Asperger Syndrome

I recently wrote about my Myer-Briggs INTJ personality, so I thought I might post this. I have never seen this term before until recently.

I went to a psychiatrist recently for mild depression. I had met a woman earlier, who never believed in depression or that she had it, but she took drugs that were prescribed to her, and the effect was enormous--like night and day. She suggested that I looked into depression medication if there is a remote chance.

Since, for one or two months, I found myself with an unusually low level of energy, being unproductive and unable to get work done for reasons I could not explain, I decided to try it out. I could not even will myself to do the simplest things. I examined my diet, my level of exercise, and air quality of my house.

The psychiatrist (the MD, who prescribes medication) referred me to a psychologist (the PhD) for further testing. I saw on a note a phrase "Pervasive development disorder." Hmm, that doesn't sound good. I went through a battery of tests, to check my intelligence, my memory, my social skills and so on. I was asked to define words--ordinary and difficult and asked to pronounce some difficult words, too. The psychologist noted that at few times that I accomplished some puzzles faster than anyone has seen. Doing in 30 seconds, puzzles that ordinarily take a minimum of two minutes; I felt happy about that. But the final review would be different.

The psychiatrist took the test results and told me that I had Asperger's syndrome--a sort of high-functioning autism. Huh? The test results showed that I was highly intelligent. According to the psychologist, if I took an IQ tests, I would be declared at least superior which is consistent with my education and my background. But, that I have a complete disregard for social matters or anything else non-intellectional. I also miss social cues, and have peculiar mannerisms, such as my "rocking."

Hey, Bill Gates rocks too, but then he was also compared to an autistic child in a Time Magazine article. Bill Gates used to brag about his SAT scores (800 Math), and would ask a girl her SATs score at Harvard, it's been reported. I started seeing connections, my SAT scores were higher than any of my 400 high school classmates, not to mention any other senior in the past 3 years; and in today's scale would be a perfect 1600. (Since the early 90's ETS readjusted SAT scores by a 100 pts.) With 1 question wrong, my 790 GMAT score was also the highest at the UCLA Anderson School of Business. What was crazy is that when I took the paper-based GMAT, I finished each section in a fraction of the 30-minute alloted time--10 minutes for the quantitative section and 15 for the verbal section.

But I have also been called socially retarded. That's funny, I got a great score on an emotional IQ tests, but that's probably because I know what the right answer. I don't do well in social situations, can't converse in a group of more than 2 people. I have to translate my thoughts from my head to my mouth, unlike most people, who speak directly what they think; so I can't keep pace with other people in a group conversation. But then again I have never had a girl friend until I was 27. And since the girl was from a different culture, she didn't know better. I think that's why she divorcing me, because she's has been more exposed to other other people in the US and wants some one more emotional and "normal."

I wonder if Asperger's is a medical term for "nerdiness." Even if it isn't, I think there would be greatly disproportionate concentration of sufferers at Microsoft compared to the rest of the world. In China, my wife says, you would not find such people, because "nerdiness" is not respected at all and ensures future poverty, so the family socializes nerds out of the condition.

Fortunately, I am in good company. Some people think Bill Gates has Asperger Syndrome. Not to mention that supposedly other famous scientists like Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton. Unfortunately, Isaac Newton died a virgin.

Comments

[Bruce]

Do you need social interaction? I also often find myself awkward in social situations, particularly groups of people I don't know - but I don't think I would like being by myself all the time either. I prefer a balance; some "me" time, some social time with people I know.

[Albert E.]

yeah, whatever..

[brian foster]

I totally relate to you. I am 33 and have always gone through the same things. I think I may have AS but my wife is stubborn and thinks I'm trying to label myself.

[Fred Bloggs]

I am an introvert, but I only found out about the differences between introverts and extroverts at 40. Introverts have biological differences to extroverts, which make it harder for them to function in the siutations that best suit extroverts.

Being introverted does not mean that you are shy, but it does mean that you are social in a different way to an extrovert. Two thirds of the population are extroverts and its no surprise that most forms of entertainment and social interaction favour extroverts, who are in the majority.

