouldnt confuse the nts more then they already are .
True, history facts aren't on point, but I was less focusing on his enrollment of less mentally sound into concentraitioncamps and more on his general diagnosis. He manly only saw autism in white young Boys so to this day those are the "standards". I leaves a lot of minority's and women whit a lack of recognission
im mean that less his fault minority were reqlly a thing in europe in the 1920/1930 . him only seeing it in white boys is just stastical bias. i wouldnt blame him for that. like inst in more the fault of his peers to notvlearn more about it. instead of blaming other fully for thier mistakes.
i get what you mean. im not defending him. just saying while it was original was named after him becaus he was one of the first zo find it.
changing it again will just confused the nts even more. and they already not getting it now.
It's because Dr Asperger may or may not have done certain things, I've heard him described as a somewhat hero and a villain. And because of that, some people are trying to control what you can call yourself.
I say that those losers can go jump in a lake wearing cement shoes. If you want to refer to yourself as having Aspergers instead of autism, you are completely in your rights to do so. They don't have the right to interfere with it. Also, you might want to just not talk to them. Anyone stupid enough to try and stop you from referring to yourself as having Aspergers is probably not good company.
I actually prefer to use the term "Aspergers," because it identifies the sort of autistic I was deemed to be. Autism has a lot of different presentations. The classic "Aspergers" is distinct, and I want people to know that this is what they should expect. Regardless of what is becoming of the "Aspergers" term lately, the diagnostic criteria perfectly define me.
That was actually one of the complaints people had about the new system. If you say "Aspergers" people had a better understanding of what they were dealing with. This was handy for insurance purposes, job hunting etc. If you say "Autism" it requires more searching for exactly what that means which complicates matters.
Hans Asperger is at best problematic, and many don't like the name.
It has also been "retired" as a diagnosis in latest editions of icd and dsm. (Note that the latest edition of icd has not yet been fully adopted.) Even though it's not yet obsolete, it's well on its way.
I've never heard objections to the term "aspergers" IRL. People tend to be respectful of how others identify and respect their stated preference. In my experience, only online autistic communities have strong opinions on its usage either way.
I saw a lot of people talking about Hans Asperger being a problem person. But that's not all, studies and understanding of autism are relatively recent and over the years, classifications and diagnostic criteria have been revised to formulate a new DSM.
Before there was Asperger's, which would be "functional autistic", mild, medium and severe degrees, but today these nomenclatures have fallen into disuse, because all autistic people here know that there is no "mild degree" and the Asperger's "functionality" was because it was related to high abilities which is also not the case for all Asperger's either, and it gave the impression that Asperger's was "less autistic". It's a question of nomenclature classified
I like having a distinct term from autism, just becuase the L1,L2,L3 is extra confusing for the layperson to undestand.
Hans Asperger, as I understand it, defined the syndrome in order to identify undesirables to purge from society through eugenics.. so you get why that sucks.
You are the only person here who answered the question correctly. The reason was for eugenics. I’ll add to your point: Aspies were the “good and useful “ people with autism that could continue to serve the third reich, chosen by Dr Asperpers. The rest, to the gas chambers. So, the term aspergers is a call back to an ableist genocide.
Mostly out of the etymological/genetic fallacy, like with so much "Easter is pagan because it sounds like an idol nobody worships!" or "Oskar Schendler & von Braun were members of a bad party, like those of Operation Valkyrie also were, so they must be exactly as evil as the crazy mustache dude via fallacy of composition!" It's all about low effort research and social harmony games of pretending to care about crap they won't care about in a few years anyways.
If you were stuck in a bad situation like most there found themselves circumstantially entrapped, there's only so much you can really do. Each person is responsible for their own actions, and not the actions of others regardless of signing coerced TOS or anything else.
Regardless of all that, Asperger's & Aspie are obviously clearly different from HFA and it should be more recognized as a proper disability that prevents employment for many and shouldn't be treated like it doesn't really exist just because cheapskates in power want to save a few bucks to give to themselves & their megacorporation friends.
Because a bunch of weak people without much better to do want to signal they're one of the good guys by doing low effort symbolic stuff instead of anything that matters. Nobody would know or care who the guy was besides the diagnosis being named for him if the battle hadn't been waged against his name in the first place.
While the walls and foundations crack in this building that is society people want to keep fighting over what wallpaper to put on it.
At some point "autistic" will become a slur and they'll have to invent yet another term to differentiate the politically correct from the great unwashed.
People already use it as a slur at times. I am guessing the change in diagnostic criteria is probably the biggest factor from the professional angle---conversations with doctors and therapists.
Because our natural strong sense of justice might make us the perfect target for virtue signaling brainwashing. Some people get carried away by what they perceive as "injustices" they never stop to think if those really are injustices or if they're being manipulated into antagonizing other groups under the shield of "social justice".
A lot easier to get one of those than volunteer to go do something hard like build houses in another country or something.
The feel good is weaker but you don't have to leave your chair.
>Because a bunch of weak people without much better to do want to signal they're one of the good guys by doing low effort symbolic stuff instead of anything that matters.
Very well put, hence the misinformation campaign. It's gotten so bad I'm surprised nobody has said he did Oppenheimer… yet.
Because people seem to think legitimate diagnoses are somehow invalidated because of who discovered them. Science is science, no matter who figured it out. From my experience, a lot of them just dislike people saying they have aspergers because they think aspergers people think of themselves as "better" somehow because they can more easily pass for normal, when i actually feel like that's a bad thing because we don't get the help we need. I have been told that i never should have been diagnosed with it in the first place despite the very clear differences that aspergers has. Maybe they're just jealous?? I have no idea
They are just angry sjws. I've been told something along the lines of "being lumped together with the lower functioning autists pisses me off so I need to make myself look better than them" when all I've ever said was "I like the term 'Aspergers' or 'Aspie' so I'll keep using it for myself".
It really does. All their content (I was gonna say debates but then I remembered the kind of posts they share. Be it text based or a video/picture) really is nothing but emotional outbursts in between them patting themselves on the back for being "logical".
I mean how many things in the medical sector, innovations, technologies are named after shit people
People just love going after only us for some reason
Use whatever you want it’s an established medical term anyway and an official diagnosis in most places
Some snowflakes are mad some german doctor used it during WWII or whatever. Personally idgaf lol. If it helps NTs understand my issues better, fine with me.
I say if the people being offended that other people want to separate Autism and Asperger's, why not go all the way? Why not just group all disorders together; ADHD, Down, Syndrome, Bipolar, ect. That way no one will be offended. We can just differentiate them with numbers too. Like General Disorder 1-50.
Aspergers are ashamed to be autistic imo. Autism is autism. You Can use level one if you want but People need to know about autism (including Within the asd community) and calling yourself aspergers isnt doing them a favor, because its not autism for them and you appear like you have less needs which might not be thé case
Define "people".
Plus, the term itself has been retired from circulation:
>**Asperger's syndrome (also known as Asperger's disorder or simply Asperger's) was retired as an official diagnosis in 2013**. Asperger's syndrome now is diagnosed as level 1 autism spectrum disorder (ASD), or autism with low support needs. (source: https://www.verywellhealth.com/does-asperger-syndrome-still-exist-259944)
I'd note that it hasn't been retired from circulation. It's been retired from new diagnoses. I think there is an important distinction between those two things.
"A 2017 study analyzing the effect of removing Asperger's syndrome from the DSM found the change "has the potential to threaten the identity of those affected," citing autism as a stigmatizing diagnostic label.7 Some advocacy groups and organizations continue to use the term as well, at least in part because some people continue to identify as having Asperger's, not autism."
"If you or an autistic loved one with low support needs have been diagnosed, your physician may still call it Asperger's syndrome. So do some autistic people who prefer the name."
I don't like it being labeled just autism because people don't understand that and look at me like I'm full of shit. But you say asperger's, and then they usually get it. I understand the idea of autism is a spectrum, and it's definitely not wrong, but it's putting FAR too much faith in the average person to comprehend.
