I don't think he's an aspie. I've seen him talking and I've seen his appearance and there are no signs of AS there. No odd-sounding vocal characteristics, I guess he is articulate (can't be sure as he speaks in a foreign language), he speaks calmly even when talking about emotive and important topics (very much UNLIKE typical aspie verbal behaviour). Aspies generally get very fired-up when talking about a topic that is their obsession or that they feel strongly about, or they overcompensate by being somewhat robotic. I don't see any off posture or odd movements or oddness in facial expression or dramatically absent expression that are typical of aspies.
"Shy but well mannered." Lots of people are shy and well mannered but aren't the least bit autistic. Lots of aspies are anything but shy and well mannered. Some aspies come across as obnoxious oafs or obsessive bores in casual conversation. Believe me.
Horseback riding and reading poetry could conceivably be autistic special interests, but they are far from typical as special interests. Generally speaking, autistic special interests are to do with sensory experiences or systemizing, and are technological or scientific in nature. Horseback riding and reading poetry are the kinds of pastimes that the idle rich often partake of, and Mr Bin Laden is a very wealthy man I believe.
I don't know much about the terrorist leader's lifestyle, (didn't they catch him? Isn't he dead?) but I very much doubt that his evading capture is due to social reclusiveness. I'm sure he has a large group of followers protecting him.
It think the psychology of religious fanatics and people who devote their lives to religion (nuns etc) has many similarities with the psychology and lifestyles of the typical aspie. Years ago in this forum I pointed out that there are interesting similarities between the profile of a personality disorder that was thought to be the result of temporal lobe epilepsy and characteristics of AS. That personality disorder was never accepted by the DSM or the psychiatry profession, but is still written about by neuroscientists. One important feature of that epileptic personality is "hyper-religiosity". I have met an aspie who has a history of epilepsy who would meet all the criteria for both AS and the "Interictal Personality Disorder" (it also had half a dozen other names). I have met some most eccentric female religious fanatics (one is a relative of mine who has some definite AS characteristics and the other works as a nurse in a neonatal care nursery). I think there's definitely a link between the reclusive, withdrawn lifestyle of the nun and the zeal of the religious zealot, and the social detachment and the obsessiveness of the autist, BUT I do not believe there is any link between religious terrorism or terrorism in general and AS. Terrorism is contrary to the rules of genuine religious sentiment. The eccentric religious people that I know are genuinely decent people. I'm sure they are well aware that killing people is against everthing that they believe in.
Another thought. I think there definitely is something odd about the psychology and the demeanour of the more dangerous and/or intolerant religious leaders. I'm thinking about some Australian religious leaders; one a Catholic one a conservative Anglican and one a Muslim leader, and also Bin Laden. These men as so serious and appear to be so humourless. It's hard to imagine them having fun or being fun to be with. In many ways they are like some aspies, and humourlessness is also one characteristic of that personality disorder that I mentioned previously. However, I don't think these religious people are necessarily autistic or neurologically different or abnormal. I think this frame of mind may be something that their experiences or lifestyle does to them. Maybe they are all just depressed?
I hope I don't seem ungrateful for help in identifying more "famous aspies". For my main list I will only include names of people who have had something pretty credible published about them being AS or autistic or claiming to be autistic, such as a book, biographical details on a pretty credible looking internet reference data base, radio show recording or transcript, article in a reputable online magazine/journal, an article in a current affairs journal (Newsweek, Time etc) or a newspaper article, professional or medical journal etc.
The two lists that started this old thread have been updated and my main list is now quite enormous with 86(?) names in it. My main list can be viewed here:
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2...rtant.html
I have another two lists here:
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2...of_19.html
If I ever get 100 names into my main list I'm going to buy a bottle of Stone's Green Ginger Wine and have my own little party!
I've always been rather fascinated by the fact that Bin Laden is a leftie, because he is a dead-ringer for a shy leftie gay man who I know, but their personalities are quite different. I think physical beauty is an element of Bin Laden's appeal (to people of both sexes). I think there's something a bit "sus" about a society in which the sexes are segregated.
