This part of ‘TERRA INCOGNITA” is … a really unknown land… No one – including top specialists and individuals affected know exactly what ‘Asperger’s’ is, where does it come from, how it develops, how it affects… It’s a part of the human psyche, its humanness like the mental capability (IQ) or personality is; and – on the other hand – it tends to be called ‘a condition’, ‘a disorder’, since it may impair functioning of an individual within the ‘typical’ society, where the rules and systems of the majority form the entire world-view…
Being a puzzle ‘Asperger’ is best reached via various metaphors, jokes, comparisons with the ‘rest’. Here are some of them:
A series of reflections on “You might be an Aspie if…” (more here: oddizms):
- if you would rather eat broken glass than go to a sorority party….you might be an Aspie
- …you want to sky-dive or bungee jump, but you wouldn’t do it if you had to drive through traffic to get there.
- …you automatically mirror other people’s voices and even their whole persona, so that you are not sure who you would be today if you had had different people around you
- …you have passed many happy minutes watching a fan spin
- …if you are a 43 year old woman and you just can’t make hair-spray work for you
- …you insist on your view on fairness even when anyone else thinks you have gone mad
- …if you get voted “coolest mum (or dad)” because you treat kids like independent people
- …if you do your walks and exercises at night because it is quiet then and hardly anyone else around
- …if you ever stayed with a hobby so long and with such intensity that you hurt yourself
The Institute of The Study of the NTs (Neurologically Typical)
NT Theory of Mind = Everyone thinks like me, except when shown to be otherwise. Autistic Theory of Mind = Everyone thinks differently from me — vastly and mysteriously — except when shown to be otherwise.
Have you ever noticed that “normal” people cannot think about the possibility that each person might live in a separate world? They can accept it as an intellectual curiosity suitable for a philosophy class, but on a day-to-day basis? They will change the subject rapidly because it causes anxiety they aren’t prepared to handle.
They think (erroneously) that they are alike, that they have already communicated and that no more communication is necessary. If no more communication is necessary, than any attempt at communication is a step in the wrong direction.
More of the research to come…