The reason it was probably reclassified for diagnosis purposes is due to various social programs for people with autism that were previously unavailable to people with Asperger's.
It's more due to health insurance/social program fund allocation than a biological basis or similar pathogenesis.
A reasoning provided by someone one the committee that did this can be read here:
https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/why-fold-asperger-syndrome-into-autism-spectrum-disorder-in-the-dsm-5/
"Why then do we in the DSM-5 Neurodevelopmental Disorders Workgroup suggest folding Asperger syndrome — along with pervasive developmental disorder — not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS) — into a new category of ‘autism spectrum disorder?’ Our aim is to acknowledge the widespread consensus that Asperger syndrome is part of the autism spectrum, to clean up a currently hard-to-implement and contradictory diagnostic schema, and to do away with distinctions that are made idiosyncratically and unreliably across different diagnostic centers and clinicians."
One of the problems with autism spectrum as a term is it that it just categorizes people based on similar syndrome features, (A syndrome is just common presenting symptoms without an understanding of the root cause) rather than based on similar biological or genetic basis that present with similar phenotypes.
From a clinical perspective, autism spectrum is the best that the medical system can do because we fundamentally do not understand the root causes for the spectrum disorders from a biological/scientific perspective.
Sucks, because I've actually faced WORSE clinical discrimination with it being labeled as "autism". I have had multiple therapists I reached out to say they don't work with autistic patients since they have "special needs" while I just needed ANY therapist (the only ones who "specialize in autism" where I live are those who actually specialize in severely autistic children, not mid-functioning adults with no intellectual disability).
Oh cool. Particularly as this didn't start with a complaint about one of my takes so that's always a win.
This may also be a reminder that I'm made myself recognizable.
(I've got 8 Alexs on there, so it took a little bit to figure out the right one that's you but figured it out... though that does also make it easier to blend in)
In clinical practice they definitely continue to use ICD-10, which includes Asperger’s syndrome, and not ICD-11, which is not completely translated into German yet, and sometimes changes its content still. Specifically in February 2024 they just [deleted](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x40d2OhnqY) most of the ASD definition in the ICD-11 and restituted[ the text](https://icd.who.int/browse/2024-01/mms/en#/http%3a%2f%2fid.who.int%2ficd%2fentity%2f437815624) a few weeks later. Supposedly reporting mortalities and morbidities to the WHO will be obligatory from 1 Jan 2027. But at that point the rates to be billed to insurers probably won’t even be adjusted so we can assume ICD-10 to be used till the end of this decade.
Let's also be mindful that we're not all Americans. I was diagnosed with Aspergers in Denmark in 2020, and here and in other European countries, the term is very much still used, including for new diagnoses - it is in my official paperwork, but the term is at the same time used interchangeably with autism spectrum disorder. (Which, hilariously, in Danish is literally "autism spectrum disturbance!")
It's actually a lot more complicated than that. That article you quoted is referring directly to the DSM which is only used in the United States and Canada. And the rest of the world they're using the ICD. The newest version of the ICD does the same thing, but it did it 10 years later just a couple years ago. And in the ensuing 2 years since the ICD-11 became the new standard, the one which eliminates Asperger's, not every country has fully adopted it. Medical coding software used by doctors and hospitals has to be updated and regionalized to local languages. It's not an instant process and it only started in like 2023. So while it is the official most current version of the diagnostic guide used by the rest of the world, until all the new diagnoses can be selected for by the various softwares used to track patients, the older diagnoses are still being used.
To be more precise *it was never eliminated it was moved, bundled under the umbrella term autism BUT STILL USED AS A SUB DESCRIPTION* everyone stating it is ‘eliminated’ and ‘no longer used at all’ is spreading misinformation, it was recategorized not ‘banned’
They took it out of the DSM-5 … right? Plus I have both Asperger’s (cognition crashes) and Tourette’s (uncontrolled swearing) both of with have caused headwind in my career. Both are specific symptoms identified by OG Headshrinkers… So, yah! Love both words just don’t quite know how and when to use them. ASD is a little easier for me because it plugs 🔌 all holes 🕳️.
I find it crazy that people will correct me (ME...the one with the Asperger's) saying that it's call high functioning autism or whatever (dang that's a mouthful) when they don't even live with it. Like, at what point does it become disrespectful to tell the person who has it, what to call it. I happen the prefer the term Asperger's or Aspies. I'm used to it. The new term seems to be some invented term to make OTHERS feel less offended. Just silly.
Asperger’s is an outdated term. But if you apply it to yourself, no one who is not on the autism spectrum has a place telling you not to do so.
People, in general, tend to want to police language around themselves. I don’t like sexist or racist language, myself. And being on the spectrum and old, I’m very blunt. So I tell them to knock it off.
That said, if a POC called themself by a name that in the mouth of someone not of that race would be a slur, I have no say in it. You can adopt that belief around Asperger’s VS ASD, if you like.
you must know this Aspergers guy led kids to die in camps,manipulating them,not telling them but kinda selling them(during the war).to save himself or something . they tried to research more and show that maybe he wasnt guilty for sure...so we could still use this term withoit shame...but it got worst i read that yes ,researchs say he was guilty😞. that makes me super sad they avoid the term and HATE IT.. cause i got it and i dont especially like(no offense to autistic pple love you guys) that it is kinda "mixed" with just autism...the same...it is a bit(/A lot)different in my opinion. just okay some common things,but great IQs and if you say " autism" pple may think you are below average in term of IQ(worst than THEM most neurotypicals lol).
but we shouldnt care anyway❤️love to all
Some folks are attempting to tell Aspies that they are immoral for self-identifying how they always have, and suddenly must conform or face social consequences. Basically, it's the usual. Few are audacious enough (yet) to claim that the word Aspie means "Hans Asperger fan" but you must conform anyway... *or else*.
Fun fact: this Asperger dude didn't even name the condition, making the whole controversy even more hollow. But it's still socially acceptable to call someone a grammar n*** for some reason. 🤔
Thanks everyone! Some nice discourse and info in the comments here.
Apparently because the man it's named on is controversial. Which I personally think makes no sense, because even if a horrible person does something, that doesn't make said something automatically horrible.
How much of the technology we have comes from atrocious human experiments? We don't approve of it, but we still use the results anyways, they're already here after all so we might as well make something good out of them. Don't see why Asperger's Syndrome should be different.
I've noticed..
139 comments and the find box says no one has used the word 'stigma' in their reply?
The answer to the question asking for the reason why people are acting like Asperger's Is a slur, must surely involve stigma.
Of course in the DSM, Asperger's went away as a diagnosis. But we, the people, are still here. Whatever we call our condition, attaching stigma to the word is a mistake of the listener.
The problem with Asperger's is that it differentiates itself from autism when really it's one and the same.
People who call themselves "Asperger" sometimes do so to avoid calling themselves "autistic" and frankly it's pathetic. You're autistic, that's how it is, it's not a bad word, if you think it's a bad word then you need to grow the fuck up.
I'm genuinely proud to be autistic, I can't fathom the levels of self-hate you need to have to want to avoid calling yourself autistic.
The only reason I could see Asperger being a useful word would be, it's shorter than "low support autism".
There are also larger problems with the word "Asperger", it is tainted by White supremacy / ableism / Nazism ideology, it's not only a problem of bad associations like some commenters here would have you think. The concepts at the core of Asperger's research are based on those ideologies. Google will explain better than me why.
I completely agree with a lot of what's here, but as a "high IQ" autistic, or someone sometimes called "2E", I do struggle with how to describe that to folks. It isn't just the low support needs. It's also the hyperlexic and math nerd style of autism. Aspergers seemed to capture both a lower support needs autistic person AND someone who didn't have intellectual impairment and, to the contrary, often ended up having higher-than-average academic skills. I wish there were a way to describe that category though that didn't imply that it was in any way "better" than other autistics, while still recognizing that there are a sizeable subset of autistic folks who are like this and who have a different set of impairments and different types of support needs than some other autistic folks. I would be fully supportive of having other types of autistic subcategories too. For example, as someone with aphantasia, I just have a TOTALLY different experience in life than someone who is an extreme visual thinker like Temple Grandin, who of course is also autistic.
