Problems with Visual vs. Abstract Thinking: Calculus

Examples from my college days preserve vividly the difference between those who think visually and those who are adept at abstract thinking. Although visual 'talent' as it was sometimes referred to, was a big bonus for studying geology, from geomorphology (landforms), to mineralogy (the crystal classification system) to structural geology (deconstructing relationships in space and time), in order to earn a degree, geology students were required to pass three semesters of Calculus and Calculus-based physics. I am not an abstract thinker; once mathematics leaves 'Concrete World' my visual mind simply goes blank - literally.  

No problemo! My visual brain could spin the wooden models that (no longer) are used to learn crystal forms, while other students were on the verge of emotional breakdown when tasked with this test. 

First panic, then strategy: I signed up for Calculus based physics before taking a Calculus course. I had to 'see' what Calculus looked like in the real world. It worked; I passed physics by sacrificing a few points on the mathematics while storing equations as whole images, and giving them names like, "the double violin with a thingy under the roof" and attached the image to a process for solving the equation. I had no idea what the equation described mathematically, but I could usually solve it. Calculus texts aid this approach since each chapter is organized by groups of similar equations.

 

I had no problem with the math that describes geologic processes like stream flow, because I could easily see the realization in nature. So, physics itself was understandable as it applies to the familiar world of motion, energy and behavior of objects, but getting through Calculus as a foreign language was like decoding signals from a very advanced and very alien civilization. 

Graphs! A visual window into the abstract language of mathematics.

From Paul's online math notes: http://tutorial.math.lamar.edu
"Now, let’s take a look at just how we could possibly get two tangents lines at a point. This was definitely not possible back in Calculus I where we first ran across tangent lines. A quick graph of the parametric curve will explain what is going on here. So, the parametric curve crosses itself!  That explains how there can be more than one tangent line.  There is one tangent line for each instance that the curve goes through the point."

 

For me graphic images, which can be quite a distraction due to their beauty, do help, but in order to 'do math' I had to approach maths as foreign languages. The analogy is fitting: one can learn the forms and grammar of another language, but never become fluent, nor speak it like a native.  

"Theory of Mind" Exposed as Delusional Thinking

It turns out that the vaunted psychological “Theory of Mind” is psychology's euphemism for delusional thinking; a supernatural, superstitious, and magical type of brain processing common to “normal” people. Anyone who demonstrates rational, science-based thinking is abnormal.
 
The fact that Scientific American would publish this is shocking.
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People with Asperger’s less likely to see purpose behind the events in their lives By Karen Schrock | May 29, 2010 |SCIAM BLOGS

BOSTON—Why do we often attribute events in our lives to a higher power or supernatural force? Some psychologists believe this kind of thinking, called teleological thinking, is a by-product of social cognition. As our ancestors evolved, we developed the ability to understand one anothers’ ideas and intentions. As a result of this “theory of mind,” some experts figure, we also tend to see intention or purpose—a conscious mind—behind random or naturally occurring events.

A new study presented here in a poster at the 22nd annual meeting of the Association for Psychological Science supports this idea, showing that people who may have an impaired theory of mind are less likely to think in a teleological way. 

Bethany T. Heywood, a graduate student at Queens University Belfast, asked 27 people with Asperger’s syndrome, a mild type of autism that involves impaired social cognition, about significant events in their lives. Working with experimental psychologist Jesse M. Bering (author of the "Bering in Mind" blog and a frequent contributor to Scientific American MIND), she asked them to speculate about why these important events happened—for instance, why they had gone through an illness or why they met a significant other. As compared with 34 neurotypical people, those with Asperger’s syndrome were significantly less likely to invoke a teleological response—for example, saying the event was meant to unfold in a particular way or explaining that God had a hand in it. They were more likely to invoke a natural cause (such as blaming an illness on a virus they thought they were exposed to) or to give a descriptive response, explaining the event again in a different way.

