Published on 12, July, 2020
I'm pretty sure I have ASD as I just scored 40/50 on the online AQ test, and when that Australian vlogger called Paul lists "15 signs that you may be autistic", I can tick 14 of them.The realisation is so far liberating; now I know why I have been in and out of treatment for depression for most of my adult life. It seems that the overevolved, hyperintelligent apes with whom I share a planet can be hard work sometimes, and the realisation that I am one of them doesn't help!But I think I can accept having ASD. The questions I have so far are:1) should I bother with a formal, medical diagnosis?. Dammit, I know I'm weird; what good does it do to give it a name?2) If it is a "spectrum" then isn't everybody on it somewhere? The better question would be are you at the red end or the blue end?Looking forward to conversing with people who might understand, and who can forgive my occasional sarcasm (eg about overevolved apes) because their own coping mechanisms involve a sense of humour that neurotypicals describe as "weird"...
Keith
Well, thanks indeed everyone for such thought-provoking replies! Though I have to say, I don't like the either/or idea idea of a spectrum that you are either "on" or "off". My hackles rise when I read throwaway comments such as,"It is very likely that Einstein was somewhere on the spectrum". Neurotypicals ask what it is like to be "on the spectrum",but I'd like to ask what it is like to be "off the spectrum" - I'm guessing that such people do not have routines, for example, in the morning they are delightfully free to brush their teeth and comb their hair completely at random.... No, perhaps not.Also thank you everyone for the alternatives to the linear idea of a spectrum, but I'm afraid your colour wheels didn't help me much. The reason being that yes, you can take only the visible light part of the electromagnetic spectrum, and yes, you can fold it round on itself to make a circular shape and - lo and behold! gamma rays and microwaves are no longer "on the spectrum". But they don't cease to exist.I think the problem arises when an analogy is taken too literally. The spectrum is an analogy, and it is only useful as far as it explains and has some predictive use. It doesn't "exist out there" and was only waiting to be discovered. it is a human construct. Other constructs such as intoversion-extraversion or intelligence continue to be used because they have such predictive power. Even though IQ has come under assult more recently, it has been used in the past to determiine educational needs of children, for example. 60% of adults will have an IQ beween 85 and 115, so you might decide to allocate resources to those whose IQ is below 85. This is tough on kids with an IQ of 86, who might still benefit from extra educational resources, but this is precisely the intention of, and the probelm with, "either/or" classifications.The Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) suggests that scores below 30 indicate that an individual is "in the non-autistic range". That's not really the same as saying "Not on the spectrum", although it sounds very close. We don't classify people as "hopelessly stupid" or "very bright" depending on an arbitrary cutoff (IQ>85).The AQ is similarly unfair to people who score 29, as they might benefit from support but won't get it as they are regarded as "not on the spectrum".Thank you Plinky for a very interesting article. The author seems to be arguing that an "either/or" approach is necessary to determine allocation of resources, which I can fully understand. Just why not use an (arbitrary) cutoff point?Finally, I should point out that we are talking here about analogies, about artificial constructs and that "the map is not the territory". A map is useful for its descriptive and predictive capabilities - "if I climb that hill (shown by the contour lines} I should see a river (shown by the blue line)". I guess I don't find the spectrum analogy helpful, but then, it is not my job to allocate health resources.Perhaps I am waiting until we have a better map, and as research continues that day may yet well come.
Oh PS to those who call me "anonymous poster" - I'm pretty new to this site and still trying to get myself a "cool handle" that will show up in posts. Since this hasn;t happened yet, I did sign my original post.If you go to the bottom of the post you can find my name and you are quite welcome to call me that :-)