I believe there has been some scientific evidence found linking left-handedness with autism, and the link between homosexuality and left-handedness is well-proven.
I used to find it hard to believe that autists could be presidents or corporate billionaires or CEOs or politicians or generals, but look through my list and you'll find there's been speculation about people from all of these positions being AS. I think an obsessed and very smart aspie has a kind of charisma linked to their cause or their corporate vision. People may be attracted to someone who seems to know where they are going and what they are doing and who seem unstoppable.
One of our kids appears to be quite a divergent thinker, manifesting in the child's writing. Our child has been writing some very funny and unusual stuff since they were little. The child appreaciates some very sophisticated adult-level comedy drama, while we have adults in our family who get very little out of most TV and cinema comedy. The autism genotype seems to be associated with extreme expressions of some abilities, with some under-able or weird and some with superior abilities.
Thanks for the suggestions, Flardox. Tim Burton is in my big list, and so is Satoshi Tajiri.
Articles about Tim Burton and AS:
Helena Bonham Carter’s child craving.
Softpedia. November 17th 2005.
http://news.softpedia.com/news/Helena-Bo...2651.shtml
Sampson, Cory (2004)
Tim Burton’s Edward Scissorhands as a psychological allegory. The Tim Burton Collective.
http://www.timburtoncollective.com/edwardpsycho.html
Articles about Satoshi Tajiri and AS:
The hot 100 game developers. (2006)
Next Generation. Future Network USA. 18th March 2006. p. 1-11.
http://www.ampednews.com/features/182/2/
Plaza, Amadeo (2006) A salute to Japanese game designers.
AmpedNews. Amped News Network. February 6th 2006. p. 1-2.
http://www.ampednews.com/features/182/2/
Regarding Steven Spielberg, I have not been able to find anything credible published saying he has AS or speculating that he has AS. As far as I can tell it is all rumours. I recently had a look at an interview with Spielberg in Rolling Stone magazine in which I think he explained being bullied as a child on his Jewishness, which I didn't think sounded too convincing, but I guess could be true.
My big list (listzilla) can be found here:
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2...rtant.html
Some professor who has expertise on autism has written in an essay that Tesla and other famous people "fit current diagnostic criteria" for autism, so I'm going to add the amazing Tesla to my list soon, bringing the number of famous names on it to over 100. Tesla had synaesthesia, and was one of the most interesting people that I've ever read about.
Simen, I've got a few points to make.
Firstly, every single professional diagnosis of any condition medical disease or whatever, starts with the decision, on the part of the "patient" or that "patient's" parents or carers, to seek a diagnosis of some kind. Very often the "patient" approaches the professional already with a good idea of what the diagnosis will eventually be. I'm sure if you have had any experience of getting a rare or uncommon medical condition properly diagnosed, you will know that you just about need to diagnose yourself to get beyond all the fobbing-off and idiotic misdiagnosis by our friends in the medical profession, to finally find a spcialist who knows their job. I'm sure that a great many adults (especially females) who have been professionally diagnosed in adulthood with AS, have only obtained a correct AS diagnosis as the result of their own tentative self-diagnosis combined with good luck and persistence.
I don't know if you have read much about schizophrenia and the so-called schiziod personality disorders. It's quite clear from what I've read, that people who meet some of the central criteria for AS, and who display no evidence of psychosis, are still, in this day and age, diagnosed as "schiziod" or "schizophrenic", and may even be medicated as such. Have a look at Grinker's book and you'll see what a total F-up the diagnosis of high-functioning autists has been in the past (and probably still is in many places). You might also like to check out this list that I've compiled:
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2...ative.html
As you can probably tell, I have no sense of awe at all for the supposed superiority of professional opinion compared to the opinions of well-read, objective, and educated amateurs.
