A classic, from friend TNP.
Saturday, February 4, 2012
Friday, February 3, 2012
Overdiagnosing Asperger's
Two recent NY Times pieces discuss the overdiagnosis of Asperger's.
This op ed is written by someone who was mistakenly diagnosed with Asperger's as a teenager by his psychologist mother who (surprise!) specialized in Asperger's. He eventually outgrew his social awkwardness, but wonders if he would have if he had been diagnosed younger, or would he have withdrawn even more in a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy:
I wonder: If I had been born five years later and given the diagnosis at the more impressionable age of 12, what would have happened? I might never have tried to write about social interaction, having been told that I was hard-wired to find social interaction baffling.
The authors of the next edition of the diagnostic manual, the D.S.M.-5, are considering a narrower definition of the autism spectrum. This may reverse the drastic increase in Asperger diagnoses that has taken place over the last 10 to 15 years. Many prominent psychologists have reacted to this news with dismay. They protest that children and teenagers on the mild side of the autism spectrum will be denied the services they need if they’re unable to meet the new, more exclusive criteria.
But my experience can’t be unique. Under the rules in place today, any nerd, any withdrawn, bookish kid, can have Asperger syndrome.
The definition should be narrowed. I don’t want a kid with mild autism to go untreated. But I don’t want a school psychologist to give a clumsy, lonely teenager a description of his mind that isn’t true.
Under the headline: "Asperger's History of Over Diagnosis,"we get a shout out as the only people who might not eventually be labeled as being a bit of an Aspie:
For better or worse, though, Asperger syndrome has become a part of our cultural landscape. Comments about a person’s having “a touch of Asperger’s” seem to be part of everyday conversations. Even an episode of “South Park” last year was devoted to Asperger syndrome. We can only hope that better physiological markers distinguishing between the autism-spectrum disorders and pure social disabilities can stem this tide of ever more pathologizing.
But, as Martha Denckla, a pediatric neurologist at Johns Hopkins University, has lamented, the only Americans in the future who will perhaps not be labeled as having a touch of Asperger syndrome will be politicians and lobbyists. Members of the political establishment may have other kinds of psychopathology; but, unlike the rest of us, they at least cannot be thought of as Aspies.
Of course we can all be glad that we will never be diagnosed as having Asperger's (which doesn't mean that I won't sometimes throw out that I am also a little bit Aspie to get sympathy and leeway). I guess we can also be happy that people seem so reluctant to diagnosis anyone who isn't a murderer a sociopath (and categorically exclude children). In my mind, though, I don't see anything wrong with labeling people a little bit Aspie or a little bit sociopathic, unless it's an issue of prescribing medication or other radically different treatment. But if there are no meds and there is no treatment, then what is wrong with slapping a label on someone as long as it helps others understand them (and helps them understand themselves) better?
This op ed is written by someone who was mistakenly diagnosed with Asperger's as a teenager by his psychologist mother who (surprise!) specialized in Asperger's. He eventually outgrew his social awkwardness, but wonders if he would have if he had been diagnosed younger, or would he have withdrawn even more in a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy:
I wonder: If I had been born five years later and given the diagnosis at the more impressionable age of 12, what would have happened? I might never have tried to write about social interaction, having been told that I was hard-wired to find social interaction baffling.
The authors of the next edition of the diagnostic manual, the D.S.M.-5, are considering a narrower definition of the autism spectrum. This may reverse the drastic increase in Asperger diagnoses that has taken place over the last 10 to 15 years. Many prominent psychologists have reacted to this news with dismay. They protest that children and teenagers on the mild side of the autism spectrum will be denied the services they need if they’re unable to meet the new, more exclusive criteria.
But my experience can’t be unique. Under the rules in place today, any nerd, any withdrawn, bookish kid, can have Asperger syndrome.
The definition should be narrowed. I don’t want a kid with mild autism to go untreated. But I don’t want a school psychologist to give a clumsy, lonely teenager a description of his mind that isn’t true.
Under the headline: "Asperger's History of Over Diagnosis,"we get a shout out as the only people who might not eventually be labeled as being a bit of an Aspie:
For better or worse, though, Asperger syndrome has become a part of our cultural landscape. Comments about a person’s having “a touch of Asperger’s” seem to be part of everyday conversations. Even an episode of “South Park” last year was devoted to Asperger syndrome. We can only hope that better physiological markers distinguishing between the autism-spectrum disorders and pure social disabilities can stem this tide of ever more pathologizing.
