Question

[stealthdragon.livejournal.com]

It's been suggested that multiplicity might be more common in people with/whose body has Aspergers' syndrome or autism, and I'm rather curious how well that holds up.

Do you or anyone in your system have Aspergers' syndrome or autism? If so, is it a system-wide thing, or particular to a certain person or group?


We have Aspergers' syndrome, and it appears to affect everyone in our system to some extent. (None of us is all that good at understanding social situations or reading body language, for instance, and the lot of us have 'odd' interests.)

(Posted as a result of this entry.)

Comments

[tir-nan-og.livejournal.com]

We have autism!

Mostly, it's our number one fronter, Morpho, who is considered to be the most autistic. The strange thing is that Roman, who we think of as a little socially clueless but not autistic, was actually out during the testing, for the most part..and yet she was still diagnosed with autism..'the big enchilada', as she'd say. (Don't ask how you can get to age 36 before being diagnosed with autism..we don't know.)

Generally, most of us don't think of ourselves as sharing Morpho and Roman's autism, and yet there are distinct limits to how much social and environmental stimulus we can handle. I think that even those of us who think of ourselves as very social and gregarious..generally do not front in public situations, and therefore have not had their claimed social butterfly characteristics tested very much.

[spookshow-girl.livejournal.com]

In that thread it's been mentioned that someone, unnamed, theorized that this is the case. I percieve a significant difference in the statements.

I have not been diagnosed with any form of autism, in fact, the only "diagnosis" that we have from a therapist is that we are going through a rough transition from student to working force drone, and doing a surprisingly decent job of discarding obsolete and detrimental notions from our family.

I'm not inclined to label myself or others in the system as autistic. My understanding of the topic is largely based on steriotypical notions. Perpetuating these notions by declaring myself a working example of them, would do little but cause problems for those who are autistic.

Until such time as my knowledgebase increases, and I see significant data to support the idea that I might be autistic, without a more likely explaination, my answer would have to be no.

--Me

[stealthdragon.livejournal.com]

In that thread it's been mentioned that someone, unnamed, theorized that this is the case. I percieve a significant difference in the statements.

True, and I agree. I've also been hearing that theory around and about for years now, in different phrasings. I can't recall anyone citing sources, but some people seemed to have more information than others (and I'm generally pretty good at distinguishing theories with data backing them up from those that haven't much, or any).

I might change the phrasing on that. Going to think about it for a while first.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

It's certainly possible to have traits that are thought of as being stereotypically autistic without being autistic in and of oneself. Things like difficulty reading body language, dislike of interaction with crowds, a 'professorlike' manner of speaking and writing, etc. can have multiple causes. We know plenty of non-autistic people who exemplify certain of those qualities to the hilt. Sometimes people really do just have 'quirks.'

[unknown-tales.livejournal.com]

No one in our system has either.

Also, you might be interested in this post (http://www.livejournal.com/community/multiplicity/265409.html), which is a similar question about whether or not systems have members that are autistic.

You found it!

[spookshow-girl.livejournal.com]

Rock on. I was considering linking to that thread, but was too lazy to nab it.

--Me

[stealthdragon.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

I remembered that post when making this one, but was too lazy to search back and find it.

[weare.livejournal.com]

We don't have either of those...at least not that I'm aware of. Though, one of my others is very odd. Think "Drucilla" from Buffy...well she talks oddly like that *shrugs*

[etana.livejournal.com]

We don't have autism, at least I haven't noticed anything and we haven't been diagnosed as autistic, etc.

nopers.

[shandra.livejournal.com]

We don't have either. We're actually very sensitive to things that (from my limited understanding) people who have Asperger's or autism generally aren't, like body language and social cues. And we overall are fine with lots of sensory input and things.

So. I don't know if it's a case of "Suzie has brown hair. Suzie is a girl. All girls have brown hair" faulty logic or whether there's some overlap or what.

Speaking from the multiple perspective, I think that if there are multiple people in a body, the statistics just tend to go that you may have a person who has X, because there are enough people 'in the room' so to speak to have various Xs.

I also kind of question the idea that autistics "create" personalities in response to in a sense, their trauma - it goes back to this idea that multiples create themselves as a response, from a singular original personality - something that doesn't fit with our experience of ourselves.