Regarding your protests that we are diagnosing people that we cannot observe, well in the age of almost limitless electronic media access, this is not true. I think someone on this thread wrote that they had observed Tim Burton, I assume in some mass media programme. I'm sure that most famous people have some footage of them that can be viewed in the internet, TV, video-hire, DVD-hire, public libraries (that loan all kinds of stuff) or through purchase of media products. Look at the references section of my list and you can find links to moving images that you can view over the net of Bill Gates rocking and also some of Glenn Gould being Glenn Gould. I've recently realized that a hugely well-known female Australian journalist appears to be AS. I've seen her body language innumerable times on TV over a span of decades, and it's plainly obvious that she has hypertelorism and a monotone voice. A while back I was watching a documentary in which my favourite Australian musician was interviewed, and I couldn't help but notice his utterly deadpan voice and body language (that he has always had) and they way he rocked his way through the interview. Knowing that he has a BIG reputation for behaving in an Aspergian manner, what am I supposed to think?
The DSM does not list all autistic traits, in fact it specifically leaves the neurological and physical aspects of autism out of the diagnostic criteria for AS. Motor clumsiness and sensory oddities are not mentioned in the DSM criteria. I'm sure this is because the DSM is written by psychiatrists, who do not wish to cede any diagnostic territory to neurologists. I believe that it is some of the "neurological" and physical aspects of autism that are the hardest to concoct or misjudge and are the most specific to autism; the sensory hypersensitivity, the odd-sounding voices, the very pedantic or very sloppy verbal pronounciation, the weird body language, the odd posture (which is unchanging), the minor birth defects that are often found, etc. Most of this stuff can clearly be seen or heard through a TV broadcast. Only a professional actor in the same league as Dustin Hoffman could simulate all of this stuff at the same time.
I'm not sure if you have had a look at my big list. Every name on it has been included because some other writer has stated or speculated that the famous person is or was on the spectrum, and quite a few living people who have been reported in the mass media to have been formally diagnosed are also in that list. The big list does not reflect my own personal opinions or speculations. I have another separate list for that stuff, in which I give (most of) my reasons.
Simen wrote
"So, fuckups happen. Doesn't mean unqualified amateurs are any better at diagnosis. You shouldn't presume so."
I'll presume all I like Simen. I've been through a number of pregnancies and as well I've had plenty of dealings with the medical profession, and medical diagnostic errors happen more often than correct decisions. This is because many doctors work on the principle that the patient will just keep coming back if their first diagnosis and treatment is incorrect, and they are happy to keep bumbling on with trial and error till the patient stops complaining, either through death or healing. There is also plain sloppiness and blindness to details. One of our kids would very likely have been stillborn if not for the medical errors that my husband and I noticed.
"As for schizophrenia, there is a type of schizophrenia not too different from AS that doesn't require split personality, psychosis and so on."
I find that very, very hard to believe. Psychosis is the defining feature of modern, mainstream medical definitions of schizophrenia, and genuine psychosis is not a feature of the autistic spectrum. There is even a campaign underway to have the term "schizophrenia" changed to a number of different psychiatric labels that are different types of psychosis. If you wish to read more about this see this New Scientist article:
http://www.newscientist.com/channel/heal...renia.html
"How would you like it if someone made a website where they speculated in YOUR mental health? Oh, she looks so schizophrenic, or, hmm, maybe narcissistic. In fact, this is what happens to a lot of celebrities and guess what, most of the amateur-diagnosed illnesses are wrong."
I don't speculate about the mental health of famous people. I speculate about whether or not famous people are on the autistic spectrum. Being on the autistic spectrum is not being mentally ill. Autism is not a mental illness. I would have thought it was obvious to anyone that this is how we regard autism in this forum. It is also the medically and scientifically accepted way of thinking about autism.
"Also, note that none of these traits are ones you have if, and only if you have AS or some kind of autism."
Oh really? Would you like to tell me what other scientifically recognized medical or psychological condition has generalized sensory hypersensitivity, of exactly the same type as seen in autism/AS, as a symptom or feature? Could you list a scientifically recognized condition besides autism that can have pedantic pronounciation and oddly formal language as a feature? What other condition besides autism could cause successive generations in a family to have noticeably stiff posture with very straight backs?
"...I disagree that the people you presumably link to (havn't seen the list) are qualified or justified in their speculation."
