Asperger's is not a form of autism

Hiya,

it seems I'm the odd one out. I refer to myself a 'slightly autistic'. 

My diagnose says I fulfill criterea for Aspergers and ASD. 

kind regards,

jamie + lion

I also tell people not in the know that I have Asperger's, not autism, even though Asperger's and Autism are related to each other in the same way as Diabetes 1 and 2 are related. Joe Public can indeed get confused, but this is largely because of an Historical fluke: Kanner's Autism entered the public consciousness long before the Asperger form. Many people associate Autism with severe mental disability in their minds, and possibly isolated savant skills. Asperger's, though, has been described by Uta Frith  as 'pure' Autism, that is, Autism with normal cognitive development.

NAS11521 said:

If ASD will now come under the umbrella name of HFA then to what extent did the two differ in the past?  There had to be reasons why people were diagnosed with one rather than the other and I've never seen an explanation of why/how things have changed.

I guess you mean to what extent did Asperger's Syndrome and HFA differ in the past?

As I understand it, classic autism involves delayed language development when very young, while Asperger's doesn't.  That's the only distinction that I can think of right now, but I'm not confident it's the only distinction!  So, someone with delayed language development and other symptoms of autism, but who grows up to be 'high-functioning', would have HFA, while someone who has the symptoms of Asperger's but didn't have delayed language development would have Asperger's.

I can see how that could mean no difference in adulthood, though.

Talking of spectra, recombinantsocks' comment reminds me of the mystery of the rainbow colour 'indigo'.

I used to wonder what 'indigo' was supposed to be.  As in, 'red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet'.  Not that long ago, I learned that words for blues had shifted in meaning.  When Isaac Newton described the visible spectrum as having those bands of colour, 'blue' meant a lighter blue, like sky blue or cyan, while 'indigo' meant a darker blue.  But today, when describing the visible spectrum, we're more likely to describe it as, 'red, orange, yellow, green, cyan, blue and violet'.  People then wonder where indigo is, and what, exactly, counts as indigo.

I remember Stephen Fry, on QI, remarking that Isaac Newton wanted there to be seven distinct bands of colour in the rainbow, rather than six, because of his belief in the significance of the number seven.  Fry remarked that, because of this, Newton had convinced himself that there was a distinct band between blue and violet, and described it as 'indigo', while completely missing the distinct band of cyan between green and blue!  But once you know that the word 'blue' has shifted a bit in meaning over the centuries, you realise that 'indigo' is just the blue band between cyan and violet, and that Stephen Fry was wrong!

If I might suggest, tinybit, there is a possibility that you are trying to deny your husband even has a form of autism. Are you scared by the name Autism?

And I think you are being a bit contradictory because you say you agree that Asperger's is on the autism spectrum; so if it is not a form of autism, yet it is on the autism spectrum, your point that it is not Autism is meaningless - a circular argument in reverse! The same argument can be made about Diabetes: Diabetes exists along a spectrum, from mild to severe, and there are  several different types, the most well known of which are type 1 and 2; they have different causes, different degrees of severity, yet they are all types of Diabetes. Or take Cerebral Palsy, another spectrum condition: some people with CP are affected only in one limb, others are wheelchair bound and struggle to speak. Different outcomes, even different symptoms, but the same condition!

I realised this morning, that here we are, a group of people who struggle with being over literal and who struggle to understand each other struggling with the exact meaning of a word. Makes you think (and chuckle)!

The word autism has to be understood against the shifting sands of both public understanding and medical knowledge. In this thread we have been struggling to work out what it means as if it had a single meaning.

in my mind there is

autism [1] a medical term which has been refined over time to mean a precise diagnosable condition relating to being self centred and poor at communicating with the outside world.

autism [2] is a slightly archaic and not so well defined condition that Kanner identified. He didn't manage to distil out the currently identified disorder from a basket of other problems that his patients had.

Medical understanding has moved from meaning 2 to meaning 1 as they have got better at splitting out the multiple problems that many autistic people have.

The public understanding has lagged behind and it's probably fair to say that they are confused, ignorant and prejudiced and they struggle to understand what the difference is.

Aspergers was originally identified as very different to Kanner's but it's now recognised that AS is really more about the narrower modern definition.

SCD is just a convenient oversimplification of things based on the triad of impairments. If you have repetitive behaviours or inflexibility of thought it is autism, if you just have the social communication issues it is SCD.

So what happens if you've got environmental sensitivity, sensory overload, anxiety, poor coordination? Oh its only autism if you've got the third strand of the triad.........

What utter tripe!! And NAS is very largely to blame for the persistence of this nonsense. The triad is a diagnostic tool that distinguishes autism from other conditions. But dividing it up based on whether bits of the triad are present is truly laughable.

Some people diagnosed with autism could now be re-diagnosed SCD.... what an absurd notion....

Psychiatry and Psychology - its a joke to call them professions....they are an utter shambles.

And NAS - if you don't wake up soon.........

misskittykat said:

My daughter was recently diagnosed as being ASD.  I assumed Aspergers, when I queried this, our consultant told me that (as recombinantsocks states) that the term Aspergers is no longer used in our county and soon, other counties in the UK will follow this development.

The clinical psychologist who diagnosed me said something similar.  She told me that they were moving from diagnosing Asperger's and (I think) autism (classic autism) as distinct diagnoses to diagnosing ASD for both.  But once she'd assessed me, she told me that in my case she thought a diagnosis of Asperger's would be more appropriate.  On the summary of assessment she eventually sent me, she went about it by confirming that I meed the diagnostic criteria for an ASD, and that I best fit "the pattern of behaviour described by Asperger known as Asperger's Syndrome."  I thought that was quite a good way of going about it.