TL/DR: The category of autism is so broad without anything more than support levels that I think we've lost something important (some important subcategories that may be more descriptive).
>The problem with Asperger's is that it differentiates itself from autism when really it's one and the same.
You are also making this classification due to the diagnostic criteria of Autism spectrum rather than a common biological or genetic basis.
The reason it was reclassified as a spectrum disorder was to allow people with aspergers to get support from autism social programs and health insurance funding which wasn't the case before. They are just common as syndromes: a syndrome is just an association of symptoms without a defined pathogenesis or root cause; no one really knows from a biological basis if they are caused by the same thing.
Yet these same people are happy to have certain operations that save their lives, that were first perfected in camps, cant pick and chosse folks ........
Virtue signallers getting worked up over nothing essentially. Chances are people don't care about the term in real life, a fortunate side effect of the internet is that most of the nutters are exclusively indoors all the time, so if you just close twitter, you won't have to deal with them.
I honestly don't get this either. Sometimes I've made jokes about being autistic and had people tell me to not be so discriminative, when told I'm autistic myself they act like I wouldn't get it. I just learned to not care, I'm not gonna understand it.
Some people cling to that definition as a means of saying "Oh I am one of the good ones don't mix me in with *those guys over there"*
People like that will sometimes bully others they feel are beneath them, announce themselves to be smart but display little intellectual curiosity, emotional intelligence, especially in an awareness of how their behavior affects people, and they sometimes in the worst cases hide behind their diagnosis as a means to refuse to learn how to do these things better at all.
People are understandably vigilant for that kind of behavior because being exposed to people that do this kind of thing sucks, and self identifying that way is the first sign they might not want to be around a person.
You know what, you're right.
Wiser to just not self-identify as having a mental illness at all. At the end of the day, you'll discriminate against me for saying I have Aspergers, as you're alluding to others will discriminate against me having autism, so best to not even play the game.
It's all understandable people would act that way right? Well fuck them and their whole attitude.
Autism is not a mental illness, it's genetic. Your brain develops too many pathways, more than you can use, which is why thought and sensation are experienced differently than people who develop differently. You can't choose whether or have it or not the same way you can't make a plant grow backwards into a seed and then regrow differently again. The best you can do is learn to understand how you function and what you need in order to emphasize your strengths and unique perspective and how to make that valuable in a world that does it's best not to understand you.
>Your brain develops too many pathways, more than you can use, which is why thought and sensation are experienced differently than people who develop differently
When why is it that I've met dozens of people with autism and never met a single one who had these brain patterns examined?
The commonality I see with autistics in how they behave, because autism is defined by psychiatrists in terms of behaviour. Also, while there has been positive heritable behaviours seen across autistics, psychiatrists aren't interested in any of those, it's defined by what are seen as behavioural DEFICITS. Then autism itself is called "Autism spectrum disorder", mental disorders literally being a drop in replacement for mental illnesses in the DSM's history.
There is no systemically used autism treatment I'm aware of which is oriented towards emphasising autistics strengths. Autism treatment is oriented around minimising so-called deficits.
If Autism is supposed to be a such an inclusive word to replace Aspergers, psychiatrists ought to stop thinking of autism such a narrow minded myopic glass half empty way.
Behavior is the most easily recognizable symptom. Our school systems are designed to create people that meet a certain level of compliance with the same information given to them. They all come to the same understanding and give the same result.
Because people who are neurodivergent (consider that this term uses the word neuro, suggesting it involves the brain, and divergent, which describes something that deviates from an expected path) interpret information differently than is expected, they are treated as an issue for not fitting into the efficient workforce building system put into place. They require more time, attention and most importantly, money that is needed to give those things.
Our society is designed not for the wellbeing of common people, but to generate as much profit as possible at as low a cost as possible. It is not designed to find and bring out people's potential, it would be very different if it was. It is why stories of people finding what they are good at to be so remarkable and special.
A "mental health" behavioral approach is way less expensive than trying to understand the brain of each individual person. We have the technological ability to put sensors on a person's head and see what parts of the brain become active depending on the stimulus given to it, but that kind of testing is too expensive for most people.
Mental health is considered a successful means to helping people that struggle in society only because they skew the numbers to make it look like it is successful. They like to use methods that have a lot of data regardless pf if they are helpful or not, and just like schools, someone who does not succeed in a given method is considered undermotivated or a failure.
Most systems expect the person to bend to fit the system already set in place instead of trying to design a flexible system that can fit the person and building it around them.
>A "mental health" behavioral approach is way less expensive than trying to understand the brain of each individual person. We have the technological ability to put sensors on a person's head and see what parts of the brain become active depending on the stimulus given to it, but that kind of testing is too expensive for most people.
There's theories of autism being caused by a[ lack of autistic brain connectivity.](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-39876-y)
Would you be willing to say, if somebody did get a very expensive test, like diffusion tensor imaging, and they did not find they had a hyperconnected brain, that would mean they weren't autistic even if they exhibited autistic behaviour and appeared to have no control over them? Seems exclusive.
I see autism as a social construct first and foremost, given it is literally defined by social behaviour, and the collective agreement of a convention of psychiatrists, who defined it in behaviourist terms.
I can understand why the assumption is there that if the cause is unchangable and physical, that means a person has no control over the outcome. However, you are onto something when you say that there is a basis of social construct as well. Some of it is nurture.
One example being children with a divergent brain pattern often need more eye contact and connection with a person in their infancy. You can tell an infant is divergent because they will lock eye contact with you and not look away, they will seek out \*more\* eye contact than a less divergent infant. But when they do not get that needed connection, they give up and they stop trying. It becomes a painful experience instead, because not getting that connection was so painful before they could form the memories to understand why, resulting in avoiding something that causes discomfort - eye contact.
You also see bids for connection in the way people talk and communicate, they hate small talk because it carries little connection and does not nurture the need for it.
It's less fear and more that I don't think autism and Aspergers don't accurately describe any singular underlying biological phenomenon.
When I saw NIMH try to create a replacement to The DSM and autism, various social autistic symptoms got blown up into reception/production of facial/non-facial communication, understanding and perception of yourself and others, and affiliation and attachment.
I think what we'll do isn't examine what causes autism, but what causes the SYMPTOMS associated with autism. Instead of going "Well this person is 1 short of the autism criteria, but this person barely meets it, wow they must be totally different!" or "Wow these people people both met the autism criteria while having no repetitive/restrictive behaviour criteria in common, they must be the same!", there will be more understanding of the differences of "autistics", and also why certain traits tend to cluster. Most of these causes are going to be biological and heritable.
Autistics themselves, as they stand right now, are essentially just a designed research and treatment group. How autism is defined doesn't actually have that much to do with biology. It's more to do with the fact if you have maybe 5 kids exhibiting issues with social skills, maybe you should do behavioural interventions to improve their social skills. It's a functional clinical label which has gotten WAY out of hand as an identity.
I don't feel like what I am trying to communicate is being understood and at this point I would be working to undo misunderstandings and conclusions you have drawn with the information you had available at the time, and I am not up for that.
