Is Asperger's Syndrome on the Rise?
by Neil Gardner
How Societal Changes Bring Out the Aspieness in Us!
Before the early 1990s most people had never heard of a variant of high-functioning autism described originally by Austrian psychologist Hans Asperger in the 1940s. Now Asperger's Syndrome seems to be the trendiest diagnosis for children or adults who face serious challenges in social interaction. Stereotypes may vary from quiet and withdrawn stay-at-home types, to nerds fixated with one esoteric subject or walking encyclopaedias.
The same period has also seen a dramatic rise in the diagnosis of ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) and dyspraxia, both of which often accompany a diagnosis of AS. Outwardly affected individuals may only appear slightly eccentric, somehow out of sync with the general flow of social life. Adult outcomes vary considerably. Some aspies are bright, albeit slightly reclusive, individuals who make a career out of their special interests and develop good enough coping strategies to deal with everyday encounters, marry and even have children. Others lead a sheltered existence with minimal socialisation, often just a few trusted relatives or carers, and may be condemned to a life of unemployment and depression. Yet such outcomes do not simply depend on the severity of an inherited neurological difference, but on the way we as naturally aloof individuals engage with the world around us. If it welcomes us, we find it much easier to become a respected member of the community. But if others shun us because of our nonconformist behaviour, we are much more likely to withdraw into a world of our own.
Some observers dismiss borderline autistic disorders as a fashionable explanation for psychological problems. They attribute the extreme alienation that many feel to purely environmental causes. Others maintain the rise in diagnostic cases can be put down entirely to increased awareness of the ably autistic. In the past aspies and auties were simply considered oddballs, village idiots or eccentric professors. However, a growing body of evidence from schools in much of the prosperous world (Western Europe, North America, Australasia and Japan) points to a significant rise in withdrawn children with behavioural and/or communication problems. Here we are not talking about people co-diagnosed with a learning disability as well as a form of autism as their numbers appear to be relatively stable. Are we to believe teachers and child psychologists in the 1960s and 70s failed to notice the symptoms we now class as ADHD, AS or HFA? If we believe the rhetoric of some key advocates of autism awareness only now has society begun to embrace a previously rejected strand of humanity.I do not wish to underrate the importance of raising awareness of the very real difficulties that ably autistic people face, but to understand our predicament, we need to take a broader look at the profound changes that society as a whole has undergone over the last few decades. Mammalian genes evolve gradually over millions of years, but humans can quickly adapt their behaviour to new environmental conditions within one or two generations. Such adaptation affects not only our lifestyle, but the way we use our brains, e.g. in a hunter-gather society much brain power is dedicated to essential survival skills, but relatively little to mathematics or abstract thinking. Some sociobiologists believe we assimilate behavioural patterns and cultural attitudes through memes, i.e. informational or mnemonic units that replicate from human to human and evolve at a much faster rate than genes. In short genes determine our hardware, while memes can be best thought of as socially imparted software, through which we interpret the rest of humanity, in a nutshell units of cultural evolution. So, the hard-wiring analogy that many have used to explain high-functioning autism may not be so hard after all. Some have maintained that individuals on the autistic spectrum are somehow immune to memes. I doubt this is the case as many aspies are obsessed with circumscribed cultural phenomena, such as Star Trek, and as likely as anyone else to indulge in mass-marketed pursuits such as watching movies or playing video-games, albeit in a more detached way. The difference lies in the way we assimilate social knowledge about expected behaviour. Such knowledge is not necessarily communicated by direct verbal means, but through gestures, subtle facial expressions and behaviours. In the right circumstances and with determination and moral support, we can learn to overcome this handicap by simply dedicating some of our analytical powers to socialisation rituals. However, the more complex and contradictory the rules of social intercourse are, the harder it is for people with a nonverbal communication handicap to adapt.
Our world, at least in prosperous countries, has undeniably undergone rapid social change since the advent of mass communication media and the onset of the post-industrial age. We have moved from a society where people dedicated their lives to the farming, extraction, production and maintenance of essential goods and infrastructure to a world centred around presentation, persuasion, entertainment and conformity to a fast-changing set of rules, all areas at which natural aspies are at a serious disadvantage. We strive no longer to produce and trade goods or services to support our family, but merely to earn enough to sustain our lifestyle, with little consideration of the people and resources needed to produce the goods we buy at supermarkets every week. We just assume that a telesales rep or a PR executive may be worth the consumer goods that their salaries can buy, although they does not produce anything and merely persuades others to purchase. Three generations ago, socialisation followed relatively structured rules. Most working people started work at an earlier age and had little time for leisure pursuits. Anyone who could till the land, work down a mine, build houses, bake bread or repair machinery earned respect. Although charisma has always played a key role in courtship, 21st century social skills had little purpose for most of the population in tougher times with a higher mortality rate.
Bullying stems essentially from an intolerance towards those who break hidden rules or act in an unusual way. Such rules centre around respect for the pecking order within a given group and observance of subtle gestures, usually emanating from high-status individuals, signalling expected behaviour. Explicit bullying may be easy to identify and root out, especially in formal settings where stricter rules apply, as it nearly always betrays the psychological weakness of the perpetrator. However, more advanced or subtler forms of bullying build on the victim's weaknesses and aim to induce conformity to a given social order, be it within a small group of teenage friends, a workplace or a neighbourhood. Those who fail to adapt their behaviour to cope with low levels of implicit bullying soon find themselves alienated. Indeed individuals who by no stretch of the imagination are on the autistic spectrum have fallen victim to systematic bullying. It is much easier to maintain a high self-esteem if there is a reasonable explanation for such abuse, such as one's ethnic or religious identity, a physical abnormality or just part of an initiation ritual to which everyone is subjected. The usual reaction is embrace mainstream culture and humbly accept one's physical limitations. However, systematicity is something an aspie mind can cope with quite easily. Relatively free of a strong sense of kinship with peers, aspies can cope better than most with isolation, a distinct advantage in many circumstances.
