Asperger's Syndrome (moved from Main List)

[Catlady (Rita Prince Winston)]

Pippin wrote in
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/HPforGrownups/message/127402 :

<< I was reading today about Asperger's Syndrome (a form of autism).
'They tend not to understand facial expressions, body language and
other non-verbal communications, and thus take statements literally,
missing implied meanings and subtexts. They often lack empathy,
blurting out truthful but unvarnished statements. Once set in a course
of action, they are slow to process new information that suggests they
should change what they are doing. And they typically fixate on very
specific interests." >>

I've heard three people who said they had Asperger's Syndrome
interviewed on the radio about it. One was a Fresh Air interview with
Dan Aykroyd
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4181931
specifically to publicize his new book about the blues, but drifted
into other topics, including Aykroyd saying he had been diagnosed as a
child with Asperger's Syndrome. 

Another was a Fresh Air interview with Michael John Carley
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1872622 a
playwright who was diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome after his son
was diagnosed. (Related story the same day waa
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1872620 )

Another was an interview with a teen boy who had written a book,
unpublished, which was a parody of mental health therapies, which he
said he hoped would be published and become number 9 on the New York
Times best seller list because if he had a book on that list, he could
get laid. And wishing to be Number 1 would sound arrogant, but still
he'd like to be better than last place.

The boy author seemed to fit the clinical description of the syndrome
-- "I want to be famous author so I can get laid" is EXACTLY the
statement that will prevent a female listener from wanting to sleep
with the speaker -- but the two adults were not merely charming and
expressive, but spoke with apparent real concern (love) of others --
the playwright of his son, Aykroyd of his efforts to get John Belushi
off drugs ... 

My conclusion? One conclusion was drawn by the playwright, who had
started a support group in Manhattan for adults with Asperger's
Syndrome and said he had observed that the suppport group members who
did best in their lives and communicated well were the ones from
'theater backgrounds' -- he indicated that they learned communication
skills in acting classes. IIRC one of those communications skills is
that, knowing one cannot tell when one's listerner is bored by
something one finds fascinating, one should periodically ask: "Am I
telling you too much?" (and, I suppose, pray that one's listener is
not polite, which would ALWAYS reply "Oh, not at all" while stifling a
yawn). 

But MY conclusion is that the diagnosis Asperger's Syndrome covers a
hell of a lot of ground.