Simen, with regards the argument about whether schizophrenia could be mistaken for or AS or has some subtype similar to AS; I was rather surprised that the DSM criteria for schizophrenia are so liberal, but I still think any person who meets the FULL requirements for the diagnosis in the DSM should have something seriously wrong with them and should be insane or psychotic, in the strictest sense of the word.
So you think that a person, in order to fit the criteria, must also fit a criterion not in the official criteria? This reeks of special pleading. What I presented is the important part, nearly the full criteria; the other criteria do not state anything about being insane, psychosis, or anything like that, they simply restrict the number of additional/co-morbid diagnoses.
Go look it up if you like: the full criteria do not require insanity or psychosis.
Another thing is that you jumped all over me when I happened to mention mental health and autism in the same sentence, but you have no trouble saying that people with schizophrenia have something seriously wrong with them and are insane.
Just seems a bit inconsistent, being that schizophrenia, too, has a strong genetic component, and the neurotype that is predisposed to schizophrenia is very much integral to that person, just as much so as with autism.
You keep complaining about amateurs diagnosing famous people with mental ailments. Does this really happen often? People love to gossip, but I don't know of any famous people who have been demonstrably incorrectly diagnosed in any well-publicized speculation.
What you need to look for is famous people who have demonstrably been correctly diagnosed in any well-publicized publication.
But anyway, I don't get your point. I see speculations about the mental health of celebrities everywhere. Online, in weekly gossip magazines, everywhere, and often with references to purported experts.
I think you are deliberately ignoring the realities of public life when you complain about amateurs speculating about the minds of the famous. My big list is largely based on the writings of professors, some of them world-class AS experts, and other academics. It is also largely based on the writings of journalists. Journalism is not the same thing as the idle speculation of members of the general public (such as bored housewives etc). Journalism has some claim to represent the truth, and to seek the truth, and it's role is to probe and be nosy and to ask questions, directly to those concerned, and to other sources and witnesses. Journalism is regarded as a some kind of profession, and it has codes of conduct and standards. Journalists pry, and sometimes the famous are happy to reveal interesting things to journalists.
So, would you trust a proposal for a unified theory of physics from a journalist, on the grounds that "Journalists pry"?
If not, what is it that makes journalists qualified to be doctors and diagnosticians but not physicists? Do they not both require a long, extensive education?
When you mention that sometimes the famous are happy to reveal interesting things to journalists, of course, if they revealed a diagnosis I wouldn't have any trouble with it.
You ask why one should respect the diagnosis of amateurs. There are two very good reasons why I respect amateur opinions about AS. Firstly, I repsect self-diagnosis, which is generally unqualified diagnosis. There is simply no person in the world who knows more about a person's mind and life history than the person who's mind it is. Parents can know about a person's history in early childhood, but parents can be biased and mistaken as well.
You're ignoring that there is also no one more biased than yourself. Self-diagnoses are notoriously unreliable in general. Not saying they're never right, just saying that they are unreliable. Often, they're wrong. Studies have shown time and again that people suck at evaluating themselves. Do you dispute this?
Further, I would have no trouble with the famous "coming out" about a self-diagnosis; or rather, I would urge people to be cautious as self-diagnoses can be unreliable, but I wouldn't mind anyone publicizing it.
But you're not talking about self-diagnoses. You're talking about the "expert diagnoses", from those very same experts you earlier sought to drag down from their pedestals, those same people you were so skeptical about earlier. And then there's the amateurs. They have every flaw the experts have, and the additional flaw that they aren't experts.
Secondly, nothing can replace the insight and the amount and nuance of the observations of a person who has lived with another person for years. I will always know more about my spouse or child or parent than any clinician, who only gets to meet patients for minutes at a time in a clinical environment, could ever know. There is no way to compare those two different types of knowledge, they are completely different. You are so spectical about the idea of diagnosing the dead, while you are presumably happy to trust the decisions of the medical profession, which is known (in Australia) for practicing what is called "5 minute medicine".
Exactly! Far-off diagnoses cannot possibly have this insight. Therefore, your own arguments show them to be unreliable.
You build a straw man when you bring up 5 minute medicine. Of course I don't trust that! Five minutes isn't enough for a correct diagnosis. But five minutes by an expert is often much better than hours with an amateur unqualified for the task. And it's a bit ironic that you bring up intimacy when you're trying to defend diagnosing people with whom it's impossible to have intimacy--long dead people, people on the other side of the planet whom you've never met!
