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Diagnosing Asperger's - Changing Our Focus from Symptoms to People

As a therapist, one thing which has always sickened me is the way medically minded folk impersonalize peoples' suffering. They justify their doing this as that they are being impartial and scientific, as if symptom relief were the holy grail of healing, and psycho babble, the requisite sacred text.

I see their doing these things as cold, heartless, and spiritually empty, and I see their lab rat medical labels as being potentially destructive to the hearts and souls of suffering people, certainly, at a time wherein these folks need all the personal strength they can muster. Ironically, the medically minded do this without once acknowledging the potential harm herein, let alone that "symptom relief" is not "healing." Were it so, we would have no such concept as being "asymptomatic." Thus, labeling groups of symptoms and saying these symptoms are the injury is like saying all women drivers are stupid. Or all men stink at diapering babies. No coincidence, medically minded personality theorists say these very kinds of things.

A part of me now realizes how negative I must sound. For this, I apologize. Even so, I know I am not alone in having these feelings. Many people, in fact, have told me they feel the same way. Even some M.D.'s. Unfortunately, unless we come up with a viable alternative, we are stuck with medically based diagnoses as the requisite sacred texts. Including medically diagnosing, "Asperger's."

So do I have a viable alternative? Yes, I do. And being a personality theorist, I have the theory, and practice, to back this opinion up. More so, in this article, I intend to introduce just such an alternative way to diagnose Asperger's. Along with some possible ways in which to use these criteria to better focus the help we give these folks.

Finally, lest you hear my use of the phrase, "these folks," as me being cold and impersonal, know I write these words as a man whom himself has Asperger's. A man who, by a mere accident of birth, has also escaped a few of the limits people with Asperger's normally suffer with. How? By having my "special interest" turn out to be something of interest to many people; human nature. No surprise that at age sixty, I have somehow managed to turn my special interest into an entire theory of human personality. As well as making this theory the doorway into helping make the world better. Especially for children.  part 2 click here

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