She also told me that there's a new diagnosis for Social Communication Disorder (SCD), which sounds to me like the Coke Zero of the autism spectrum if classic autism (or Kanner's) is ordinary Coca-Cola and Asperger's is Diet Coke.  Before the assessment was complete, she thought SCD might be a better diagnosis for me, but by the end of the assessment she decided it was Asperger's after all.

My daughter was recently diagnosed as being ASD.  I assumed Aspergers, when I queried this, our consultant told me that (as recombinantsocks states) that the term Aspergers is no longer used in our county and soon, other counties in the UK will follow this development.  So, if it is no longer to be used and they all come under the same umbrella, how can it be different?

I have books on Aspergers and Autism and the only difference that I can see between the two are Aspergers tend to have less issue with a speech delay in childhood and HFA tend to have a more obvious learning disability.  I may be wrong and have missed more subtle differences but the main traits seem to be the same?

I also believe that many more people are aware now than they were a few years ago that being on the spectrum doesn't mean you are a classic Rainman.  Maybe that's because there are more people being diagnosed with HFA and almost everyone I speak to knows of someone on the spectrum whether it be a close relative or just someone they know of.  I've certainly been surprised on how understanding people have been since my daughter had her diagnosis.

The way I see it is that the original Kanner's or "classic" autism is triad autism combined with other severe mental disability. This is what many people would recognise as "autism". I think that is what tinybit is calling autism.

The current definition of autism just refers to the triad of impairments and this particular set of symptoms is what aspies have. We don't have any other congenital issues so we don't appear to be disabled to the casual observer.

I think that ManyStripes explained this very well. If Asperger's is not a form of autism, then what is it? How can we explain that both Autism and Asperger's share the triad of impairments? Or that Hans Asperger himself first used the term Autism before Kanner himself? Asperger called the condition 'autistic psychopathy'.

I have Asperger's and I am autistic; I have a form of autism. I display behaviours that people with other types of Autism display: I stim; I rock under stress; I flap my hands when excited; I tip toe walk ( I did this compulsively as a child); I have tantrums when my routine is broken; I find it very hard to make friends; I need a lot of support, and the condition is very disabling. What distinguishes me from Kanner cases, is that I have a high verbal IQ, I am aware of my condition and its limitations, and my condition can be so invisible to outsiders that I can momentarily appear 'neurotypical'. But I still have autism, or a form of it. It is a bit like comparing type 1 and type 2 diabetes - they are both diabetes but have different causes and affect people in different ways. However, they are both serious and life changing conditions, and they both affect the same metabolic system.

The diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome is set to be abolished in the near future as the medical profession has decided that there is no useful clinical distinction between the two. researchautism.net/.../dsm-icd-10-abolish-asperger-syndrome

As I understand it, the difference between autism and aspergers is made by looking at the logical intelligence or IQ of the individual. Autism, including Aspergers, indicates low emotional intelligence, this spectrum is then split according to the IQ which is something completely different. I'm an aspie so i don't have a low IQ. However, i read lots of the posts on this site and know that I suffer in similar ways to ALL of the LF autistic kids and adults just the same as the other aspies. i have the same compulsive instincts, the same difficulty in communicating and working out the world and the same runaway thoughts.

in my mind the autistic spectrum is a continuum where you can be measured as anything from 0 to perhaps 200. 100 is normal but some people are geniuses scoring 150 on the scale, shmoozing and enjoying every moment of social interaction. Some people, including me, are dunces, perhaps scoring 50, and every day can be a minefield of misunderstandings and confusion. i have had people shout at me in supermarkets, shout at me at work, i have had a series of unfortunate events in my career and i now understand why - i am clinically autistic!

I have recently been diagnosed with Asperger's, which I understand to be an Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).  Of course, this does not make me an expert!  But I'd like to share how I tend to think about this particular issue.

As I understand it, Asperger's Syndrome is not Kanner's Syndrome, but whether or not it's always possible or sensible to put a particular case clearly in one and not the other, I don't know.  I tend to think of Kanner's as being 'classic autism', like ordinary Coca-Cola, or non-avian dinosaurs, while Asperger's is 'diet Coke', or avian dinosaurs - birds!  And just as there are plenty of people who say birds are not dinosaurs, there are people - yourself included - who say Asperger's is not a kind of autism.

Birds are certainly in the clade dinosauria, whether we consider them dinosaurs or not, and Asperger's is an Autism Spectrum Disorder, whether we consider it autism or not.

Birds are in the clade dinosauria, because of what clades are by definition, the fact that birds are descended from (other) dinosaurs, and how the clade dinosauria itself is defined.  (You can acceptably define it as being the most recent common ancestor of triceratops and chickens, and all descendants of that most recent common ancestor.)  This happily means that we know, for sure, that some dinosaurs taste exactly like chicken, by virtue of being chickens!

This stuff about birds being in the clade dinosauria, whether we like saying they're dinosaurs or not, is a matter of both how we define and organise terms and categories, and of what we learn and discover about birds and (other) dinosaurs.  Similarly, as knowledge and understanding of Kanner's and Asperger's Syndromes and the Autism Spectrum has developed, and as terms and categories have been defined, developed and updated, we've ended up with Asperger's being regarded as a kind of dinosaur.  Or something like that.