Oh, of course you haven't bothered to look at my list. If you had, you would have seen this bit at the end of the list:
Details of some authors and sources of references
Professor Simon Baron-Cohen
Professor of Developmental Psychopathology in the departments of Psychiatry and Experimental Psychology
University of Cambridge
Co-director of the Autism Research Centre
University of Cambridge
Professor Arthur Caplan
Emanuel and Robert Hart Professor of Bioethics
University of Pennsylvania
Director of the Center for Bioethics
University of Pennsylvania
Professor Michael Fitzgerald
Henry Marsh Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Trinity College, Dublin
and also a psychoanalyst with the
International Psychoanalytic Association
[information about his books can be found here:
http://www.professormichaelfitzgerald.eu/books.html]
Professor Morton Ann Gernsbacher
Vilas Research Professor
Sir Frederic Bartlett Professor of Psychology
University of Wisconsin-Madison
President of the Association for Psychological Science
and mother of a son diagnosed as autistic
Professor Christopher Gillberg
Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Gothenburg University, Gothenburg, Sweden
St George’s Medical College, University of London
Visiting Professor
Universities of Bergen, Odense, New York and San Francisco
Professor Ioan James
Savilian Professor of Geometry
Oxford University
Professor Oliver Sacks MD, FRCP
Professor of Clinical Neurology and Clinical Psychiatry
Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons
Columbia Artist
Columbia University
Neurologist and popular science book author
Do you think these humble folks are adequately qualified to write about the autistic spectrum, Simen?
Professor Caplan wrote this article:
Caplan, Arthur (2005) Would you have allowed Bill Gates to be born?: advances in prenatal genetic testing pose tough questions. MSNBC.com. May 31 2005.
http://msnbc.msn.com/id/7899821/
I'm sure that you would agree that the issues of prenatal screening for autism genes (destruction of potentially autistic embryos), and the "what would the world be like without famous aspies" question are very important inter-related ethical issues. Caplan has pointed out the relationship between these two different issues in this article.
I'm doing my old trick of dropping back in after being very busy for a while with family life beyond my computer.
I'd like to say a big thank you to Jewelie for informing us about Prof Fitzgerald's new book. I can't wait to see that one! More names for my list!!!!!!!! YEAH! It's certainly time that someone wrote about Tesla and Norbert Weiner with regards to AS. They were strange ones, to be sure.
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. The issue of amateurs confusing schizophrenia with AS seems to be no big issue, as I have personally never heard of any famous person being diagnosed with it following public speculation or simply being speculated about with regard to this condition. Frank insanity would be, one would think, pretty hard to hide, especially if one is famous. Who could ever forget seeing the media coverage of Mariah Carey flipping out during her "episode"?
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.
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.
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.
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".
Simen wrote
"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."
Where is the inconsistency? Mental retardation is often strongly genetically determined, but I don't think there's anything good about it at all. Some genotypes are @#$%ed, some are very valuable. Simple concept. Genuine schizoprenia isn't integral to a person's personality. One either has it or one does not. It has a definite onset of symptoms, and those symptoms can apparently be treated or may remit. People aren't born psychotic (as far as I know). I believe there is good evidence pointing towards vitamin D deficiency and virus infection as possible causes of schizophrenia, while I do not believe this is true of AS.
Isn't it obvious that there is a big, big, important difference between being insane (psychotic, schizophrenic) and being merely eccentric (AS)? I believe all insane, actively psychotic people belong in mental hospitals. I believe merely eccentric or unusual people deserve to live without harassment or negative labelling, as long as they can manage without imposing on others. There is no inconsistency in this. Just because I value AS as a way of being does not mean I have signed up to defend every conceivable form of human variation. I think there may be some fanatics who hold this position, but I am not one of them.
Simen wrote:
"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."
If you'd bothered to actually read the references that support my list you'd see that most of the living people on that list are there because they have discussed their self-diagnosis witha journalist, or have discussed a professional diagnosis with a journalist, mentioned their childhood diagnosis to journalist, have described a typically autistic childhood and adulthood with two different journalists, or have had a biographer describe their childhood autism diagnosis in their published biography. Idle speculation by amateurs who do not know the person diagnosed, or amateur diagnosis by hack journalists do not form the basis of any more than maybe a couple of the names in my huge list of 114 (soon to be 115) famous people. But why would you let the facts get in the way of a pompous rant?