Childrens' lives have changed almost beyond recognition with the discovery of a new age, teenagehood, no longer a short interlude of adolescence before commencing life's duties, but an active period of socialising, rebelling and conforming that extends right into one's twenties. In no other epoch have millions of teenagers been able to explore the complexities of cultural and sexual awakening. Until recently this privilege was the preserve of the idle rich. A seemingly endless list of books detail how success in life depends largely on one's mastery of soft skills and deep assimilation of cultural fads, learned largely during teenagehood. Social skills are usually defined as a form of diplomacy, but actually mask pervasive deception. The righteousness of an action depends not so much on rational analysis, as on social acceptability, a factor subject to conflicting influences. If your social life is centred around discotheques, taking ecstasy may actually enhance your social integration. By the same logic any sincerely held beliefs about the adverse effects of multinationals exploiting poorly paid workers in the third world are best suppressed if you're a graphic designer for an advertising agency whose main client is a multinational. Better still one learns to believe the official line, whatever the conspicuous evidence to the contrary, that somehow their client has a fair trade policy, only sources goods locally or actually donates vast sums to good causes. The same individual may find herself in both situations. In one she constructs a rationale for taking the risks associated with ecstasy and in the other he takes on board a diluted version of the corporate blurb to justify her contibution to the art of subtle persuasion. It doesn't take a genius to know what is morally right or wrong, but it does take considerable brainpower to construct a sophisticated web of deceit. Today most employees work in offices or other places of work requiring smooth interaction with others and an immediate appreciation of the social hierarchy as well as an acquaintance with contemporary culture. Coolness, a set of behavioural traits dictated largely by the advertising industry, is the order of the day.
Greater emphasis on acting cool places aspies at a natural disadvantage, unless we manage to win some kind of street cred as token weirdoes. Psycho-analysts love to stress the importance of self-confidence. Low self-esteem clearly affects a large proportion of the general population, but shunned from social life and demoted to the bottom of the pecking order, most aspies have fallen victim to severe bouts of depression and many are prescribed potentially destabilising drugs. Unlike Kanner autistics, aspies are rarely oblivious to other people's attitude and find it hard to cope with repeated rejection. Most of the behavioural problems attributed to mature aspies are more a result of teenage alienation than a failure to empathise with others. This cuts both ways as arguably most neurotypicals find it hard to empathise with people with a different set of cultural assumptions. Treating aspies as antisocial outcasts worthy only of alienation only causes most to withdraw further into their shell, requring more remedial action in the form of medication and support workers.
While the AS boom seems confined to Western Europe, North America and Australasia, comparable phenomena have surfaced elsewhere. Japanese society has probably retained more structured social rules and certainly values excellence more than Britain for instance. Notably eye contact, actually considered essential in job interviews over here, tends to be avoided in Japan. Teenagers find it hard to cope with conflicting pressures to achieve well both at school and an increasingly sophisticated social life. Thousands of Japanese adolescents now lock themselves in their rooms for months or even years on end, shunning all human contact, except perhaps with their parents or siblings, a phenomenon known as hikikomori. Some take it extremes letting rubbish pile up in the hallway by refusing to let anyone clear up their mess as they indulge in a world of video fantasy.
The current rise in the diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome and related behavioural phenomena cannot be attributed to rapid genetic mutation. But to dismiss this increase as a mere result of our better understanding of neurological diversity evades the issue. Why is a growing fraction of the population unable to cope with societal pressures? The assumption that only aspies have changed stands in stark contrast with voluminous evidence about behavioural changes in the mainstream population. Rather than focussing on the alleged inadequacies of aloof but otherwise intelligent individuals, psychologists would do well to trace the emergence of new category, neurosmarmies, individuals who use their aptitude for interpreting social stimuli to deceive others. Ironically most of their victims are neurotypicals as their charm offensives tend to put off many aspie-types. Sadly the growing sophistication of social deception affects behaviour in the wder population and exacerbates the exclusion of the those less genetically inclined to conform.
We are all part nature and part nurture. In a humane society we should not seek to change the former, but adapt the latter to bring out the best in everyone. There are many other good reasons to move towards a low-impact society centred around smaller communities, but a return to a simpler but more structured set of social rules would benefit aspies enormously. There are many small steps that may at least point us in the right direction.
- Smaller class sizes
- Smaller schools
- All kids treated as individuals
- Restrictions on advertising to children. The media and entertainment industry determine what products and behaviours are cool. While the possession of such products or successful emulation of these bahvioural patterns may boost the self-confidence of many children and young adults, they ostracise and depress those who just can't cut it.
- Replace the current emphasis on coolness with inclusiveness of different outlooks on life.
- At all times promote content over form. People should learn to respect knowledge, skills and results rather than presentation.
- Give people a chance to prove their worth by eliminating the causes of much sensory frustration (such as noise, bright lights, busy or overcrowded rooms).