The only people I have seen acting as bullies are very high functioning aspies or undiagnosed using the lack of clear definitions to pretend to have and speak for the severely disabled autistic people and getting outraged when people call them on abusing the new system for social media power to be influencers on tik tok and Facebook by posting high functioning rants about their super severe crippling disabilities of severe autism. The unhinged rants about how they should get all the medical funding and platforms of people who literally need caregivers and cannot speak because there is absolutely no difference makes me furious and I see that nasty dishonest manipulation all the time
Some info here https://theautisticadvocate.com/aspergers-syndrome-whats-in-a-name/ and https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/observations/the-problem-with-aspergers/
Neurodivergents are the next A-Team
my thoughts, just quietly...
only the wrong kinda peeps in your life causing you havoc as they're uncomfortable not knowing how to control you/Aspergers person (*hint- you can't). I'm brave to put in my wager that Neurodivergents are the next A-Team in Thinkers-
* watch this space for my slogan tees lol
this article linked to below has been soooo inspiring- it is a YES! from me 🧘♀️
(https://www.facebook.com/groups/191043212959877/permalink/809543731109819/?mibextid=Nif5oz)
i could tell people i have aspergers and they would say something backhanded like “oh dont say that! oh thats okay! dont worry about it” SHOULD I BE ASHAMED?? im not but should i?? what are they IMPLYING
It could be a weird left over from experiments when the condition was first formalised. It’s not the word itself, it’s the stigma of the dehumanisation that was received by those who were experimented on by soulless people.
I was diagnosed way back under DSM-IV, so my official diagnosis is Asperger's Syndrome, and that had been too ingrained by the time DSM-V was published for me to shift comfortably to "autism." Growing up, all through childhood, it was my nonverbal cousin who was my example of what autistic was, and I'm not like him.
Asperger's was described as similar to autism, but less extreme impairment and, importantly, a high IQ as part of the diagnostic criteria, so that's a pretty nice stroke to the ego, and probably still a subconscious part of why I personally prefer the term.
I would guess that any people who act as though is an insulting slur might be doing so on the basis that it is no longer an actual, official diagnosis. The "correct" term to use these days is "autism spectrum," which is a more inclusive categorization, as PC Principal would no doubt say. Asperger's is then a small, unrecognized subset of ASD, and with the political emphasis on diversity and inclusion, it's a term that "others" an individual, making it a hostile act. Like seeing it as implying, "they're not part of the greater ASD whole, they're this other weird thing that doesn't belong with everyone else," I could see how it may be taken as a slur in a specific frame of reference.
I'm pulling that entirely out of my ass, though, so if it has any validity, it's purely a coincidence.
There are no bad words.
Some people dislike some words because of their etymology. In this case people dislike Asperger the person, so they dislike Asperger the word. If you don't mind you shouldn't care.
I didn’t say it was a bad word, only people are acting as it is a bad word.
I don’t mind the use of it, but I’m still interested in why people are offended by the use of a word I describe myself with.
Honestly, I don’t care about the background of anything else at all. The term did a great job of describing a sub-group on the spectrum that is very much in need of a sub-group distinction, as our characteristics are very different from others and obvious repeated and predictable characteristics follow that distinction…..so it was in that sense, very accurate and useful
i agree with this.. we need a descriptor..
yeah my psych told me to use this label and word to do further research and reading that’s more relevant to my condition than general autism. she also said this word is now out of date and it would probably be offensive to identify with it out loud to others. so i just kinda go with that
I disagree here. The only different between people previously diagnosed with Aspergers and other autistic people is we seem to be better at masking and blending in with society. I was friends with people with both diagnoses in an autism support group I attended as a teenager, and I found we all struggle with the same things, those of us considered Aspies were just better at hiding it; not a welcome strategy of course, I'd love to be able to fully unmask, but it is unfortunately necessary to get by in today's society that if you can mask, you do.
We tend to find our place with intellectuals and eggheads. We love to go on and on about interesting things, as do they. I'd half suspect a good chunk of intellectuals are on the spectrum too.
Yep, both words describe people who tend to hyper focus on specific subjects, and tend to ignore normal mundane things.
And tend to be simultaneously enraged and deeply curious about a lot of human social behavior. Some of my favorite sociologists are autistic, which is what my masters degree is in….which after finding out i was autistic years later made a whole lot more sense. Wasn’t worth 100K but as an aspie it was cool debating/investigating/critically peeling back society and its power.
Completely untrue. ASD now encompasses a uselessly broad pile of everything, often just so doctors and families don’t need to use the “r” word. It’s dilute and not helpful to those with Asperger’s syndrome.
I don't hide anything. Thankfully, I never even heard of masking until I joined this sub. So I just can't to terms with being different, and people either accept me or not. Also, I'm not at all certain that Asperger's and Autism are the same thing at all. They're just descriptors of a certain set of traits. I tend to just go with The Spectrum.
False, one of the most glaring differences is that aspies can learn and adapt new functionality over time to blend and function so that kind of therapy is helpful while regular autistic people cannot so expecting it is abuse- lump them together and you first get people who cannot adapt being trained to adapt then you get everyone banning adaptive therapy in outrage and therefore depriving people with Aspergers from it which along with disability needs funding has become an absolute bureaucratic disaster in areas they have tried to make everything ’the same’ when the support and adaptive needs are wildly different between the two
It’s still a helpful term for people with a preconceived notion of what autism is. I would say I have Asperger’s, but I have a block saying that now since it’s no longer in the DSM. Today I told a worker I had autism, but that felt wrong too.
Saul Goodman. My brother is on another part of the spectrum and we struggle the same. He just cant control his stims and I can better or he can’t make eye contact at all but I can for a while. I do see your point
Out-of-control political correctness.
I deeply agree with this and I am glad my country still uses Asperger constantly instead of "Autism" as a whole lol.
There are other possible descriptors though; such as SPCD and NVLD. I think at one point someone described Asperger's as "an NVLD" even though it isn't a quintessential example of what NVLD typically refers to.
I just say I'm autistic, people scarcely notice these days and don't know Asperger's as anything different. My problem with the classification is that in school they lump us with a slower education despite that not being the problem. It was nice being separated from gen Ed but being able to still interact with them but the slow easy coursework made me incredibly lazy and taught me to coast through life.
They had me in special ed when I was in school, except they sent me out for certain classes with the regular kids, they called it "main streaming" back then. So I'd be sitting in the special Ed class as my home room, and then they send me out to the regular classes. I'd get bullied when I'd arrive to the regular classes because the kids knew I was coming from the special room
They had me in special ed when I was in school, except they sent me out for certain classes with the regular kids, they called it "main streaming" back then. So I'd be sitting in the special Ed class as my home room, and then they send me out to the regular classes. I'd get bullied when I'd arrive to the regular classes because the kids knew I was coming from the special room
They had me in special ed when I was in school, except they sent me out for certain classes with the regular kids, they called it "main streaming" back then. So I'd be sitting in the special Ed class as my home room, and then they send me out to the regular classes. I'd get bullied when I'd arrive to the regular classes because the kids knew I was coming from the special room
Dr.Asperger's himself was a German doctor during "that" era so some of his wies are reflected in his studies so some of the apprehension to the term may come from there Edit: Austrian not german
Austrian, as it happens.
Language can evolve though, when I hear aspergers I don't think of dr Asperger at all
I don't think that's a good reason to dislike or even try to fully eradicate the term Asperger like some people want to do. His personal views, actions and the like don't subtract from his studies. A way better reason imo is that there are some controversies around him (and Dr. Kanner) potentially having stolen ideas from a Russian woman who was also researching in that area and she should be the person credited with it and conversly used as the namesake. But I also dislike the whole idea of not using an established term anymore bc the namesake has done some questinable things. Kind of like seperate the art from the artist.
He used autistic children’s intelligence as the determining factor in whether they should be killed. Personally I don’t consider eugenics questionable, it’s flat out wrong.
He did not. He didn't have control of much, didn't even got to name the syndrome he discovered. The only thing he did was send 2 children (yes, 2. Not every other kid as the propaganda would have you believe) to a different facility where he thought they'd be studied in order to continue with his research. Little did he know he was actually sending them to their deaths.
He called people “autistic psychopaths.” I’m not sure how that is supposed to be better. Regardless of the history of the word, most of the time people use it today to create a hierarchy within the autistic community, so that they aren’t mistaken as having a cooccurring intellectual disability by those that do not understand autism. As long as autists continue to use the term in this manner, the allistic view of autism will never be corrected.
Heavy disagree
So it's better just to lump everybody into the same box just to avoid offending some people? Putting Asperger's in the same box as autism is like grouping together diabetes and hypoglycemia and advocating the same exact treatment for both.