 

Once again we see that so-called scientific studies by psychologists are tainted by a bizarre insistence that delusional (magical-supernatural-religious thinking) is required in order to be a socially-acceptable human, and indeed that supernatural belief is necessary to social acceptance. Is it surprising then that American education is deficient in science and math instruction, and is instead focused on magical social ideas like the insistence that smiley face stickers 'create' self-esteem? 
It's unbelievable!

Flight, Fight or Freeze / The Stress Response

Chronic Stress
This cartoon of a fish in a blender sums up what modern life is like. The fish is trapped in an open-ended fear of being chopped into a fish smoothie, and activation of the blender is beyond its control.

For most of human history, threat was a product within the local setting. Quick feet and quick thinking were automatic - you escaped or died. Danger from remote sources (violent storms, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, flood and fire) was assigned to nature spirits, and later to powerful humanlike gods, whose behavior could be influenced by sacrifice and through gifts. The human tactic of preemptive sacrifice, with humans and  animals as victims, is familiar to children - when we disobey our parents we pre-punish ourselves by going to our room or giving up a privilege, in a 'cunning' effort to plea down the consequences of our offense.

Eventually individuals and groups assigned the task of negotiation with the gods to an intermediary or to a priestly class, thereby reducing psychological stress, but not real danger. The establishment of a social hierarchy created new stresses, which modern humans have inherited and increased beyond what is tolerable.

The human body and brain evolved to cope with brief and terrifying stress in the natural environment; after such an event took place (a narrow escape from a flash flood or a confrontation with a large carnivore, let's say) the body needed time to relax and recuperate from the surge of hormones that activate the ancient Fight or Flight response, which is the fundamental response to stress in the animal brain. As modern humans we are thoroughly familiar with this sudden and automatic chemical alteration in our brains and bodies. The loss of control while driving on ice or the sudden intersection with a deer crossing a country road, is enough to send our respiration and heart rate soaring and to distort time and memory. If our stress system is healthy, once the danger has been resolved, our body will return to baseline functions and we are left with a 'focus' lesson in mind. Pay attention, slow down, watch for obstacles.

Humans are not equipped to cope with high levels of chronic stress. The structure and demands of contemporary society fail to deliver what we need to be healthy animals, but instead promote chronic stress that slowly alters and eventually will destroy the mind and body. Many of these stressors are ongoing and inescapable, and the body and brain therefore cannot relax and recuperate.

The photograph of a fish that responds to the source of stress by exiting to a better environment, models the Asperger flight response, which in nature is a vital and much more common option that confrontation. One might call it Nature's intelligent conservative force. But, aggressive male-dominated societies label self-preservation as abnormal, defective, effeminate and cowardly. Wow! How crazy is that?
 

Flight or retreat is the typical Asperger response to social stress. In modern societies, one is unlikely to be attacked by wild animals, but more than enough danger is provided by the social environment. The person(s) one encounters may be hostile and aggressive due to chronic stress, arrested intellectual and emotional development, or by indoctrination into a cult of bullying and violence. One may be trapped with people whose self-worth depends on demeaning others or who put 'lesser' beings in stressful social situations. Stress is chronic; unnatural levels of conflict, both within the local setting and from global sources, keep individuals in dangerous states of chemical imbalance. Governments and corporations exploit the stress response, because humans cannot think rationally (or think at all) when "stressed-out."       

The male-dominated American culture promotes the fight response: War, war, war! Everything is a war. The War on Poverty, The War on Obesity; Storage Wars, Cupcake Wars! The normalization of conflict as the default mode of human interaction has poisoned civic and political life. The cult of extreme American 'maleness' involves the U.S. in acts of aggression around the world. Up and down the social pyramid, from poor to rich, being a bully is lauded and rewarded.  



In American culture, the instinctive fight response has been perverted from a 'no-other-option' defense to a demand on males to adopt psychopathic behavior; society values  conflict and violence, not cooperation or fair play. Equality has become an obscene joke. Boys are raised in the belief that aggression toward other humans, especially females, is necessary to be considered a man. This pushes vulnerable boys to the emotional breaking point and dooms many males to arrested intellectual and emotional development, with little hope of being adequate fathers. This extreme definition of being male is NOT the traditional and natural view of male strength, which constrains the use of force to the protection of the family and community.  

