Autistic individuals have a
deficit in their capacity to perceive the feelings
which other people experience in social situations.
They also have difficulty recognizing that
circumstances and events can be interpreted in a
variety of ways by different individuals.
There are milder forms of
autism in which cognitive functions are not impaired,
and some individuals can have exceptional
mathematical, musical or artistic abilities. Simon
Baron-Cohen believes there are innate differences
between male and female brains. In his view, female
brains are predominantly wired for empathy, whereas
male brains are predominantly wired for understanding
and building systems. He describes autism as an
extreme version of the male brain, which may explain
why autism is more common among males.
Among a group of 840 students,
scientists scored significantly higher in autism
spectrum traits than humanities and social sciences
students, confirming an earlier study which showed
that autistic traits are associated with scientific
skills.
Within the subgroup of science
students, mathematicians, engineers, physical, and
computer scientists were found to have the highest
scores, followed by biologists, experimental
psychologists and medical students.
These findings raise the
question: "Are bio-medical scientists and
experimental psychologists temperamentally well
suited to the task of understanding human emotions
and feelings?" (see Scientific brain linked to autism - BBC article). They have no difficulty
inventing new ways to categorize and label symptoms,
but have they made major breakthroughs in curing
emotional ill-health? For those conditions for which
antidepressants are typically prescribed the answer
is "No." Likewise for schizophrenia. They
haven't got to that stage yet. They're still
gathering statistics.
... bio-psychiatrists assert
the existence of hypothetical 'chemical imbalances'
and 'genetic predispositions' for which they have no
incontrovertible evidence. By and large they ignore
family and societal factors. They are content to
administer drugs of dubious worth to adults &
children regardless of the aetiology of their
symptoms. Part of the problem is that, in medical
school, they are mainly taught about anatomy,
physiology, biochemistry and genetics. So they try to
shoehorn explanations for all types of psychological
distress into those categories. Instead of a last
resort, their first resort is to mask the symptoms of
distress by drugging people.
A similar problem occurs in the
field of psychology. An ambitious psychology student
can achieve outstanding academic success despite
exhibiting a degree of empathy deficit slightly below
the threshold for a formal clinical diagnosis of
"high functioning autism." It should come
as no surprise that such individuals tend to favour
cognitive therapy and mechanistic genetic hypotheses,
because their cognitive faculties aren't impaired.