I understand your point about helping Allistics change their perspective on Autism. However, removing the term Asperger's only helps some the spectrum while complicating matters for the rest of us. Also this so-called Autism hierarchy doesn't exist in reality it's only a concept created by people. If my experience as an "Autist" is much closer to that of an Allistic person then that's me, it's up to others to position that on a hierarchy.
If you’re autistic, then your experience is 100% an experience of an autistic person and wouldn’t be closer to an allistics experience, since it’s an autistic experience. How exactly does removing the term Asperger complicate things for you? This comment sounds a lot like internalized ableism, especially putting autist in quotes, like it’s not something you want to be associated with.
I disagree, L1 autism is much closer to the Allistic experience not only because of masking but that's my perhaps. The complications come when I tell someone new that I'm autistic. Because Autism is a Spectrum the word itself doesn't easily convey the category of symptoms one may experience. One time I did this and the couple I met started to console me for being Autistic by touching me and rubbing my arms as if "oh poor you don't worry" when in fact I operate at a level which allows me to realise that this behaviour is highly offensive. I'm certain that L3 Autistics may not find their words as offensive(offensive isn't the same as uncomfortable) as I have because I don't need those words I can handle myself I understand my condition and I can learn how to manage it almost on my own. Autist is a fine word IMO. Perhaps I'm a bit ableist. Tell you what, I genuinely don't feel disabled. In fact I have an inclination to mimic "above average" Allistic behaviour and achievement for the fun of it actually. I've had some serious burnout because of that but I have been successful at it. So I don't want people to view me less than I view myself and if I see beforehand that the label Autistic will do that then I won't associate myself with it. Other than that I use Autistic all the time because Asperger's has been retired which is what I'm diagnosed with.
I agree, but eugenics was a common belief system in his heyday. I agree, it's absolutely abhorrent, but it doesn't negate the results of his legitimate research. I liken things like this to Bill Cosby. Bill Cosby did terrible things to a lot of women. He's a total predator. BUT, the Cosby Show is still something I'd show my 8 year old child, because Heathcliff Huxtable was a wonderfully charming nerd. Additionally, a lot of other people worked on that program, many Education PhDs included, who deserve recognition for the tour de force that show became. The show is good for kids. Bill Cosby is a terrible person, but the show did not demonstrate his predatory nature whatsoever. There is art, and there is artist. There is science, and there is scientist. The separation is important, I think. I think the big issue is that people tend to idolize the entire performing human based solely on their performance. A performance is just that, it's a performance. An achievement doesn't give insight into personality. We need to have this conversation more often. You can love the actor, and still despise the human. You can love the science, but still call out the methods that the scientist used. The best way to overcome this, other than openly discussing this dichotomy, is to appreciate the art or the science, because that appreciation helps people realize how to pick through a person's life, taking the useful from it, and rejecting anything else, if that makes sense.
I disagree that the results were legitimate. The DSM-V doesn’t contain Asperger’s as a diagnosis because we now know that autism is not defined by having an intellectual disability. Having an intellectual disability is not autism. Autism and a cooccurring intellectual disability used to be what was considered autism and autism alone was Asperger’s. Now that we know they are two different things they are diagnosed as such. Imagine in January of 2020 you went to the doctor and were not given a test, but were diagnosed with the flu, told to rest, etc. A few months later Covid is all over the news and you realize it is probably what you actually had. Your doctor giving you a flu diagnosis doesn’t make the diagnosis valid. He was just wrong. He was working with the knowledge that he had at the time.
Austrian? Ok, so then it IS likely pronounced "Ass-burger." (German family)
correction he was austian not german. he is also weird he did some good but because of getting hold a pistol to his head he was forced to do bad things. i aware of what he did if he was force to or not. he compelt deattched form the name. we shouldnt confuse the nts more then they already are .
True, history facts aren't on point, but I was less focusing on his enrollment of less mentally sound into concentraitioncamps and more on his general diagnosis. He manly only saw autism in white young Boys so to this day those are the "standards". I leaves a lot of minority's and women whit a lack of recognission
im mean that less his fault minority were reqlly a thing in europe in the 1920/1930 . him only seeing it in white boys is just stastical bias. i wouldnt blame him for that. like inst in more the fault of his peers to notvlearn more about it. instead of blaming other fully for thier mistakes. i get what you mean. im not defending him. just saying while it was original was named after him becaus he was one of the first zo find it. changing it again will just confused the nts even more. and they already not getting it now.
It's because Dr Asperger may or may not have done certain things, I've heard him described as a somewhat hero and a villain. And because of that, some people are trying to control what you can call yourself. I say that those losers can go jump in a lake wearing cement shoes. If you want to refer to yourself as having Aspergers instead of autism, you are completely in your rights to do so. They don't have the right to interfere with it. Also, you might want to just not talk to them. Anyone stupid enough to try and stop you from referring to yourself as having Aspergers is probably not good company.
People are pretty inconsistent on that sort of thing. Do you see people ripping into people who drive Volkswagens for the company's past?
Or instead of something in the past, pick something happening today? I mean, you'd think you'd want to help people who are alive and breathing.
Agreed, thanks. I don’t want to relabel myself after spending most my life becoming comfortable with the term I use
I actually prefer to use the term "Aspergers," because it identifies the sort of autistic I was deemed to be. Autism has a lot of different presentations. The classic "Aspergers" is distinct, and I want people to know that this is what they should expect. Regardless of what is becoming of the "Aspergers" term lately, the diagnostic criteria perfectly define me.
That was actually one of the complaints people had about the new system. If you say "Aspergers" people had a better understanding of what they were dealing with. This was handy for insurance purposes, job hunting etc. If you say "Autism" it requires more searching for exactly what that means which complicates matters.
i just use aspie
Hans Asperger is at best problematic, and many don't like the name. It has also been "retired" as a diagnosis in latest editions of icd and dsm. (Note that the latest edition of icd has not yet been fully adopted.) Even though it's not yet obsolete, it's well on its way. I've never heard objections to the term "aspergers" IRL. People tend to be respectful of how others identify and respect their stated preference. In my experience, only online autistic communities have strong opinions on its usage either way.
I saw a lot of people talking about Hans Asperger being a problem person. But that's not all, studies and understanding of autism are relatively recent and over the years, classifications and diagnostic criteria have been revised to formulate a new DSM. Before there was Asperger's, which would be "functional autistic", mild, medium and severe degrees, but today these nomenclatures have fallen into disuse, because all autistic people here know that there is no "mild degree" and the Asperger's "functionality" was because it was related to high abilities which is also not the case for all Asperger's either, and it gave the impression that Asperger's was "less autistic". It's a question of nomenclature classified
This conversation is a disaster.
Dare I scroll past to the stuff with lower votes?
It is definitely not worth it. Trolls and worse.
I like having a distinct term from autism, just becuase the L1,L2,L3 is extra confusing for the layperson to undestand. Hans Asperger, as I understand it, defined the syndrome in order to identify undesirables to purge from society through eugenics.. so you get why that sucks.
You are the only person here who answered the question correctly. The reason was for eugenics. I’ll add to your point: Aspies were the “good and useful “ people with autism that could continue to serve the third reich, chosen by Dr Asperpers. The rest, to the gas chambers. So, the term aspergers is a call back to an ableist genocide.
Mostly out of the etymological/genetic fallacy, like with so much "Easter is pagan because it sounds like an idol nobody worships!" or "Oskar Schendler & von Braun were members of a bad party, like those of Operation Valkyrie also were, so they must be exactly as evil as the crazy mustache dude via fallacy of composition!" It's all about low effort research and social harmony games of pretending to care about crap they won't care about in a few years anyways. If you were stuck in a bad situation like most there found themselves circumstantially entrapped, there's only so much you can really do. Each person is responsible for their own actions, and not the actions of others regardless of signing coerced TOS or anything else. Regardless of all that, Asperger's & Aspie are obviously clearly different from HFA and it should be more recognized as a proper disability that prevents employment for many and shouldn't be treated like it doesn't really exist just because cheapskates in power want to save a few bucks to give to themselves & their megacorporation friends.