Instead of government and the people cooperating to correct damaged  environments, the severe maladjustments that have become pervasive in millions of  Americans are 'treated' with illegal and prescribed drugs, alcohol, domestic violence, financially reckless behavior, bullying and other destructive behavior. Television, films, videos, and popular music pummel kids with one message: Violence, whether physical or emotional, is the shortcut to what you want, and it's legitimate. The profitable lie that objects can substitute for human fulfillment is relentlessly promoted via advertising and entertainment. And yet, the inability of millions of Americans to finish minimal education requirements or to function well-enough to hold a job, remains a culture-wide mystery! 

Some environments have been devoid of what the human animal needs for generations; no one alive remembers that life can be secure, productive and fulfilling. Children born into high stress environments cannot know that safe streets and intact families exist, except as distorted media fantasies. Chronic stress has taken over so thoroughly, that we no longer produce competent  and rational citizens and leaders. 

Nature's third response to stress is
the Freeze, which is instinctual in young animals, from deer fawns to lion cubs, whenever the mother must leave them unguarded. The Freeze can be temporary; rabbits will remain motionless, buying time to acquire information about the threat - which direction to run and when? The Freeze in human interaction often is expressed as subservient behavior, learned helplessness, depression, emotional paralysis and chronic fear. These states of mind can mask tremendous rage or end in self harm.

Societies have elaborate systems of behavior that exploit Fight, Flight and Freeze. These responses play out differently in people diagnosed as Asperger. Typical social humans misinterpret an innate flight response as defiance or disobedience, when in the natural world, running away from danger is by far the most successful life-saving action.

Profiting from Created Disorders and Diseases

...As opposed to interaction with elephants, chairs or watermelons...


What isn't mentioned is that the primary function of society is to judge, evaluate and 'be mean' to people.

 

 

Creating and treating social anxiety has become a major profit-making engine in the abnormal psychology industry, and in related medical, publishing and consumer products industries. It's a good cop / bad cop business: prey on people's fears of being inadequate, defective and socially unacceptable through advertisements and entertainment. Flood TV with corporate propaganda that masquerades as health news, diet and exercise schemes. 

Pressure, pressure, pressure is applied by cosmetic and retail enterprises, and aimed at young girls and women. Be perky! Be a bitch! Be a whore! Whatever you do, don't be yourself - wear a mask at all times. Your face and body are mistakes that must be corrected.  

Note how shyness, by being paired with social anxiety, expands the ever-growing population of individuals who are abnormal and need "help."

Convince parents that their child is a monster from Mars or the Spawn of Hell. Reassure them that that the kid's problems are not their fault and then sell, sell, sell the Hell out of books, guides, and services. The promise of social salvation rakes in billions in consultation fees, testing fees, publications, seminars and so-called expert advice. Curiously, just like old-time religion, salvation from social rejection requires spending (donating) a lot of money, so get out the credit cards. 

Once a frenzy of self-doubt and insecurity has been achieved, institutions and corporations get even more money on the back end, by promising to treat or cure the abnormal mental state that has been created. It's so American: money, money, money.  

How children in the U.S. are supposed to look - perfection is a monster that kills happiness, and sells products.



American economics is aimed at achieving high levels of anxiety in the population: it's good for business. Entertainment and advertising, as well as distortions of reality presented by 'news' programs, serve to drive feelings of fear and inadequacy in the population. We're a 'Fadistic' (rhymes with sadistic) culture.

Wow!

And don't forget profits realized by treating the physical damage and disease caused by socially-induced stress! 

 

Divide and Profit: Extinction of the Individual

We must look to the wisdom of the past when so little can be found in our contemporary world. I'm old now; I grew up in the 1950s and 1960s, supposedly a less free, more conservative time in the United States. But, I have never felt so confined, defined, categorized, unhinged from history, from common humanity, from belonging, from kindness, from the "values" of a democratic society than I do now. The individual has been erased and replaced by stock characters in a game of ‘diversity-demographics’: Divide and profit. This ongoing process of extinction of the individual is critical to those FKAA(Formerly Known As Asperger) for whom individuality and its correlates, Honesty, Justice, and Equality are essential.