But, as Martha Denckla, a pediatric neurologist at Johns Hopkins University, has lamented, the only Americans in the future who will perhaps not be labeled as having a touch of Asperger syndrome will be politicians and lobbyists. Members of the political establishment may have other kinds of psychopathology; but, unlike the rest of us, they at least cannot be thought of as Aspies.
Of course we can all be glad that we will never be diagnosed as having Asperger's (which doesn't mean that I won't sometimes throw out that I am also a little bit Aspie to get sympathy and leeway). I guess we can also be happy that people seem so reluctant to diagnosis anyone who isn't a murderer a sociopath (and categorically exclude children). In my mind, though, I don't see anything wrong with labeling people a little bit Aspie or a little bit sociopathic, unless it's an issue of prescribing medication or other radically different treatment. But if there are no meds and there is no treatment, then what is wrong with slapping a label on someone as long as it helps others understand them (and helps them understand themselves) better?
Thursday, February 2, 2012
Subspecies
But specifically about this site:
I do not know the name of the person behind “Sociopath World”; doubtless that’s by design. He or she (actually, screw it; I’m gonna go with he) refers to himself merely as “The Sociopath” on his contact page, as “M.E.” on Twitter, and as me@sociopathworld.com when he hands out his address (which makes me doubt that the “M.E.” Twitter handle is an actual set of initials). No matter. This is either a subtle and very labor-intensive hoax, or it’s your one-stop-shopping center for the interested empath (they call us “Empaths”, apparently, which I find both more precise and less condescending than the “neurotypical” label the Autistic Spectrum types seem to prefer). The most popular posts end up on the FAQ list: Do Sociopaths Love? Are Sociopaths Self-Aware? Am I a Sociopath? Can Sociopaths be “Good”? There are helpful how-to pointers: How to break up with a sociopath, for example (the illustration to the right was taken from that particular entry; at least we know that sociopaths have a sense of humor).
There are pop-culture observations: whether the new Twenty-first-century Sherlock really is a sociopath in the world of fiction, whether Lady Gaga is in real life, the potential infiltration of sociopaths into Occupy Wall Street drum circles. There’s a forum, rife with trolls and assholes and deleted posts; but there’s also legitimate debate there. And surprisingly, it also seems to function as a kind of support group for people in emotional distress.
You can even, I shit you not, order a Sociopath World t-shirt.
So. ME is out there, fighting the good fight. He’s getting noticed (at least, his blog gets shitloads more comments than mine, not that that’s a high bar to clear in the wide webby world). He’s showing up on the occasional psych blogroll. So now, I’m going to sit back and see if the neurodiversity community is willing to pick up the torch. If he is trying to kickstart the Vampire Rights League, though, I think he’s fighting an uphill battle.
Reading the comment section, there is a remarkable absence of people arguing that Aspies and Auties should not be lumped in with filthy, no-good sociopaths. Instead we get things like: "When I first ran into sociopathworld.com I thought that’s what it was, evil trying to represent itself as less than totally harmful or at least as something not to be so rightly feared. I’m less sure, now, and we should probably all spend some time reading there."
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Children's primer
I saw this the other day and was reminded of the Lovefraud types. I especially like how it could be read by a six year old.
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Morality pill
My friend sent me a link to this NY Times op-ed titled "Are we ready for a morality pill?" with the instruction "let your followers discuss their impending extermination through pills." Apart from the obvious Clockwork Orange implications, I thought this was the most controversial part
Why are some people prepared to risk their lives to help a stranger when others won’t even stop to dial an emergency number?
Scientists have been exploring questions like this for decades. In the 1960s and early ’70s, famous experiments by Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo suggested that most of us would, under specific circumstances, voluntarily do great harm to innocent people. During the same period, John Darley and C. Daniel Batson showed that even some seminary students on their way to give a lecture about the parable of the Good Samaritan would, if told that they were running late, walk past a stranger lying moaning beside the path. More recent research has told us a lot about what happens in the brain when people make moral decisions. But are we getting any closer to understanding what drives our moral behavior?
