The other day a therapist asked me about Asperger’s Syndrome
and I said to her: “Don’t get me started
on Asperger’s and the DSM-5! For those
who don’t know, the DSM is the Diagnostic
and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders that’s used by all mental health providers
like psychiatrists, psychologists, Clinical Social Workers and other mental
health clinicians, in order to diagnose patients/clients, and bill the health
care insurance companies. So what did
the DSM-5 creators do that I dislike so much??? They’ve lumped those
wonderfully creative, brilliant, totally out-of-the-box males and females like
the Albert Einsteins, Woody Allens , Bill Gates, James Durbin, Daryl Hannah,
Dan Aykroyd, Heather Kuzmich, Dan Harmon, Alexis Wineman, Temple Grandin,
Vladimir Putin, Susan Boyle, James Taylor and others. A t.v. character is
Asperger’s is Monk who has both Asperger’s and O.C.D.
What’s Aspergers? Neurobiologically, Asperger’s (and all ASD people) have various degrees and types of disconnection/misconnection between the Right and Left Brain Hemispheres. The two brain are not in sync. They don’t communicate well with each other.
What are the characteristics of Asperger’s you ask? Well, Aspies are brilliant people, as you can see from the above list. People with Asperger’s and ASD (but the latter to a much greater and much more intense degree) has persistent difficulties with social communication and social interaction. That doesn’t mean with speaking but with the COMMUNICATION of the person with others. The Aspie is very very intelligent; but they can often talk AT you rather than WITH you. With ASD there is a delay in speaking usually; with Asperger’s there isn’t. In fact, Aspies are brilliant lecturers and brilliant people. There’s also this nonsense you could read that Aspies or those who are ASD have no empathy. That’s just not true! There is very much empathy; but the expression of that empathy is the problem. They sometimes have difficult articulating that empathy.
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