The very act of 'doing away with' the Asperger's diagnosis demonstrates the willful 'doing away with' our personalities, preference and voices - we are subsumed into a 'spectrum' of socially undesirable persons, classed with psychopaths, but grudgingly said to have some usefulness to society, which is a very narrow and easily removed permission to exist.

Friedrich Nietzsche, 1844-1900
“You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”

“It is the individual only who is timeless. Societies, cultures, and civilizations -- past and present -- are often incomprehensible to outsiders, but the individual's hungers, anxieties, dreams, and preoccupations have remained unchanged through the millennia.”

_Eric Hoffer, 1902-1983

“The larger the group, the more toxic, the more of your beauty as an individual you have to surrender for the sake of group thought. And when you suspend your individual beauty you also give up a lot of your humanity. You will do things in the name of a group that you would never do on your own. Injuring, hurting, killing, drinking are all part of it, because you've lost your identity, because you now owe your allegiance to this thing that's bigger than you are and that controls you.” _George Carlin, Last Words  

 

For those who would have Asperger children 'ape' so-called normal behavior: "Imitation cannot go above its model.”

“The imitator dooms himself to hopeless mediocrity. The inventor did it, because it was natural to him, and so in him it has a charm. In the imitator, something else is natural, and he bereaves himself of his own beauty, to come short of another man's.” _Ralph Waldo Emerson, Divinity School Address
 

And from old school psychology and psychiatry: “Ultimately everything depends on the quality of the individual, but our fatally short-sighted age thinks only in terms of large numbers and mass organizations...” _C.G. Jung, The Undiscovered Self, 1875-1961 

“The liberty of the individual is no gift of civilization. It was greatest before there was any civilization.” Sigmund Freud, 1846-1949

 

INTJ / Bipolar / Asperger's

Not true: The MBTI doesn't label
personality preferences as pathologies. 

I'm not the first person to notice the intriguing similarities between the Myers-Briggs INTJ personality type and Asperger 'symptoms.' The difficulty we face is that having invented Asperger's Disorder in the 1980s, those responsible for writing the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) have deleted Asperger's Disorder as a discrete condition and have moved us onto a new invention, the Autism Spectrum. 
Those of us who are Formerly Known As Asperger's (FKAA) have been killed off with mere words, erased from the DSM-5, and loaded like shades or ghosts on to the back of an overcrowded bus, while psychologists and psychiatrists figure out what to do with us. Makes them appear kind of silly, doesn't it?

I have exited the bus and will continue to examine how it is that I qualify for three different labels: INTJ, bipolar, and the currently nonexistent Asperger's Disorder - FKAA. I must have won some dysfunctional lottery!

Asperger's: Pathology or a Personality Type?

If you have been given an Asperger's diagnosis, or personality disorder and / or mental illness diagnosis, check out the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). You might discover that some of your frustration, unhappiness and self-defeating behavior is due to a lack of knowledge about your personality. You may be living and working in an environment that doesn't suit you, and that your lifestyle is causing stress. I am NOT advocating the MBTI as a substitute for medical evaluation or treatment, but it is a valuable tool that can add specific and reliable information about your personality-based preferences.

Are you an introvert or an extravert? Do you make decisions based on thinking or feeling? Do you accept information 'as-is' or do you add interpretation and meaning? When interacting with the world, do you rely on logic or perceptions of people and their circumstances? Sixteen personality types are derived from the interactions of these 4 dimensions. Perhaps the most important factor for those individuals who have been diagnosed with 'pathologic' behavior is the stated goal of the MBTI, which views human differences as just that: Differences. 

"The goal of knowing about personality type is to understand and appreciate differences between people. As all types are equal, there is no best type. The MBTI instrument sorts for preferences and does not measure trait, ability or character. The MBTI tool is different from many other psychological instruments and also different from other personality tests."