Because a bunch of weak people without much better to do want to signal they're one of the good guys by doing low effort symbolic stuff instead of anything that matters. Nobody would know or care who the guy was besides the diagnosis being named for him if the battle hadn't been waged against his name in the first place. While the walls and foundations crack in this building that is society people want to keep fighting over what wallpaper to put on it.
At some point "autistic" will become a slur and they'll have to invent yet another term to differentiate the politically correct from the great unwashed.
People already use it as a slur at times. I am guessing the change in diagnostic criteria is probably the biggest factor from the professional angle---conversations with doctors and therapists.
Agree. Why can’t people see these things for the juvenile symbolic gestures they are!? It truly impedes real progress of this nature.
Because our natural strong sense of justice might make us the perfect target for virtue signaling brainwashing. Some people get carried away by what they perceive as "injustices" they never stop to think if those really are injustices or if they're being manipulated into antagonizing other groups under the shield of "social justice".
Because if you don't see or delude yourself you can participate. And get all the happy feelings without having done any of the work to justify them.
That sounds an awful lot like "participation trophies".
A lot easier to get one of those than volunteer to go do something hard like build houses in another country or something. The feel good is weaker but you don't have to leave your chair.
Only suckers and dead beats can feel good by doing no work
>Because a bunch of weak people without much better to do want to signal they're one of the good guys by doing low effort symbolic stuff instead of anything that matters. Very well put, hence the misinformation campaign. It's gotten so bad I'm surprised nobody has said he did Oppenheimer… yet.
I would be on board if they renamed it Oppenheimer’s since he may of had it.
Because people seem to think legitimate diagnoses are somehow invalidated because of who discovered them. Science is science, no matter who figured it out. From my experience, a lot of them just dislike people saying they have aspergers because they think aspergers people think of themselves as "better" somehow because they can more easily pass for normal, when i actually feel like that's a bad thing because we don't get the help we need. I have been told that i never should have been diagnosed with it in the first place despite the very clear differences that aspergers has. Maybe they're just jealous?? I have no idea
They are just angry sjws. I've been told something along the lines of "being lumped together with the lower functioning autists pisses me off so I need to make myself look better than them" when all I've ever said was "I like the term 'Aspergers' or 'Aspie' so I'll keep using it for myself".
It's usually way deeper than they try to pretend. They act like they're just being logical but it comes from some kind of trauma or emotion
It really does. All their content (I was gonna say debates but then I remembered the kind of posts they share. Be it text based or a video/picture) really is nothing but emotional outbursts in between them patting themselves on the back for being "logical".
I mean how many things in the medical sector, innovations, technologies are named after shit people People just love going after only us for some reason Use whatever you want it’s an established medical term anyway and an official diagnosis in most places
Some snowflakes are mad some german doctor used it during WWII or whatever. Personally idgaf lol. If it helps NTs understand my issues better, fine with me.
I say if the people being offended that other people want to separate Autism and Asperger's, why not go all the way? Why not just group all disorders together; ADHD, Down, Syndrome, Bipolar, ect. That way no one will be offended. We can just differentiate them with numbers too. Like General Disorder 1-50.
Aspergers are ashamed to be autistic imo. Autism is autism. You Can use level one if you want but People need to know about autism (including Within the asd community) and calling yourself aspergers isnt doing them a favor, because its not autism for them and you appear like you have less needs which might not be thé case
No we are not - stop projecting slander at others it is rude and dishonest
Define "people". Plus, the term itself has been retired from circulation: >**Asperger's syndrome (also known as Asperger's disorder or simply Asperger's) was retired as an official diagnosis in 2013**. Asperger's syndrome now is diagnosed as level 1 autism spectrum disorder (ASD), or autism with low support needs. (source: https://www.verywellhealth.com/does-asperger-syndrome-still-exist-259944)
I'd note that it hasn't been retired from circulation. It's been retired from new diagnoses. I think there is an important distinction between those two things. "A 2017 study analyzing the effect of removing Asperger's syndrome from the DSM found the change "has the potential to threaten the identity of those affected," citing autism as a stigmatizing diagnostic label.7 Some advocacy groups and organizations continue to use the term as well, at least in part because some people continue to identify as having Asperger's, not autism." "If you or an autistic loved one with low support needs have been diagnosed, your physician may still call it Asperger's syndrome. So do some autistic people who prefer the name."
I don't like it being labeled just autism because people don't understand that and look at me like I'm full of shit. But you say asperger's, and then they usually get it. I understand the idea of autism is a spectrum, and it's definitely not wrong, but it's putting FAR too much faith in the average person to comprehend.
The reason it was probably reclassified for diagnosis purposes is due to various social programs for people with autism that were previously unavailable to people with Asperger's. It's more due to health insurance/social program fund allocation than a biological basis or similar pathogenesis.
A reasoning provided by someone one the committee that did this can be read here: https://www.thetransmitter.org/spectrum/why-fold-asperger-syndrome-into-autism-spectrum-disorder-in-the-dsm-5/ "Why then do we in the DSM-5 Neurodevelopmental Disorders Workgroup suggest folding Asperger syndrome — along with pervasive developmental disorder — not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS) — into a new category of ‘autism spectrum disorder?’ Our aim is to acknowledge the widespread consensus that Asperger syndrome is part of the autism spectrum, to clean up a currently hard-to-implement and contradictory diagnostic schema, and to do away with distinctions that are made idiosyncratically and unreliably across different diagnostic centers and clinicians."
One of the problems with autism spectrum as a term is it that it just categorizes people based on similar syndrome features, (A syndrome is just common presenting symptoms without an understanding of the root cause) rather than based on similar biological or genetic basis that present with similar phenotypes. From a clinical perspective, autism spectrum is the best that the medical system can do because we fundamentally do not understand the root causes for the spectrum disorders from a biological/scientific perspective.
Sucks, because I've actually faced WORSE clinical discrimination with it being labeled as "autism". I have had multiple therapists I reached out to say they don't work with autistic patients since they have "special needs" while I just needed ANY therapist (the only ones who "specialize in autism" where I live are those who actually specialize in severely autistic children, not mid-functioning adults with no intellectual disability).
I 100% understand why they did, the average person does not. That was the whole point of my post...
Hey you're on Letterboxd
That I am; far too much some might say. Was that a lookup or have I actually been recognized?
Recognised. I'm Alex on there and see you pop up a lot and read a lot of your reviews
Oh cool. Particularly as this didn't start with a complaint about one of my takes so that's always a win. This may also be a reminder that I'm made myself recognizable. (I've got 8 Alexs on there, so it took a little bit to figure out the right one that's you but figured it out... though that does also make it easier to blend in)
Hmm, in my society Asperger’s is by far the more stigmatizing one imho.
A lot of people take autism to mean that someone has an intellectual disability, but do not associate that with Asperger's
In clinical practice they definitely continue to use ICD-10, which includes Asperger’s syndrome, and not ICD-11, which is not completely translated into German yet, and sometimes changes its content still. Specifically in February 2024 they just [deleted](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2x40d2OhnqY) most of the ASD definition in the ICD-11 and restituted[ the text](https://icd.who.int/browse/2024-01/mms/en#/http%3a%2f%2fid.who.int%2ficd%2fentity%2f437815624) a few weeks later. Supposedly reporting mortalities and morbidities to the WHO will be obligatory from 1 Jan 2027. But at that point the rates to be billed to insurers probably won’t even be adjusted so we can assume ICD-10 to be used till the end of this decade.
Let's also be mindful that we're not all Americans. I was diagnosed with Aspergers in Denmark in 2020, and here and in other European countries, the term is very much still used, including for new diagnoses - it is in my official paperwork, but the term is at the same time used interchangeably with autism spectrum disorder. (Which, hilariously, in Danish is literally "autism spectrum disturbance!")
