Asperger's Syndrome

Psychology attempts to classify individuals into various categories. Often this is like trying to put round pegs into a square hole. The good doctor observes similarities among individuals and attempts to generalize, which is only natural. Generalization works quite well in tackling other matters, such as corn, soybean, insects and animals. Humans are incredibly complex, though, and some individuals are quite difficult to classify. This presents a challenge for the psychologist. Theories tend to miss the mark when working with individuals. A psychologist should remain flexible and not take any one theory as absolute Gospel. There are infinite permutations, particularly in a diverse population spanning the globe. In addition to innate traits, there are societal and familial influences to consider. Psychologists therefore have a difficult time of things, and I don't envy their job. They grapple with the most intricate puzzle of all, H. Sapiens.

This morning, at random, I entered "love" in Wikipedia just to see what the article would say. I have loved plenty of people in my life. It's kind of a crazy feeling, which the article confirmed. "Love" led me to an article on "love-shyness," which is a condition in which an individual is unable to establish a relationship with another person, usually an opposite-sex person. The heterosexual author of the theory suggests that love-shyness is confined to heterosexuals, but I'm skeptical of that, being gay myself. I have felt love-shyness before, even around the same sex. This so-called condition is also quite a common plot in situation comedies.

One of the proposed causes of love-shyness was hypoglycemia, which I may have to some degree, and "Asperger's Syndrome," a term I have come across before. Science fiction author Piers Anthony wrote on his blog (I forget which monthly posting) that his father probably suffered from AS.

In reading about this syndrome or disorder (the psychologists have not reached a consensus over which slot to place AS in), I felt a bit taken aback. The description sounded a little like me. I've been accused of pedantry, for instance. I certainly do like big words. The description of early childhood and adolescence did not seem off base for me, either. When I was a child, one girl called me a "walking, talking encyclopedia." This seemed to echo the description that Hans Asperger applied to four boys that he diagnosed with AS. He called them his "little professors." Adolescence was a challenging period, but it is for many gay people, due to the hostility one may find in high school just for being different.

Syndrome is a scary word. This was a test for my ego. Did I suffer from AS? Do I suffer from AS? At first I thought, maybe. However, I have this memory-resident program running at all times in the background of my operating system. It is a handy little utility called "Question Authority." I have enough experience with academia to remain unfazed by fancy terms.

Upon reflection, it sounds to me like the establishment has found a label to put on nerds. Everyone wants to place a label on everyone else. It seems to make things easier. But humans cannot be classified like insects, not in the way that some would like to do. There are some that prefer to take a pathological view of others. They will look for a difference, and instead of interpreting the difference as a simple variation, which may be adaptive in certain scenarios, they think it is a symptom of either an illness or moral evil. I am more familiar with this sadistic attitude than most people, being homosexual. One of the main drives in human beings is ego fulfillment, and one of the paths to this end is the belittlement of others. If others are sick or wrong, then that implies that you, the observer, are better than they are. And is that so? When you point a finger at another person, three fingers are pointing back at you.

I visited a forum for "Asperger's Spouses," where I found supposedly normal wives complaining about the eccentricities and perceived effeminacy of their heterosexual husbands. They were convinced their husbands had AS. The term seems like just another label used to beat other people over the head with. If you can diagnose someone with XYZ, then you're automatically right forever, and they're automatically in the wrong, no matter what the circumstances. The diagnosis sounds like a convenient weapon to me.

How normal is normal functioning? The nations of the world often slay each others' people by the thousands or even by the millions. This is a demonstrated and documented fact about normal, sane people. How rational are normal people, if violence is their answer? It seems closer to the truth to confess that the majority is not such a sterling model of sanity to begin with. Normal is just not that great. Look at the results.

The criteria for AS includes a difficulty in understanding humor, social nuances and figures of speech. AS'ers also have a tendency to have a narrow range of interests. They may memorize railroad schedules, catalog information, or movie times, something I've never done. Based upon these and other criteria, I decided I'm about 25% closer to AS than the general population, but not quite there. I can sit by a computer almost all day writing, programming, reading, or researching. I like these activities a great deal. But in other ways, I am unlike AS people. I'm not clumsy, but have average physical dexterity. I don't have any problem with small talk, love humor, and watch comedies on a daily basis. I don't shy away from abstract concepts, and I'm not confined to one narrow area of interest. Dungeon Crawl may be a minority subject, but if every person with a niche interest is AS, then that implicates all of academia along with me. I like everything taught at college. There aren't many subjects I don't find interesting. I'm more of a generalist than the AS diagnosis predicts.

I suspect the psychologist's viewpoint is influenced by their occupation. They must deal with disturbed individuals suffering from behavioral problems. They spend less time with the well-adjusted than with the troubled. So their viewpoint is apt to assume a pathological bias. There was a famous study once in which a psychologist sent several normal volunteers, mostly graduate students, to mental hospitals. Each of the volunteers claimed to be hearing voices, but mentioned no other symptoms. Almost all of them were admitted and diagnosed as suffering from schizophrenia, manic-depression, or something similar. After a few months, the "patients" revealed the experiment to the hospitals and published the results. This scandal exposed the fallibility of psychological diagnosis.

It would be well for people who have been told they are some kind of label to take the diagnosis with a grain of salt. Perhaps the esteemed professional is correct, perhaps he is mistaken, or there is a third possibility, perhaps he is both correct in some ways and mistaken in other ways. No one is God. No one is omniscient, no matter what they may claim. No matter what their rank in the social hierarchy, each person generates their own internal version of reality which differs to some degree from objective reality. J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote, "Even the wise cannot see all ends." And in the Bible it says, "We see the world as through a glass [mirror] darkly."

There is much in the realm of psychology that remains a mystery, more so than in the other sciences. Psychology today remains in its infancy. In any case, if one is diagnosed, it's not the end of the world. As for AS, there are certainly worse things to be than that. It seems rather mild in comparison to some of the other classifications.

As a computer programmer, I have known on a professional basis many nerds, and some of them probably did suffer from AS or HFA (High-Functioning Autism). I remember several guys and even a couple of women that almost never interacted with the others around them. They tended to be heterosexual. They did not even say hello to me in passing. I sometimes felt offended by this behavior, but then I learned that they were this way to everyone, by no means just me. They were pretty good programmers, if unlikely to wear the latest fashions. They were shy and not apt with small talk. The truth is that they were probably afraid of the so-called normal people. They did not understand us, and for this reason hesitated to engage us in conversation. But if you asked them a question and were patient enough to listen to them, they could interact well enough for the purpose of the job.

I am reminded of the bitter complaints of wives of AS sufferers. If nerdiness bothers a woman, then she should not marry such a man in the first place. Who is really to blame for the marriage: the socially naive nerd, who is gullible and often the victim in social settings, or the so-called normal partner? It is a good idea to know one's boyfriend well before putting a ring on one's finger. Marrying someone just because they are willing to support you is seldom a good idea. Desperation is not a good reason for marriage either. But if one does marry for these reasons, allowances should be made for the other person's eccentricities. One can't expect a nerd to transform overnight into Prince Charming. It's asking too much.

My advice to psychologists is to go a little easier on the nerds. Don't give them such a hard time. You need them to wrestle with all the technical problems in today's world. Of course, when a married couple comes in for counseling, it may be an easy thing to target the least socially sophisticated spouse and pile all the blame upon him, because he will be less likely to seek confrontation. This is an easy path to take, but not necessarily the right one.