

Vipassana Retreat – Mindful Living with Asperger's Syndrome - ca98am79
http://www.jkp.com/blog/2014/08/vipassana-retreat-a-brand-new-article-from-the-author-of-mindful-living-with-aspergers-syndrome/

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lutusp
I hope everyone realizes that Asperger Syndrome has been abandoned for cause
-- that as far as psychiatrists are concerned, the name refers to a cultural
meme, not a mental illness, and it was a mistake to put it in DSM-IV as a
diagnosis. It's been removed from the new DSM-5, and those who removed it
discourage its use, a use that can only stigmatize people who may be placed at
an advantage by possessing its described traits.

Among those who were "diagnosed" with Asperger Syndrome at the height of its
popularity included Albert Einstein, Thomas Jefferson and Bill Gates. That was
when mental health professionals realized their mistake.

From a practical standpoint, what we call Asperger Syndrome, and foolishly
tried to stigmatize and treat, may in fact be an advantageous evolutionary
trait that's being selected for in our technically advanced culture.

Not unlike homosexuality and many other traits that were once thought to be
treatable mental illnesses, Asperger Syndrome has been recategorized as normal
behavior by those who had the most to lose -- mental health clinicians who
were able to read the handwriting on the wall.

~~~
maxerickson
Isn't it fair to say that the behaviors would now be described as part of the
autistic spectrum?

(Let's say we are talking about the words used by a careful clinician to
communicate something, not what some rando on the internet said once about
Bill Gates)

~~~
lutusp
> Isn't it fair to say that the behaviors would now be described as part of
> the autistic spectrum?

No, because there's little that connects the Asperger Syndrome traits with
those of autism. Since the abandonment of the Asperger diagnosis, many have
argued that it's still with us, because it's been folded into the Autism
category. But this misses an important detail -- it wasn't Asperger Syndrome
itself that was folded into autism, but those who received the Asperger
diagnosis -- which meant people were placed in the position of asking
themselves whether they wanted to be thought of as autistic rather than an
Aspie.

Among my many correspondents on this issue, being called an Aspie became
desirable, fashionable. That was one reason the Asperger diagnosis was dropped
-- it had become a popular, desirable mental illness. Psychologists had never
before been in the position of having people ask for a particular diagnosis
based on its popularity.

> (Let's say we are talking about the words used by a careful clinician to
> communicate something, not what some rando on the internet said once about
> Bill Gates)

But in modern mental health practice, one cannot really ignore popular trends.
It seems everyone knows what ADHD, PTSD and Asperger's are, and how they rank
in popularity. A psychologist would be at a severe disadvantage through not
knowing that Asperger Syndrome had become a popular, desirable diagnosis,
regardless of the social reasons.

Overhead conversation: "So ... what's your diagnosis?" "Well ... I confess ..
I don't have one." "You don't have one? What's wrong with you?"

~~~
maxerickson
_No, because there 's little that connects the Asperger Syndrome traits with
those of autism._ is pretty out there.

Like, I can't imagine you could find a single psychologist that would strongly
agree with it. I know you have your issues with psychologists, but a fair
criticism requires an accurate characterization of what they say.

Or are you arguing from your own set of traits that are reasonably assignable
or something? Because difficulty with social interaction, apparently because
of differences in brain function, is a pretty big piece of autism and also
factored heavily into Aspergers.

~~~
lutusp
> _No, because there 's little that connects the Asperger Syndrome traits with
> those of autism._ is pretty out there.

If it weren't true, psychologists would have argued against dropping the
diagnosis. But they argued in favor of it -- they realized they had made a
mistake.

> Like, I can't imagine you could find a single psychologist that would
> strongly agree with it.

That's a classic _non sequitur_ in mental health. It's uncontroversial that
you can find a psychiatrist or psychologist who will, seriously and at length,
agree or disagree with any position whatever. It's a simple matter of looking.
I can quote any number of examples -- a Harvard University professor who took
alien abduction reports at face value, as though they represented reality. A
department of psychiatry chairman who interviewed children about their past
lives on Planet Earth, in complete seriousness. And so forth.