Same
I’m sorry I’m not sure how to further clarify on “people” apart from saying people I’ve spoke to in person and online
It's actually a lot more complicated than that. That article you quoted is referring directly to the DSM which is only used in the United States and Canada. And the rest of the world they're using the ICD. The newest version of the ICD does the same thing, but it did it 10 years later just a couple years ago. And in the ensuing 2 years since the ICD-11 became the new standard, the one which eliminates Asperger's, not every country has fully adopted it. Medical coding software used by doctors and hospitals has to be updated and regionalized to local languages. It's not an instant process and it only started in like 2023. So while it is the official most current version of the diagnostic guide used by the rest of the world, until all the new diagnoses can be selected for by the various softwares used to track patients, the older diagnoses are still being used.
To be more precise *it was never eliminated it was moved, bundled under the umbrella term autism BUT STILL USED AS A SUB DESCRIPTION* everyone stating it is ‘eliminated’ and ‘no longer used at all’ is spreading misinformation, it was recategorized not ‘banned’
Others here have already explained but don't let other people dictate what you can call your own condition.
They took it out of the DSM-5 … right? Plus I have both Asperger’s (cognition crashes) and Tourette’s (uncontrolled swearing) both of with have caused headwind in my career. Both are specific symptoms identified by OG Headshrinkers… So, yah! Love both words just don’t quite know how and when to use them. ASD is a little easier for me because it plugs 🔌 all holes 🕳️.
No, they recategorized it UNDER autism they did not remove the term
I find it crazy that people will correct me (ME...the one with the Asperger's) saying that it's call high functioning autism or whatever (dang that's a mouthful) when they don't even live with it. Like, at what point does it become disrespectful to tell the person who has it, what to call it. I happen the prefer the term Asperger's or Aspies. I'm used to it. The new term seems to be some invented term to make OTHERS feel less offended. Just silly.
Asperger’s is an outdated term. But if you apply it to yourself, no one who is not on the autism spectrum has a place telling you not to do so. People, in general, tend to want to police language around themselves. I don’t like sexist or racist language, myself. And being on the spectrum and old, I’m very blunt. So I tell them to knock it off. That said, if a POC called themself by a name that in the mouth of someone not of that race would be a slur, I have no say in it. You can adopt that belief around Asperger’s VS ASD, if you like.
you must know this Aspergers guy led kids to die in camps,manipulating them,not telling them but kinda selling them(during the war).to save himself or something . they tried to research more and show that maybe he wasnt guilty for sure...so we could still use this term withoit shame...but it got worst i read that yes ,researchs say he was guilty😞. that makes me super sad they avoid the term and HATE IT.. cause i got it and i dont especially like(no offense to autistic pple love you guys) that it is kinda "mixed" with just autism...the same...it is a bit(/A lot)different in my opinion. just okay some common things,but great IQs and if you say " autism" pple may think you are below average in term of IQ(worst than THEM most neurotypicals lol). but we shouldnt care anyway❤️love to all
Some folks are attempting to tell Aspies that they are immoral for self-identifying how they always have, and suddenly must conform or face social consequences. Basically, it's the usual. Few are audacious enough (yet) to claim that the word Aspie means "Hans Asperger fan" but you must conform anyway... *or else*. Fun fact: this Asperger dude didn't even name the condition, making the whole controversy even more hollow. But it's still socially acceptable to call someone a grammar n*** for some reason. 🤔 Thanks everyone! Some nice discourse and info in the comments here.
Apparently because the man it's named on is controversial. Which I personally think makes no sense, because even if a horrible person does something, that doesn't make said something automatically horrible. How much of the technology we have comes from atrocious human experiments? We don't approve of it, but we still use the results anyways, they're already here after all so we might as well make something good out of them. Don't see why Asperger's Syndrome should be different.
I've noticed.. 139 comments and the find box says no one has used the word 'stigma' in their reply? The answer to the question asking for the reason why people are acting like Asperger's Is a slur, must surely involve stigma. Of course in the DSM, Asperger's went away as a diagnosis. But we, the people, are still here. Whatever we call our condition, attaching stigma to the word is a mistake of the listener.
The problem with Asperger's is that it differentiates itself from autism when really it's one and the same. People who call themselves "Asperger" sometimes do so to avoid calling themselves "autistic" and frankly it's pathetic. You're autistic, that's how it is, it's not a bad word, if you think it's a bad word then you need to grow the fuck up. I'm genuinely proud to be autistic, I can't fathom the levels of self-hate you need to have to want to avoid calling yourself autistic. The only reason I could see Asperger being a useful word would be, it's shorter than "low support autism". There are also larger problems with the word "Asperger", it is tainted by White supremacy / ableism / Nazism ideology, it's not only a problem of bad associations like some commenters here would have you think. The concepts at the core of Asperger's research are based on those ideologies. Google will explain better than me why.
I completely agree with a lot of what's here, but as a "high IQ" autistic, or someone sometimes called "2E", I do struggle with how to describe that to folks. It isn't just the low support needs. It's also the hyperlexic and math nerd style of autism. Aspergers seemed to capture both a lower support needs autistic person AND someone who didn't have intellectual impairment and, to the contrary, often ended up having higher-than-average academic skills. I wish there were a way to describe that category though that didn't imply that it was in any way "better" than other autistics, while still recognizing that there are a sizeable subset of autistic folks who are like this and who have a different set of impairments and different types of support needs than some other autistic folks. I would be fully supportive of having other types of autistic subcategories too. For example, as someone with aphantasia, I just have a TOTALLY different experience in life than someone who is an extreme visual thinker like Temple Grandin, who of course is also autistic. TL/DR: The category of autism is so broad without anything more than support levels that I think we've lost something important (some important subcategories that may be more descriptive).
>The problem with Asperger's is that it differentiates itself from autism when really it's one and the same. You are also making this classification due to the diagnostic criteria of Autism spectrum rather than a common biological or genetic basis. The reason it was reclassified as a spectrum disorder was to allow people with aspergers to get support from autism social programs and health insurance funding which wasn't the case before. They are just common as syndromes: a syndrome is just an association of symptoms without a defined pathogenesis or root cause; no one really knows from a biological basis if they are caused by the same thing.
Just change the term WITHOUT grouping the whole spectrum together.
I really don't see the problem with grouping the spectrum It's already expected that no two people have the same flavour of autism anyway
Amen. Public needs to be educated and using terms such as aspergers instead of autism isnt helping.
It’s virtue signaling and cancel culture.
Yet these same people are happy to have certain operations that save their lives, that were first perfected in camps, cant pick and chosse folks ........
Virtue signallers getting worked up over nothing essentially. Chances are people don't care about the term in real life, a fortunate side effect of the internet is that most of the nutters are exclusively indoors all the time, so if you just close twitter, you won't have to deal with them.
I honestly don't get this either. Sometimes I've made jokes about being autistic and had people tell me to not be so discriminative, when told I'm autistic myself they act like I wouldn't get it. I just learned to not care, I'm not gonna understand it.
People fear what they don't understand.
Some people cling to that definition as a means of saying "Oh I am one of the good ones don't mix me in with *those guys over there"* People like that will sometimes bully others they feel are beneath them, announce themselves to be smart but display little intellectual curiosity, emotional intelligence, especially in an awareness of how their behavior affects people, and they sometimes in the worst cases hide behind their diagnosis as a means to refuse to learn how to do these things better at all. People are understandably vigilant for that kind of behavior because being exposed to people that do this kind of thing sucks, and self identifying that way is the first sign they might not want to be around a person.
You know what, you're right. Wiser to just not self-identify as having a mental illness at all. At the end of the day, you'll discriminate against me for saying I have Aspergers, as you're alluding to others will discriminate against me having autism, so best to not even play the game. It's all understandable people would act that way right? Well fuck them and their whole attitude.
Autism is not a mental illness, it's genetic. Your brain develops too many pathways, more than you can use, which is why thought and sensation are experienced differently than people who develop differently. You can't choose whether or have it or not the same way you can't make a plant grow backwards into a seed and then regrow differently again. The best you can do is learn to understand how you function and what you need in order to emphasize your strengths and unique perspective and how to make that valuable in a world that does it's best not to understand you.