[stealthdragon.livejournal.com]

Speaking from the multiple perspective, I think that if there are multiple people in a body, the statistics just tend to go that you may have a person who has X, because there are enough people 'in the room' so to speak to have various Xs.

That's certainly one possibility. I read back over here (http://www.livejournal.com/community/multiplicity/265409.html), and it seems to suggest that systems having one autistic (or autistic-appearing) member are fairly rare.
If multiplicity and autism-spectrum states have little to do with one another, then we can probably expect to see the same prevalance rate as in the general population. (Only a few aspies in the multiple community, and only a few multiples in the aspie community. The second might be biased by not wanting to 'out' oneself, which is why I've added this post and cross-referenced the entries.)
If there does turn out to be some sort of correlation, I have no idea what it will indicate, aside from more research being necessary! :)

An LJ questionnaire isn't the most scientific of methodologies, and there's probably going to be a sample-size problem, but some data is better than none.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Donna Williams describes having created personalities who could give a non-autistic presentation to the world-at-large, not so much in response to trauma but simply to give an appearance of "normality". One of us did that. She didn't create a new person, but she modified her own presentation.

[stealthdragon.livejournal.com]

I also kind of question the idea that autistics "create" personalities in response to in a sense, their trauma..

At times the theory is worded that way, but it doesn't have to be. There's also the possibility of common causes, where gene-sets contributing to autism might predispose one to be/become multiple. (Or gene-sets which are simply more common in the autisitc population, even if they have no direct effect on the expression of spectrum traits.)

The body has AS, as I mentioned, and the trauma-multiple thing doesn't mesh with our experience either. There might originally have been one person in this body, but if there was, they no longer exist because we grew out of them in much the same way as a grove of trees can share a root system. It was an entirely natural process.
(The other option is that we were hiding from one another for 12+ years, which is also a possibility.)

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

*grins* Depends which one of us you ask. If you ask me, the answer is a definite yes - the social aspects of it aren't that much of a problem these days (I'm almost 48, after all; I've had time to learn skills enough to 'pass'), but the sensory/processing aspects haven't changed. Some of them are very cool; some of them are annoying... *shrugs*... I wouldn't take the "normal pill" if it came with a million-dollar bonus, but sometimes I wish there was a cure for neurotypicality (http://home.att.net/~ascaris1/neurotypicality.html).

If you ask Kír, the answer is an equally-definite "no" - not because he denies the sensory/processing differences (which he too must cope with when he's corporeal, and finds very disconcerting), but rather because he denies the validity of 'autism' as a diagnostic category - in fact, denies the validity of the entire DSM-IV. I actually agree with him about that, because the DSM-IV is really nothing more than the modern-day Malleus Maleficarum, and he's right that what is called "autism" may have a dozen different causes, none of which have been determined - not to mention that no two autistics are ever alike - HOWEVER, I still think we do need a word, and the word "autism" works well enough. He says it doesn't; that it's inaccurate and perjorative. We could argue about it all month, and never agree, so... whatever.

If you asked Crist-Erui, assuming you were one of the handful of people he'll allow close enough to ask him anything, you'd get no useful response: he can talk, he apparently understands things just fine, but he almost never answers questions. A shrink who saw him would doubtless diagnose him as quite severely autistic, but no shrink ever will see him, so it's moot.

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

There is no statistical evidence as yet. Speculation comes from within the online communities devoted to discussion of same, including this one, but that's a relatively small fraction of the overall population and may not be representative.

Rumor has it that some professionals in Australia are speculating on a possible connection between some forms of Asperger autism and natural / non-disordered multiplicity, but they haven't got anything solid yet.

The real problem is that so little actual research has been done on multiplicity anything (as opposed to speculation) that nobody can say if there's a connection right now.

Our personal experience is that the shared brain has the autism; anyone who comes front is affected by it. The conditions that are collectively labeled autism on earth are normal on Laura, and are referred to as chen. They are valued and honoured members of society. Several frontrunners, including Elaq, Gabe, jason and myself, are considered chen at home. The history of our chen in the earth world is complicated, since they very much wanted to be active on earth but had to be secret or clandestine most of the time.

