How To Differentiate Between Autism and Asperger's Syndrome

Once and For All

Note: This is humor. While it seems to me that most people who differentiate between autism and Asperger's do follow these steps, it certainly isn't my wish that more people follow them.

So you've heard the term autism, you've heard the term Asperger's, and you're wondering exactly which category you belong to. This is a common dilemma. Fortunately, because nobody has ever been able to determine a true answer to that (something about the nature of making up faulty categories), you are in luck. You get to figure out for yourself how to split autistic people into two distinct groups. The fun part is that someone has already invented the names of the two groups for you, and they are lying around without clear definitions just waiting for you to appropriate them. So follow these steps, and by the end, you'll be differentiating with the best of them (or not). Note that you can apply these steps in slightly modified form to "high-functioning" and "low-functioning", for the exact same reasons.

Step 1: Think of a trait or set of traits in yourself that you view as essential to your sort of autism but that is absent or more advanced in someone else's sort of autism.

Examples: Speech, language, symbol, understanding of emotions, empathy (in any of several senses), emotionality, understanding of environment, echolalia, use of metaphors, clumsiness, social aloofness, social passivity, introversion, seeming grace but with complex movement problems, anxiety levels, perseverations, IQ scores, having an internal "world" (define "world" however you like; most who use it do), what kind of tea you prefer to drink, what sports you enjoy, and just about anything else you could think of.

All of these are traits that have been used successfully to differentiate autism and Asperger's. The beautiful thing, as you will find, is that most of them have been used to differentiate them in both directions, so you can choose which one you want to be.

It can be useful to find an autistic person who is very different from you in almost all respects, and use the traits in which you differ (or seemingly differ) as your essential traits. This is a time-honored method of categorizing people.

Step 2: Decide whether you want to be Asperger's or autistic.

If you want to emphasize how much more capable you are than the real unfortunates, or if you just can't get the idea of how to refer to yourself as autistic, it's best to choose Asperger's. If you want to emphasize how much of a real, authentic autistic person you are, or if you want to emphasize how much more able all the autistic people you run across are compared to you, it's best to choose autism. Of course, you can do either one for different reasons. The good part is that you really do get to choose. Cases have been made for every sort of autistic person being one or the other.

Step 3: If you have decided you are autistic, call the "other sort" of people Asperger's. If you have decided you are Asperger's, call the "other sort" of people autistic.

Example: If you have decided that the defining traits of your kind of autism are having a good understanding of emotions and introversion, then the other group of people has poor understanding of emotions and are extroverts. If you have decided you are autistic, the other group is Asperger's. If you are Asperger's, the other group is autistic.

Step 4: Ignore the vast diversity of traits in autism, the fact that there are more than two important types of autistic people, and the people who don't appear to fit your model of things.

This can be easier said than done, because your theory is bound to be flawed, no matter how complex you make it. But if you're bound and determined to split autistic people into two groups, you can ignore reality with some effort. Something that has made many people more comfortable is to develop a complex theory around the traits they're describing. For instance, if you like pop psychology, you can find a veritable cornucopia of ideas in the idea of "right brained" versus "left brained" people, but if you know enough about neurology to wince at simplifications like this, you can invent a system of your own. Note that you can, if you want, also create a continuum between autism and Asperger's, just to take care of the outliers (it won't, but you don't need to think about that).

Step 5: Apply your theories of autism over people's objections if necessary.

Pigeonhole other autistic people into your categories, based on your observations, not on their own, unless their observations fit the ideas you have developed. Praise people who agree with you. Act authoritative. If someone doesn't agree with you, you can put them into the other group by default, and explain why that group lacks the unique cognitive skills or experiences to observe what you've observed.

If you do all these things, you will have discovered as workable a definition of the difference between Asperger's and autism as anyone. You will annoy a lot of people because your idea of the difference will be as inaccurate as anyone else's has been, but at least you'll be secure in your knowledge of where exactly the categories lie. Everything will be nice and orderly for you, and perfectly in accordance with the language you hear around you, and if that matters to you more than reality does, you should be fine.

If you become discouraged by the intrusion of reality, remember that a lot of the famous autistic people¹, from Temple Grandin to Jasmine O'Neill, from Donna Williams to Stephen Shore, have applied similar steps to divide autistic people into oversimplified groups. Follow those links and see for yourself how easy it is to categorize us. But don't look too hard at reality, or you may find that, like the original person to coin the term "Asperger's syndrome", you will at least begin to have doubts about the whole thing.

¹ Disagreement with the way these people carve up autism does not necessarily extend to disagreement with anything else they're doing and should not be taken as a blanket statement about their work.

home | project | library | links | discussion