Simen quoted:
"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."
No, I haven't really disproved my own argument, and here's why. The one AS expert who has done most of the diagnosis of the dead that you take exception to, Prof Michael Fitzgerald, does I believe show in his writing a comprehensive knowledge of what intelligent people with AS are like as people that one knows as people. His writing does seem to demonstrate a great wealth of personal experience of knowing people who have AS, that goes beyond the dry clinical diagnostic criteria and medical textbooks. I think the writing of Attwood and Baron-Cohen also show this. BUT, I do also have serious reservations about each of these experts as well. I can't respect Fitzgerald's background as a psychoanalyst. To put it plainly I believe Freud and his movement is totally worthless and positively harmful. But I can see in his writing that Fitzgerald has known and thought a great deal about many people who have AS.
There are plenty of clinicians who write about people with AS almost wholly in terms of clinical jargon and medical terms. They don't really understand much at all about their "patients" and "cases". These people may be recognized by the medical world as experts, but they don't understand jack, because they don't know anyone with AS as a person.
Simen wrote:
"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! "
Well, anyone can get a sense of great intimacy from reading Newton's words from his own private diaries, even though he died in 1726 and lived on the other side of the world. That's the magic of written communication, Simen. I'm in Australia, and where are you writing from, Simen?
Regarding Andy Kaufman, he is mentioned as possibly being autistic in this book:
Paradiz, Valerie (2002) Elijah’s cup: a family’s journey into the community and culture of high-functioning autism and Asperger’s syndrome. The Free Press, 2002.
and if you read this book it will be clear that he was a most unusual, and probably educationally disabled, person:
Zehme, Bill (1999) Lost in the funhouse: the life and mind of Andy Kaufman. Fourth Estate Ltd.
This is a more compact version of my big list, for anyone who is interested:
A concise referenced list of 114 famous or important people diagnosed with an autism spectrum condition or subject of published speculation about whether they are or were on the autistic spectrum
http://incorrectpleasures.blogspot.com/2...amous.html
In the biography that I cited it said something to the effect of Kaufman's teachers gave him pass marks just so that he wouldn't be held back each year, to avoid getting him back in their class the next year. Apparently he did virtually no work in school, and his father was extremely frustrated at his consistent record of academic failure. That's pretty much what I recall reading in the biography. The book also describes a couple of times when Kaufman was sent to see a child psychologist or a child psychiatrist. Kaufman did start his own business as a child that was successful and lasted for years, according to the book. The Wikipedia says Kaufman grduated from a 2 year junior college. Being from Australia I have no idea what that means academically, but I do know that an American college degree (diploma?) is nothing like an Australian university degree, which are generally 4 years in duration or more. You need to consider that Kaufman came from a benign, middle-class (Jewish?) family, and coming from such a family can serve to hide a young person's problems to a degree.
The brilliant New Zealand author Janet Frame is the latest famous person that I have noticed has been the subject of medical speculation that she was on the autistic spectrum (a HFA). I expected this would happen eventually. A while ago I stumbled across a piece of writing in the internet in which someone was arguing that Frame was autistic, so Dr Abrahamson isn't the first person to notice the obvious, she's just the first person to get such an opinion published in a medical journal.
My point is that many medical professionals aren't professionals, and many patients are better informed about specific conditions than their doctors, and there are even some medical specilists who acknowledge this and are happy to deal with such patients.
I also know that the whole business of medical diagnosis of people on the autistic spectrum has been a total disaster till recent years. I'm sure if you read Grinker's book, you'd realise that adults and children with AS or HFA have been misdiagnosed wholesale by the psychiatric profession, because they didn't even know the basics of defining or diagnosing autism, because of the appalling standards of scientific knowledge in psychiatry. Mental hospitals were up to recently just places to dump bothersome or inconvenient family members, and many of these dumped people have been autists. There's just nothing magical about the profession of psychiatry or medical doctors. The history of psychiatry is a sad joke. I'm not a member of the anti-psychiatry brigade who believe that there is no objective state of mental illness, but I do know that the state of knowledge in this profession has been a joke.