[stealthdragon.livejournal.com]

Rumor has it that some professionals in Australia are speculating on a possible connection between some forms of Asperger autism and natural / non-disordered multiplicity, but they haven't got anything solid yet.

That would be a highly interesing study to see the results of. Thanks, and I'll keep an eye out in that direction. Hopefully something will come of it.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

It's somewhat difficult for us to talk about because there appears to be a perception that claiming autism, especially of the Asperger variety, is 'faddish,' especially to excuse one's bad behavior. I won't claim that I've never seen this; I've only seen it a few times, but a few cases are all that some people need to pick up the idea that it's always a put-up job. I think there may also be a tendency for people to interpret mute/withdrawn system members as autistic. (To be fair, this is nothing new: it used to be common to refer to abused children who had become intensely withdrawn as autistic, which helped to perpetuate the concept that it was caused by abuse and bad parenting.)

I would say that about half of the people in here identify with the label, and half of them don't. Significantly or not, those who do are primarily those who were 'born into the body'-- who haven't identified as walk-ins. For those who don't, they tend to see it as an aspect of the body which may or may not fit with who they really are-- like being female-- but which needs to be acknowledged anyway (i.e. remembering that they can't stay at a party too long because of overload). Some people here, like Ruka, consider it fascinating to study/experience as a different state of being than their own.

We do have our share of people with individual 'quirks' which some might choose to see as autistic, although they aren't in and of themselves. One of the problems with a society where corporations and lobby groups dictate 'normalcy' is that things once considered to be merely odd or even positive-- like having a deep, intense area of interest, or (for children) preferring reading to sports and socializing-- have been redefined as symptoms of (supposed) pathologies. Conversely, there have also been attempts by some autistic people to redefine autism as a 'superior' state of being (much as some multiples have attempted to claim multiplicity as a superior state) characterized by logic and superintelligence-- which may be partly responsible for more people deciding, accurately or no, to self-define as autistic, if it's seen as a positive state.

Our take on that whole business is that while it's certainly better to be seen as a special genius than as something which shouldn't exist, these expectations can also put a stressful burden on autistic people to appear brilliant, talented, hyperlogical, to be savants, etc. in order to prove their authenticity and right to exist. Again, there are also parallels with multiplicity here, in that multiples were expected to be geniuses, creative, psychic, etc., and some multiples who didn't meet the impossibly high standards (incl. us) worried about whether or not they were 'real.'

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

"I think there may also be a tendency for people to interpret mute/withdrawn system members as autistic."

In our case, this physical body is definitely autistic - Kír may dispute the word, but even he doesn't dispute the signs: sensory hyperacuity, hyperlexia, prosopagnosia, splinter skills, executive-processing dysfunction. However, I don't think it's because of autism that Crist-Erui went mute and withdrawn; I think my mother beat him.

When my daughter was little, I had a conversation with my Mom on the subject of spanking, and she said that she stopped spanking me after an incident that made her realize that she was out of control with it. I don't remember that at all, but I do remember Crist-Erui becoming afraid of people, not all at once, but gradually - he just sort of slipped away from everything human. So I think that was why, though I have no way to prove anything. But even before then, he didn't talk.

These days he talks; he's even quite the chatterbox at times, now that he's got people he can talk to who won't hurt him, and he's getting more understandable, but he's still very strange and shy. It's hard to say whether his strangeness is "autism", though, or something else, and in a lot of ways it really doesn't matter.

[fadingtogrey.livejournal.com]

We're not autistic. We used to wonder if one system member's behavior was autistic, but have since decided he's just remarkably quirky. ;)

[ricktboy.livejournal.com]

We're not autistic, but I don't know what Asperger's is.

Maybe if I knew more about it, I'd be able to tell you.

Tara
Pack Collective

[stealthdragon.livejournal.com]

Aspergers' syndrome is considered to be on the mild end of the autistic spectrum, and the diagnostic criteria are almost exactly the same. (Though given the reliability of the current system of defining the spectrum, next week they may very well be saying that we're little green aliens in disguise. Nothing that the multiple comunity isn't familiar with, there.) Some people make no distinction between high-functioning autism and Aspergers' syndrome, but among those who do, it's usually dependant on whether or not there's a delay in developing language.

