I find the term "spectrum" problematic. Is Asperger's part of the spectrum? Wikipedia says it's an invalid diagnosis. So did all those people with Asperger's just get dumped in the "Autistic Spectrum" bucket?
DSoes the spectrum run from ultra-violet to infra-red? Is this a spectrum for which every behaviour pattern has a slot? Does that mean we're all "on the spectrum"?
If that's what it means, then that seems like dismissing Autism as just being one extreme of being an awkward person.
I think a lot of devs wind up working with people who are awkward. They don't like it (who would?) Some of those awkward people self-identify as autistic. So the devs decide they don't care much for autistic people. I think that's a kind of bigotry; they should really dislike working with awkward people, whatever the reason for their awkwardness.
[Awkward: apparently this is related to upward, downward, northward, etc. "Awk-" signifies "at an unusual angle". I know of no other word that starts with "awk-"]
> Is Asperger's part of the spectrum? Wikipedia says it's an invalid diagnosis. So did all those people with Asperger's just get dumped in the "Autistic Spectrum" bucket?
This is explicitly what happened. The DSM-V explicitly automatically gives you an autism spectrum disorder diagnosis if you had an Asperger’s diagnosis. I think it’s hilariously how blatantly political this criteria is.
As for the legitimacy of spectrum disorders, the only thing I have to say about the subject is the parable of Chesterson’s fence. Think about the problems people were trying to solve with the concept of autism spectrum disorder.
>is this a spectrum for which every behaviour pattern has a slot
You aren’t far off but are missing th forest for the trees. It’s part of a diagnostic system where every disorder is meant to be discrete and non-overlapping and you either have it or you don’t and other good traits you would want in a diagnostic nosology. The spectrum is an artifact of it having to bend to describe what are actually several distinct similarly presenting conditions. It doesn’t have to describe EVERYTHING, it has to fit a hole in the nosology. Asperger’s was depreciated in large part because of the overlap with autism.
If you want something to criticize take a few steps back and look at mental health and psychiatry as a whole. A lot of the assumptions underpinning autism underpin more of mental health.
> take a few steps back and look at mental health and psychiatry as a whole.
Indeed.
Consider, for example, the diagnostic criteria for bipolar. There seems to be half-a-dozen conditions wrapped up in that term, not all of which have poles. Not all people with bipolar are psychotic (that is really important; if you're dealing with someone with bipolar, it makes a huge difference if they are subject to delusions or paranoia).
I believe (might be wrong) that "schizophrenia" is now a discredited diagnosis. Even depression is a fuzzy target. How do you distinguish ordinary sadness from depressive illness? Anti-depressant pills seem to work on both. And there's no "chemical imbalance" theory of depression that hasn't been discredited.
My sense is that we haven't progressed much in understanding mental illness since Victorian times, with their diagnoses of "melancholy".
DSoes the spectrum run from ultra-violet to infra-red? Is this a spectrum for which every behaviour pattern has a slot? Does that mean we're all "on the spectrum"?
If that's what it means, then that seems like dismissing Autism as just being one extreme of being an awkward person.
I think a lot of devs wind up working with people who are awkward. They don't like it (who would?) Some of those awkward people self-identify as autistic. So the devs decide they don't care much for autistic people. I think that's a kind of bigotry; they should really dislike working with awkward people, whatever the reason for their awkwardness.
[Awkward: apparently this is related to upward, downward, northward, etc. "Awk-" signifies "at an unusual angle". I know of no other word that starts with "awk-"]