Researchers there took two rats who shared a cage and trapped one of them in a tube that could be opened only from the outside. The free rat usually tried to open the door, eventually succeeding. Even when the free rats could eat up all of a quantity of chocolate before freeing the trapped rat, they mostly preferred to free their cage-mate. The experimenters interpret their findings as demonstrating empathy in rats. But if that is the case, they have also demonstrated that individual rats vary, for only 23 of 30 rats freed their trapped companions.
The causes of the difference in their behavior must lie in the rats themselves. It seems plausible that humans, like rats, are spread along a continuum of readiness to help others. There has been considerable research on abnormal people, like psychopaths, but we need to know more about relatively stable differences (perhaps rooted in our genes) in the great majority of people as well.
Must it? This may just be an issue of semantics, but I don't think that this is necessarily a question of morality (big surprise). I think that the fact that there are some very moral people who sometimes do bad things (i.e. Milgram subjects or the Good Samaritan preachers) suggests that it is not really an issue of morality at all, but perhaps of attention. Sometimes our attention is directed at a "good" behavior and we have an impulse to act. Sometimes we are distracted or our attention is never caught or there is not the impulse. Under my theory, generally moral people are on the lookout for moral things and are willing to act (unless they get distracted or get conflicting cues, like in an experimental setting trying to make them look amoral). Is this too behavioralist? Has that all been refuted since I took psychology at university?
And what about mental state? One thing that most criminal laws and religions have in common is a distinction between a good/bad act and a good/bad mental state. For instance, many religious people believe that if you do good things and don't have good intentions that is not moral and vice versa. Similarly, many crimes require a particular bad intent or are mitigated by the lack of a bad intent.
I understand the rationale behind wanting to test morality by observing people's objective actions rather than subjective mental state (not just a "walk the talk" argument but an ease, consistency, and accuracy of measurement motivation), but I think (if my understanding of morality is at all accurate) that a person's level of morality is not merely a sum of a person's actions. I hope that's not true, at least.
Why are some people prepared to risk their lives to help a stranger when others won’t even stop to dial an emergency number?
Scientists have been exploring questions like this for decades. In the 1960s and early ’70s, famous experiments by Stanley Milgram and Philip Zimbardo suggested that most of us would, under specific circumstances, voluntarily do great harm to innocent people. During the same period, John Darley and C. Daniel Batson showed that even some seminary students on their way to give a lecture about the parable of the Good Samaritan would, if told that they were running late, walk past a stranger lying moaning beside the path. More recent research has told us a lot about what happens in the brain when people make moral decisions. But are we getting any closer to understanding what drives our moral behavior?
Researchers there took two rats who shared a cage and trapped one of them in a tube that could be opened only from the outside. The free rat usually tried to open the door, eventually succeeding. Even when the free rats could eat up all of a quantity of chocolate before freeing the trapped rat, they mostly preferred to free their cage-mate. The experimenters interpret their findings as demonstrating empathy in rats. But if that is the case, they have also demonstrated that individual rats vary, for only 23 of 30 rats freed their trapped companions.
The causes of the difference in their behavior must lie in the rats themselves. It seems plausible that humans, like rats, are spread along a continuum of readiness to help others. There has been considerable research on abnormal people, like psychopaths, but we need to know more about relatively stable differences (perhaps rooted in our genes) in the great majority of people as well.
Must it? This may just be an issue of semantics, but I don't think that this is necessarily a question of morality (big surprise). I think that the fact that there are some very moral people who sometimes do bad things (i.e. Milgram subjects or the Good Samaritan preachers) suggests that it is not really an issue of morality at all, but perhaps of attention. Sometimes our attention is directed at a "good" behavior and we have an impulse to act. Sometimes we are distracted or our attention is never caught or there is not the impulse. Under my theory, generally moral people are on the lookout for moral things and are willing to act (unless they get distracted or get conflicting cues, like in an experimental setting trying to make them look amoral). Is this too behavioralist? Has that all been refuted since I took psychology at university?
And what about mental state? One thing that most criminal laws and religions have in common is a distinction between a good/bad act and a good/bad mental state. For instance, many religious people believe that if you do good things and don't have good intentions that is not moral and vice versa. Similarly, many crimes require a particular bad intent or are mitigated by the lack of a bad intent.
I understand the rationale behind wanting to test morality by observing people's objective actions rather than subjective mental state (not just a "walk the talk" argument but an ease, consistency, and accuracy of measurement motivation), but I think (if my understanding of morality is at all accurate) that a person's level of morality is not merely a sum of a person's actions. I hope that's not true, at least.
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