[shatterstorm.livejournal.com]

Not in this system.

Some of our traumatized ones may display behavior that would be suggestive (avoiding eye contact, rejection of physical contact, rocking.)

One of us spent a lot of time when we were a child learning how to adjust facial expressions to communicate what she was feeling - the body didn't synch up to her internal state well. People kept misreading what she was feeling and that caused a lot of problems. She's always been very good at reading other people's emotional states though.

[echoesnspectres.livejournal.com]

We're autistic (officially diagnosed as Asperger's, but we don't believe in that distinction - we didn't exactly have a "normal" development of language and self-help skills, and neither did most, or any, people labeled with Asperger's - so duh), and there seems to be some kind of vague consensus that our being plural (I was going to say multiple, but opinions differ on that) is connected to, or part of, our autism.

But I have to add to that that we started out as self-defining plural as an alternative to saying that we ("I") had "fluctuations", which we considered part of our autism, except that almost none of the other autistic people we met or read seemed to have them. So the idea that it's part of our autism in some way may have to do with how we used to view ourselves before we found Astraea's pages almost a year ago.

[amusedinsanity.livejournal.com]

No autism that we've found. We have many indeviduals who have developed odd 'quirks' and tendencies, but that's more just the way we've grown and the places we've been/things we've experience in life that has shaped various members of the system at various points in our lives. We -do- have one system member who is distinctly schitzophrenic and always has been, but don't believe that really has much to do with anything. We kind of feel the same way as Shandra, that in a group, staticly speaking, you've got as much chance of having a varied percentage of different things occuring. Like the whole 1 in 10 gay thing. Except we have that backwards :} 1 in 10 is straight in here *laughs*

[sublimebeing.livejournal.com]

I work with kids, and I have two severly autistic kids in my class and two not so severly autistic kids. One of the not-so-severe ones (to me) shows signs of having at least one other personality..I can't really explain it but especially when he gets angry - I see this flicker in him that changes. And sometimes he will talk to me in a manner which is well beyond his years (something "I" used to do as a child) And I am sure that he has, or will develop as he get older (my class are 4-5 year olds) MPD. I don't know if this has any relevance but is definitely something to ponder..

[appadil.livejournal.com]

Eeee, I want to speak, but last time this topic came up I somehow got involved in some huge argument and had to get rescued by a mod. ^^;;;

...I have a vague unsubstantiated theory that virtually anything (autism, otherkin, psychic phenomena, really liking the color green, etc) will have a higher correlation with multiplicity than in the general population. If the population within multiple systems follows the same statistical spread as the population in general, then it's simply a matter of numbers- the more people you have 'occupying' a body, the more likely it is that at least one of them will fit any classification or descriptor you care to examine.

..of course, I have absolutely NO idea whatsoever how closely the demographics within systems approximate the demographics of humanity at large, so it's likely to remain completely unsubstantiated.

[sethrenn.livejournal.com]

Actually, that makes perfect sense to us-- what we always thought was that a lot of the garbage about multiples being geniuses has to do with the fact that if you have a large enough group, one or more people are going to show talents in particular areas. If there are several such members, an outside observer who thinks there's only one person will see it as a single individual with several outstanding talents. And a lot of the therapists who based their ideas on the concept that all multiplicity began with an original mind splitting jumped to the conclusion that all these abilities must have been possessed by the 'original'-- who obviously must have been super-intelligent. I believe this was the basis of some of Truddi Chase's and others' more extreme claims.

[shadowechoes.livejournal.com]

Nope, none of Us have autism or Aspergers.

[mercuryisme.livejournal.com]

My psychology teacher last year was amazingly uninformed about a lot of things, so I would not be surprised if this was false- but he said that MPD was caused my psychological trauma, such as being molested or abused (so it's a more common disorder in girls).

As far as I know Aspergers and autism are both... something you're born with... and MPD is something you gain. If I'm way off here I'm sorry, I'm learning.

I don't have multiples by the way, I'm just a mercurial girl... and probably bipolar. Or maybe I'm just a teenager, who knows?