An interesting comment from the article: "From the genius, to the anxiety, through the social awkwardness, Esther Reed is a classic case of Asperger's Syndrome! Anyone who has lived with family members who have this condition, as I have, should be able to instantly recognize it. The clues are all there. Her father was a "shy and reclusive man" who had his family living out in the woods isolated from society. There is the source of her autistic spectrum disorder; she probably inherited it from him. She is not amoral as one person previously commented, but rather, as Esther admitted, she didn't realize her actions would hurt others. Again, this is classic Asperger's -- the inability to put yourself in someone else's shoes, the lack of empathy, the self-centered egotism resulting from an inability to generate a theory of mind, i.e. see things from someone else's point of view or understand how what you might do or say would affect the other person. Esther had personal problems a normal person would have been able to handle by confronting and facing her family and expressing her feelings to them and if necessary, just openly leaving to start over, i.e. without running away in the way that she did -- making her paper existence vanish -- and without snapping and acting as she did. People with Asperger's try to hold it together but often snap and act out. In children, it is tantrums. As an adult, Reed snapped and impulsively grabbed a co-worker's purse -- not the act of a genius criminal, since obviously the suspicion would fall on co-workers. She could not handle pressure and personal problems a normal person would have been able to handle without Esther's extreme behavior. Even as a child, she had a hyperresponsivity to stress as described by her teacher which was echoed in her adult life when she became completely dysfunctional when stressed at Columbia and on the run. Ironically, her defense attorney was right, but apparently he didn't have a clue as to the correct diagnosis."
Nothing like psychological diagnosis via Rolling Stone article commenters...
People need to realize that many of these psychological disorders are descriptive of symptoms rather than fundamental physical changes. So what if she's an Aspie? I don't know of any other Aspies who conned their way into the Ivy League.
Actually she sounds like a clear case of a sociopath.
Aspies lack EQ, but not necessary empathy. Sociopaths lack empathy altogether, and will result to destructive actions to get what they want with no regard to people around them, or sometimes, even themselves.
It seemed to me that she was genuinely concerned--at least somewhat--about minimizing her damage to others. She did rationalize that choosing a missing girl's ID probably wouldn't be that bad.
"No one would be hurt by the theft, she reasoned, as long as she was careful not to rack up debt. "I always thought, mistakenly, if there was no financial loss, there was no harm," she says."
So it seems her inability to recognize her damage to others was more problem in rationale than understanding of empathy.