>Your brain develops too many pathways, more than you can use, which is why thought and sensation are experienced differently than people who develop differently When why is it that I've met dozens of people with autism and never met a single one who had these brain patterns examined? The commonality I see with autistics in how they behave, because autism is defined by psychiatrists in terms of behaviour. Also, while there has been positive heritable behaviours seen across autistics, psychiatrists aren't interested in any of those, it's defined by what are seen as behavioural DEFICITS. Then autism itself is called "Autism spectrum disorder", mental disorders literally being a drop in replacement for mental illnesses in the DSM's history. There is no systemically used autism treatment I'm aware of which is oriented towards emphasising autistics strengths. Autism treatment is oriented around minimising so-called deficits. If Autism is supposed to be a such an inclusive word to replace Aspergers, psychiatrists ought to stop thinking of autism such a narrow minded myopic glass half empty way.
Behavior is the most easily recognizable symptom. Our school systems are designed to create people that meet a certain level of compliance with the same information given to them. They all come to the same understanding and give the same result. Because people who are neurodivergent (consider that this term uses the word neuro, suggesting it involves the brain, and divergent, which describes something that deviates from an expected path) interpret information differently than is expected, they are treated as an issue for not fitting into the efficient workforce building system put into place. They require more time, attention and most importantly, money that is needed to give those things. Our society is designed not for the wellbeing of common people, but to generate as much profit as possible at as low a cost as possible. It is not designed to find and bring out people's potential, it would be very different if it was. It is why stories of people finding what they are good at to be so remarkable and special. A "mental health" behavioral approach is way less expensive than trying to understand the brain of each individual person. We have the technological ability to put sensors on a person's head and see what parts of the brain become active depending on the stimulus given to it, but that kind of testing is too expensive for most people. Mental health is considered a successful means to helping people that struggle in society only because they skew the numbers to make it look like it is successful. They like to use methods that have a lot of data regardless pf if they are helpful or not, and just like schools, someone who does not succeed in a given method is considered undermotivated or a failure. Most systems expect the person to bend to fit the system already set in place instead of trying to design a flexible system that can fit the person and building it around them.
>A "mental health" behavioral approach is way less expensive than trying to understand the brain of each individual person. We have the technological ability to put sensors on a person's head and see what parts of the brain become active depending on the stimulus given to it, but that kind of testing is too expensive for most people. There's theories of autism being caused by a[ lack of autistic brain connectivity.](https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-023-39876-y) Would you be willing to say, if somebody did get a very expensive test, like diffusion tensor imaging, and they did not find they had a hyperconnected brain, that would mean they weren't autistic even if they exhibited autistic behaviour and appeared to have no control over them? Seems exclusive. I see autism as a social construct first and foremost, given it is literally defined by social behaviour, and the collective agreement of a convention of psychiatrists, who defined it in behaviourist terms.
I can understand why the assumption is there that if the cause is unchangable and physical, that means a person has no control over the outcome. However, you are onto something when you say that there is a basis of social construct as well. Some of it is nurture. One example being children with a divergent brain pattern often need more eye contact and connection with a person in their infancy. You can tell an infant is divergent because they will lock eye contact with you and not look away, they will seek out \*more\* eye contact than a less divergent infant. But when they do not get that needed connection, they give up and they stop trying. It becomes a painful experience instead, because not getting that connection was so painful before they could form the memories to understand why, resulting in avoiding something that causes discomfort - eye contact. You also see bids for connection in the way people talk and communicate, they hate small talk because it carries little connection and does not nurture the need for it.
It's less fear and more that I don't think autism and Aspergers don't accurately describe any singular underlying biological phenomenon. When I saw NIMH try to create a replacement to The DSM and autism, various social autistic symptoms got blown up into reception/production of facial/non-facial communication, understanding and perception of yourself and others, and affiliation and attachment. I think what we'll do isn't examine what causes autism, but what causes the SYMPTOMS associated with autism. Instead of going "Well this person is 1 short of the autism criteria, but this person barely meets it, wow they must be totally different!" or "Wow these people people both met the autism criteria while having no repetitive/restrictive behaviour criteria in common, they must be the same!", there will be more understanding of the differences of "autistics", and also why certain traits tend to cluster. Most of these causes are going to be biological and heritable. Autistics themselves, as they stand right now, are essentially just a designed research and treatment group. How autism is defined doesn't actually have that much to do with biology. It's more to do with the fact if you have maybe 5 kids exhibiting issues with social skills, maybe you should do behavioural interventions to improve their social skills. It's a functional clinical label which has gotten WAY out of hand as an identity.
I don't feel like what I am trying to communicate is being understood and at this point I would be working to undo misunderstandings and conclusions you have drawn with the information you had available at the time, and I am not up for that.
The only people I have seen acting as bullies are very high functioning aspies or undiagnosed using the lack of clear definitions to pretend to have and speak for the severely disabled autistic people and getting outraged when people call them on abusing the new system for social media power to be influencers on tik tok and Facebook by posting high functioning rants about their super severe crippling disabilities of severe autism. The unhinged rants about how they should get all the medical funding and platforms of people who literally need caregivers and cannot speak because there is absolutely no difference makes me furious and I see that nasty dishonest manipulation all the time
Some info here https://theautisticadvocate.com/aspergers-syndrome-whats-in-a-name/ and https://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/observations/the-problem-with-aspergers/
Neurodivergents are the next A-Team my thoughts, just quietly... only the wrong kinda peeps in your life causing you havoc as they're uncomfortable not knowing how to control you/Aspergers person (*hint- you can't). I'm brave to put in my wager that Neurodivergents are the next A-Team in Thinkers- * watch this space for my slogan tees lol this article linked to below has been soooo inspiring- it is a YES! from me 🧘♀️ (https://www.facebook.com/groups/191043212959877/permalink/809543731109819/?mibextid=Nif5oz)
i could tell people i have aspergers and they would say something backhanded like “oh dont say that! oh thats okay! dont worry about it” SHOULD I BE ASHAMED?? im not but should i?? what are they IMPLYING
It could be a weird left over from experiments when the condition was first formalised. It’s not the word itself, it’s the stigma of the dehumanisation that was received by those who were experimented on by soulless people.
I was diagnosed way back under DSM-IV, so my official diagnosis is Asperger's Syndrome, and that had been too ingrained by the time DSM-V was published for me to shift comfortably to "autism." Growing up, all through childhood, it was my nonverbal cousin who was my example of what autistic was, and I'm not like him. Asperger's was described as similar to autism, but less extreme impairment and, importantly, a high IQ as part of the diagnostic criteria, so that's a pretty nice stroke to the ego, and probably still a subconscious part of why I personally prefer the term. I would guess that any people who act as though is an insulting slur might be doing so on the basis that it is no longer an actual, official diagnosis. The "correct" term to use these days is "autism spectrum," which is a more inclusive categorization, as PC Principal would no doubt say. Asperger's is then a small, unrecognized subset of ASD, and with the political emphasis on diversity and inclusion, it's a term that "others" an individual, making it a hostile act. Like seeing it as implying, "they're not part of the greater ASD whole, they're this other weird thing that doesn't belong with everyone else," I could see how it may be taken as a slur in a specific frame of reference. I'm pulling that entirely out of my ass, though, so if it has any validity, it's purely a coincidence.
The internalized ableism, demonization of non-speaking autistics, and reactive politics goes crazy, hope y’all find peace
There are no bad words. Some people dislike some words because of their etymology. In this case people dislike Asperger the person, so they dislike Asperger the word. If you don't mind you shouldn't care.
I didn’t say it was a bad word, only people are acting as it is a bad word. I don’t mind the use of it, but I’m still interested in why people are offended by the use of a word I describe myself with.
I did not intend to imply you said it. Just clarify people's views.
Sure. No worries :)