One of the key differences between an introvert and an extrovert lies in energy. An extrovert is energised in a social situation, such as a party, whereas the same situation drains energy from an introvert. Unlike extroverts, introverts regain energy when they are alone.

Extroverts also gain energy and feel happier in situations like night clubs with fast changes, such as flashing lights, and when meeting new people.

Biological differences exist between introverts and extroverts. Accordingly, an introvert cannot learn to become an extrovert or vice versa. However, social skills can be learnt, which can aid an introvert to fit in better in a predominatley extrovert world.

A further difference is that extroverts tend to clarify there thoughts while talking to other people, whereas introverts tend to need some time alone to ponder. These differences can cause an extrovert to think that an introvert keeps things to themselfs, which is not a correct assumption.

Introverts do have some advantages over extroverts, such as thinking before acting, depth of knowledge and a good ability to empathise with other people.

A good book on the subject is "The Introvert Advantage" by Marti Olsen Lansey, Psy. D..

Rather than suffering from AS, you may simply be an introvert. Which is just another way of being social.

[Diego Bernardo Vega]

I wouldn't say I relate to everything you wrote but I have been there in many situations and having the same "feelings" you describe. I want to add that Hans Asperger is just labeling a certain behavior pattern with his last name. I am not a PhD in psychology, not even in Computer Sciences, but I want to believe that for giving ones name to a newly discovered syndrome one must be a real nerd! By the way, I am a INTP, and a geek. I see this post is old, I hope you have been ok since then.

[Art V.]

You sound like a super-genius. So why is your writing replete with the types of errors you're required to identify and fix on the GMAT? After all, you only missed one question.

[Alexander]

But did anti-depression medication work?

[Wesner Moise]

The Zoloft depression pills did not work for me.

[Dylan Lainhart]

Yes, you're definitely Asperger's.

However, I personally don't see a lick of difference between "Asperger's" and autism. I was diagnosed with AS at the age of ten, but I now say I am autistic.

From everything I have read, Bill Gates is a classic example of an autistic. He is autistic to the bone (every autistic is). You sound that way yourself.

However, autistics don't "suffer". There is nothing wrong at all with being autistic. We're not "disordered"; we're just different. That's all.

Autism is seen as a disorder in "social skills", but lots of autistics can function well in social situations. I can function moderately well in the social game myself. That doesn't mean I'm not autistic.

An interesting essay on this:
http://home.att.net/~ascaris1/intro.html

[Chris Weed]

Some of you may have read Oliver Sacks' book "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat". It contains some striking stories about autistics. The conclusion of one of the stories has really stuck with me. After a description of the treatment of an autistic girl with a deep gift for the visual arts, which faded during the treatment as she learned to speak, Sacks quoted an observer of the case:

"We are left with a genius who has had her genius removed, leaving nothing behind but general defectiveness. What are we supposed to think about such a curious cure?"

(See http://www.macalester.edu/~psych/whathap/diaries/diariess96/amber/Diary12.html.)

[Thompson Hayner]

Welcome to the club :). I'm 35 and was diagnosed with AS in 2001 (although I've been seeing psychiatrists and psychologists for three years before that -- and before that was years of trying to self-cure myself).

Still working on the cure, unlike a previous poster, I've no interest in remaining autistic (although growing up without friends was helpful in that I am pretty much immune to the peer pressure society places on one). But jobs are hard to come by as I'm an ineffective advocate for myself in interviews, so I'm definitely looking to get cured. I'd settle for being symptomless, of course.

Good luck on the drugs, I've tried plenty of them and have yet to find an effective one(for me at least).

If you figure (or have figured) out any good ways of battling AS, let me know. Thanks.

[Anon E. Mus]

I prefer quiet and solitude. I don't really care what other people think. I scored at the 99.9 percentile on the quantitive section of a graduate school exam. Sounds Asperger-ish, doesn't it?

As it turns out, I'm not. I prefer to avoid nerds because of their lack of social skills. I also hate things that are tedious.

