Everyone who meets me quickly recognizes my angularities and eccentricities. It’s all part of Asperger syndrome.
Asperger Syndrome and Autism Spectrum Disorder are neurological and neurodevelopmental disorders, not mental illnesses. Asperger Syndrome bears the name of Hans Asperger, an Austrian psychologist, who studied the clinical characteristics of autism in the 1930s and 1940s. His work was overshadowed by that of the American physician Leo Kanner whose work framed the academic understanding of autism for roughly forty years. Leo Kenner’s diagnostic criteria required a comorbid learning disability and dimished intellectual capacity. Hans Asperger’s diagnostic criteria accommodated normal (and even gifted) cognition.
In 1982, psychologist Lorna Wang differentiated two types of autism according to learning (dis)ability. She termed autism without learning disability as Asperger Syndrome. Diagnostic recognition of Asperger Syndrome arose first in 1992 and 1994 through the publication of ICD-10 and DSM-IV, respectively. Asperger Syndrome was subsequently folded into Autism Spectrum Disorder in DSM-V (2013) and ICD-11 (2019). Asperger Syndrome is sometimes referred to as “high-functioning autism.”
Persons with Asperger Syndrome categorically do not apprehend social cues, norms, and expectations of the normative population. They are prone to incongruous perceptions of reality. They see no gray and they often fail to understand why other people do not see things with equal clarity. They generally have problems experiencing emotion; various emotions can be absent or disproportionate (too little or too much). They display inconsistent reactions to expressions of emotion because the ability to identify, anticipate, and appreciate the emotions of others is absent or limited. They often cannot articulate thought in moments of emotion or anxiety overload.
Asperger lives are characterized by routines and difficulty adapting to change. Persons with Asperger Syndrome have normal, hightened, or superior intelligence and generally live independent lives. Although classic autism is diagnosed at very young ages, usually by age three, Asperger Syndrome is frequently unrecognized, discounted as a peculiar personality, or misdiagnosed as ADHD and bipolar disorder.
Dave Plummer, a retired Microsoft engineer, tells his story of a successful career despite his undiagnosed AS/ASD, and the meaningfulness of a diagnosis that explained his life experience.