Saying that a psychiatrist or psychologist holds a particular view on a topic
isn't exactly evidence for the proposition.

> I know you have your issues with psychologists, but a fair criticism
> requires an accurate characterization of what they say.

Oh, I agree, because evidence rules and my opinions shouldn't make any
difference to the objective evidence.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_E._Mack](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_E._Mack)

Quote: "John Edward Mack M.D. (October 4, 1929 – September 27, 2004) was an
American psychiatrist, writer, and professor at Harvard Medical School. He was
a Pulitzer Prize-winning biographer, and a leading authority on the spiritual
or transformational effects of alleged alien abduction experiences."

" ... the BBC quoted Mack as saying, "I would never say, yes, there are aliens
taking people. [But] I would say there is a compelling powerful phenomenon
here that I can't account for in any other way ..."

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Weiss](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Weiss)

Quote: "Brian Leslie Weiss (born November 6, 1944) is an American
psychiatrist. His research includes reincarnation, past life regression,
future-life progression, and survival of the human soul after death."

I could go on like this for hours, but surely you realize where it would lead
-- my original remark was correct.

> Because difficulty with social interaction, apparently because of
> differences in brain function, is a pretty big piece of autism and also
> factored heavily into Aspergers.

Yes, but without knowing the actual cause of (a) autism and (b) Asperger
Syndrome, we're drawing conclusions based on superficial similarities that may
not be connected in any deep way. Sort of like the fable of the blind men and
the elephant -- each blind man comes to a different conclusion based on the
same evidence.

That's the new direction in mental health -- the field's opinion leaders are
recommending a change in direction that searches for causes, rather than a
continued emphasis on symptoms. About this change, NIMH director Insel
recently said, "The strength of each of the editions of DSM has been
“reliability” – each edition has ensured that clinicians use the same terms in
the same ways. _The weakness is its lack of validity_."

"Unlike our definitions of ischemic heart disease, lymphoma, or AIDS, the DSM
diagnoses are based on a consensus about clusters of clinical symptoms, not
any objective laboratory measure. In the rest of medicine, this would be
equivalent to creating diagnostic systems based on the nature of chest pain or
the quality of fever. Indeed, symptom-based diagnosis, once common in other
areas of medicine, has been largely replaced in the past half century as we
have understood that _symptoms alone rarely indicate the best choice of
treatment._ Patients with mental disorders deserve better."

Source: [http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-
dia...](http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/director/2013/transforming-
diagnosis.shtml)

If we knew what causes autism, and what causes Asperger Syndrome, this
conversation would be rendered moot by actual scientific evidence, something
in short supply right now in psychiatry and psychology.

~~~
maxerickson
_Yes, but without knowing the actual cause of (a) autism and (b) Asperger
Syndrome, we 're drawing conclusions based on superficial similarities that
may not be connected in any deep way. Sort of like the fable of the blind men
and the elephant -- each blind man comes to a different conclusion based on
the same evidence._

That presumes there is a distinction. With no evidence about the cause, there
is no good reason to make such a presumption in either direction.

~~~
lutusp
Yes, I agree. I was commenting on the mental health field's having made the
connection, on no serious evidence.

It's important to realize that mental health diagnoses follow popular taste,
not scientific evidence. Homosexuality was a mental illness as long as the
public held homosexuality to be unacceptable. In the pre-Civil War era,
psychologists labeled a slave's tendency to run away from his master as a
mental illness, simply because that was a popularly accepted idea, with
support among those who paid the psychologists:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drapetomania](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drapetomania)

In the same way, Asperger Syndrome seemed to be a way to attract paying
clients -- but I don't mean those who received the diagnosis, but the parents
who paid the bills, who perhaps wanted Johnny to "fit in" better at school, be
more "normal".

In each of the quoted cases, public taste changed over time, and psychologists
responded by abandoning a failed mental illness. It's not science, it's a
popularity contest.

If only real doctors could retire their diagnoses in the same way -- that
would instantly solve the cancer and heart disease problems. But this is silly
-- medicine isn't psychology. Medicine is based on science.