I'm enthusiastic, often perky, and can make vacuous small talk like a fraternity boy. Why do I do this if it's not what I want to do? It's a simple value proposition. Being a nerd doesn't have a payoff. I want the maximum benefit for the least amount of effort. It takes a lot less effort to put on an act and engage in small talk than to be a nerd.

I recommend not being so introspective. Don't take your job and yourself so seriously. Stop thinking about yourself. You are selling yourself to others. They don't care about you. You've got to figure out what they want. Then convince them that somehow you are the person to help them get what they want.

It's also about choices. You are in control. I keep myself entertained at work by using my social skills to improve my work life. It's just a game, I don't take it seriously. Play the game, you'll get farther. You don't have to live the game.

I don't care about social interaction. But I really like money. By rejecting nerdiness, I can get more money with less total effort than being a nerd requires.

[Reviews]

http://www.favourite-links.com
http://www.links4you.biz

[J Kargol]

Agree with the last comments. I am probably AS, but I really enjoy money and success. It isn't hard to play the social game, it is actually an interesting challenge. Once you have mastered it you can have people eating out of your hand. Don't take being socially challenged to seriously. It is true, people don't care about you and they don't care if you have a problem. Those who do care are glad you have a problem because it provides them entertainment. Don't think so hard!

[Nick]

On AS and IQ.

As Anon pointed out about the value proposition of "smalltalk", this is exactly what people with AS want to do - but can't. It is described in the AS literature that people with AS often want to form relationships and be active socially but don't know how or can't keep up and can at times give up altogether.

I know this conversation was forshadowing a different stance on social thinking. Spare me this introvert/extrovert taxonomical house of cards...

Firstly, I was diagnosed with AS after curing my attention problem with medication. I was reading around on the net about how all these things related: ADHD, AS, etc. In my case, these things all related to an astonishing lack of consistency in the tested areas that are averaged out for an IQ. In my case, there are more than 100 IQ points difference between my strengths and weaknesses. This internal asynchrony is a serious impediment on my entire life as my reading comprehension (70 IQ), verbal (60 IQ), and planning skills (60 IQ)cannot keep up with my spatial (approx. 160 IQ)or working memory (approx. 200 IQ) and factual (130 IQ) ability. My guess is a lot of people with AS are in a similar, but probably not as extreme case as I am in.

As for being smart in everything, you can be smart in everything (including socializing), although it's not likely as the bell curve suggests. Potential is another fallacy that needs to be addressed: There's no such thing as potential. In this way IQ is not a representation of accomplishment and never will be. Also, in this way IQ and an AS diagnosis will never make anyone an eternal social retard (like me.)

Furthering this idea is a question of great importance. If one can accept giftedness as it is, without labels of potential and stereotypes or any degree of fairness involved, another should accept AS as it is without second guessing the basis of the disorder. If the labels and scores given out are to be the tools of endless argument are they really worthwhile?

[Death]

Hi! Another "Aspie" here. Good to see that Microsoft (I'm assuming that you're one of their employees) has a decent disabled employee policy! :-)

Personally, I think that Mr Gates himself also has Aspergers - That is clear to me when I compare him to myself. Both of us can write programs in our sleep. Both of us know computers inside out and both of us don't seem to give a damn about what everyone else thinks of them!

To be perfectly honest here, I am not too pleased with Microsofts rather draconic marketing strategies and the probability that as I rate Linux higher than Windows, then I will probabally be sued for slander/libel!
(Mr Gates doesn't seem to take into account that people are allowed to make their own choices - Another Asperger trait.)

To be honest again, I wouldn't turn down an opportunity of meeting the MD of Microsoft himself, but then again that would be only to ask him why despite the billions of dollars that Microsoft hold, why on earth can't Microsoft create virtually fault-free products, (I refer again to Linux) and why is their tech-support here in the UK so abysmal?

Farewell...
>> Death <<

[Nick]

Microsoft cannot create fault-free products because:

1. There lacks a consistent policy on information transduction. As you know, in programming there can be many ways to say the same thing using code. Incoherence is directly proportional to the number of functions/languages that do exactly the same thing yet manage to exist because of incompatibility and limited knowledge.

2. Patents run out after 20 years. Code changes reflect the need to repatent. .NET is a good example. Don't get me wrong C# is a great language, but if it's just gonna change again and/or lock me into using visual studio for development the middleware monster builds and builds (on purpose?).

(I don't work at MS. I'm not a very good programmer either cause languages keep changing!)

To sum it up, pick a language, I don't care what it is and stay with it forever. I just started learning programming a year ago and I learned C cause I heard the name a lot. Didn't have much else to go on. It is harder for me to learn a new language than to use the "old" language "inefficiently" because I'm used to it and I fear unnecessary change. This could also reflect that I am not a procedural and linguistic thinker.

To get more visual thinkers into programming things (symbols, words - because visual thinkers see letters not the true meaning, etc.)

Perhapes this is the reason english works so well for both auditory and visual thinkers - it doesn't change (drastically)!

"Mr Gates doesn't seem to take into account that people are allowed to make their own choices - Another Asperger trait"

I have to say, that describes my son exactly! He's 16, unofficially diagnosed with AS around age 10 and officially at 14. He languished in the 'problem kids' class all through elementary school, even though he consistently scored in the top percentiles on national tests, and scored a 1280 on the early SAT (age 12) in the Johns Hopkins program.

Anyone who thinks AS is a false label for nerdiness doesn't know anything about AS. Many of his problems in school came from his inability to deal with chaos and disorder - he still becomes agitated and lashes out when things don't go the way they're supposed to. And there's a definite predisposition towards becoming obsessed with certain subjects - maps are my son's, and I recently met a man on the bus who had all the Seattle bus routes and schedules memorized (and was telling people that a local TV show did a story on him about it). THAT'S the type of thing you see with Aspies. There's a definite tendency towards literal thinking too - not understanding common phrases or expressions. He also expects the world to conform to HIS standards and ideas of how things should be, not the other way around. So anyone who thinks you can just "learn to play the social game," I defy you to come teach my son. You have to be able to DETECT the subtle non-verbal cues before you can learn to emulate them.

[why should i tell u?]

hi!another aspie here.my personality is also intj.dignosised 3 years ago.being 9 years old thats 1 third of my life

[jerk]

I've never been diagnosed as an aspi, probably because no one bothered looking past my behavioral difficulties as a child. Both parents and teachers were more concerned with my antisocial tendencies than they were with the more organic roots of my problems. Ironically, both my father and stepfather were psychiatrists.

Yet I likely am an aspi. I never had antisocial tendencies, though I committed antisocial acts. I was the classical "wimp" trying to fit in with a tough crowd as a child, and of course that meant compromising both behavior and academic achievement in order to gain acceptance.

To make a long story short, I managed to slowly evolve from a detention center case study, to a Yale University graduate. At some point I decided to accept being a nerd (or aspi) and stop compensating with self-destructive behavior for my social abnormalities.

Yet I'm visiting the website not to discuss myself. My son is worrying me, as he has the aspi traits. I love him, and want him to be better than myself. He's in preschool, and already the teachers have noticed that he's transfixed on fans, wheels, clocks and other moving circular objects. He often refuses to respond to his name, and doesn't adhere to the desired lesson plan (which tends to be a social activity at that age).

Unlike me, he is a very sweet and nice person. God, I hope I make the right decisions for him.

[Natasha]

I am a proud mother of two young boys, one of whom was recently diagnosed with border-line AS. Most of the time he is a "normal" boy who is set in his own ways and we are slowly beginning to understand how to help him get the best out of himself and his life. My concern though lies with his academic life. I am regularly pulled aside by his teacher who tells me that "he has had a bad day" again - with this ranging from his not listening to her to being very easily distracted. I have told her of his AS and even supplied her with information on it and how to best tackle it in the classroom, but she still seems to have difficulty with my son's AS behaviour. I know that AS is a relatively unknown and newly diagnosed condition, but for how long must I educate individuals on it when, as teachers, they should not only be knowledgable of it but also display some understanding of it and the people it touches on a daily basis?

[Melissa]

Hi! Natasha, I perfectly understand your feelings because I have 2 sons(8 and 5) and the
8 years old has AS. You and your husband should have a meeting with your son's teacher and
LI(learing impaired) teacher and lay out a
behavior plan for him. My son uses a check list
to help him follow school routines and he is doing very well most days. Sometimes he does
have problems following the directions and
rules, but that's OK. AS kids take criticism
very seriously and they don't like to be told
over and over what they do wrong. Encourge
and praise your son often (everyday) even
though he has a bad day.

[swannie]

To address the issue of AS preschool and kindergarten difficulties in the classroom:

I have a five-year old in kindergarten who exhibits AS traits (he was diagnosed PDD-NOS -- which means the "authorities" are not sure where he lies in the Autistic Spectrum.)

One time the aide (who. I found out later, was experienced only with aiding pre-teen and teen autistic children) called me at home because my son wouldn't do anything she asked him to do. She then asked if I could "please tell him (my son) at home that he needs to follow the rules in school," because sooner or later, that's the only way he can fit in school.

Without sounding judgmental or uncooperative, I told the school aide, "If a child has diabetes and he needs adjustment in his nutritive habits in school, wouldn't the school allow for such 'disruption' in school routine?

"If a child has asthma and cannot participate in sports, wouldn't the school accomodate him by setting up a special program for him?

"The reason my child was given an aide by the school specialists is that he has a DISABILITY in adapting to social norms and social expectations.
Whereas you and I have the proper wiring to understand and learn intuitively the norms and rules of social behavior, autistic kids LACK THAT WIRING, or CHEMICAL, or SYNAPSE FIRING, whatever physiological deficiency ...

"No matter what I tell my son at home as how to behave in school, if in school he is not given the proper channel to learn proper classroom behavior, he will insist on his ways. That is a characteristic of an autistic kid."

I fell short of telling the school aide that it is her job to facilitate that aspect of his learning in school.

I think she consulted the autistic specialist after that because my child no longer says "I hate school." when I ask him how his day went.

**********
One of the main characteristics of autism (including Asperger's) is the autistic person's inability to relate socially, due to "wiring in the brain" that's different from "normal" people.

I read somewhere that the difference between a highly functional autistic person and one with Asperger's Syndrome is that the former usually doesn't have the desire to make social connections, the latter does.

Imagine yourself having the desire to do something but are not able to do it because you lack the ability.

And to top it, "normal" people think that all you have to do is make an attitude adjustment.

In THIS sense, Asperger's is a more difficult condition to live with than "obvious" autism. At least "normal" people accept autism as something that the autistic person can't help.

This is why whenever I bring my son to school, it breaks my heart to see him try to play with his classmates while waiting for the school bell to ring, but again and again, subtly rejected or ignored.

But this is also why I admire his courage: He doesn't give up trying.

[Douglas]

I was thinking there would be some bloggers blogging about various aspects of Aspergers by now.

[DebbieM]

I have a son with asperger's, he's 21, we didn't find out till he was in 8th grade, needless to say, up till that time, his life was not the best, he tried interacting with other kids, was rejected most of the time, we tried Scouts, 4-H, little league, soccer, couldn't figure out why the other kids always harassed and picked on him, why his coordination was always a little off. Took alot of work with the School District to protect him from other classmates, but they have a right to be safe in their educational enviroment. My son is in his 3rd year of college, pursuing Civil Engineering, it will probably take him a extra year or more to finish because of his way of doing things, he has taken trips to Florida for Spring Break with his Campus Crusade group for the last 2 years, he has found acceptance on the College Campus, that he never found in High School. Make people aware of what they have, when you look at a person with asperger's, you don't see a disability, you don't notice that something is different till you spend time with them. They are very unique and interesting people, my son's knowledge in the areas of interest to him continues to impress people after they get to know him and love him, as we do. Good luck to all of you and don't give up.