For complete information about the MBTI, please go directly to the official website for The Myers & Briggs Foundation.
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I filled out the MBTI long before being diagnosed as Asperger, and fell into the INTJ type, sometimes referred to as The Scientist. Having the INTJ personality type does not carry the negative baggage of Asperger's Disorder, although many people do regard the INTJ group as arrogant know-it-alls. Some INTJ people are adamantly against any identification of the two assessments, but others are intrigued, as am I. Females of either designation are rare. There is an overlap of 'symptoms' or 'preferences' in Asperger and INTJ descriptions. 

'Symptom' assumes that the behavior is a problem, whereas 'preference' assumes a normal variation in human likes and dislikes. 

The psychology of pathology and developmental retardation identifies Asperger behavior as NEGATIVE and DEFECTIVE. A long list of offensive behaviors is identified and experiments are designed to ferret out individuals who exhibit some specified number of "symptoms" - a number which is arbitrary and keeps changing. Those individuals are then cast out of "normal and acceptable humanity" like blemished peanuts that are sorted and discarded in order to maintain a false standard of peanut perfection - which every peanut must strive to achieve. This is why we see a very long and bizarre array of supposed symptoms attached to the Asperger's diagnosis. The message is, "We don't like people who display these behaviors; they are not normal." The intent is to control the definition of what it is to be truly human. The search for pathologies is embedded in a social (hierarchical) and religious (Puritanical) agenda.

In sharp contrast, the MBTI, which is based on the work of Carl Jung, views human behavior as part of nature and arising from the individual. It respects human diversity. The focus is on self-ownership and the equality that only comes with individual expression in society and the greater world.

These are two extraordinarily distinct and important philosophies, and represent a long-standing struggle between fundamental concepts about being human. 

Manipulation of the DSM-5: Robin S. Rosenberg, Clinical Psychologist

Abnormal Is the New Normal

Why will half of the U.S. population have a diagnosable mental disorder?

By Robin S. Rosenberg, a clinical psychologist in San Francisco and the author of Superhero Origins and Abnormal Psychology. Edited for length; bold my emphasis. Full article can be read in SLATE, Medical Examiner section, 4/12/13. 

In addition to classifying some medical disorders as mental disorders, the DSM also has been nibbling at the edges of “normal” by reclassifying as pathological the patterns of thoughts, feelings, or behaviors that were previously considered normal (albeit perhaps weird or odd). For instance, people who are extremely shy and concerned about how others might evaluate them, and who thus avoid certain types of activities, might be diagnosed with “avoidant personality disorder.” These same characteristics didn’t used to be considered pathological, and in some other cultures they are not considered to be so.

Another way that the increased prevalence of mental illness occurs is by lowering the threshold of what it takes to be diagnosed with a given disorder. For instance, DSM-5 will change in the criteria for “generalized anxiety disorder,” a disorder that involves excessive and persistent worrying. Whereas the criteria in DSM-IV required three out of six symptoms of worrying, only one symptom is needed in DSM-5. Similarly, whereas in DSM-IV the symptoms must have persisted for at least six months, in DSM-5 the duration has been reduced to three months.

One effect of a bigger mental illness tent is that there are fewer people standing outside the tent. Although the next edition of the DSM might not increase the overall number of disorders, if the criteria are loosened…then more people would qualify for a disorder. There are, and probably will continue to be, fewer and fewer people who will live their lives in relatively good mental health according to the DSM.

The normal trials and tribulations of life—the periods of sadness, or worry, of anxiety, or grief, of difficulty sleeping, of drinking too much caffeine or having caffeine withdrawal headaches—have been pathologized. They’ve been made into mental illnesses… providing a bigger tent for mental illness leaves us with an increasingly restricted definition of mental health and can make us all more likely to see mental illness even when it isn’t there—where there is just normal human struggle. We can become so used to seeing psychopathology that we think—erroneously—that being odd or having difficulties must be an expression of mental illness.

What is going in our culture that allows for this expanding definition of mental illness? There are many explanations. The first is related to payment for treatment. Psychological treatments and medications can be useful for a variety of problems, but for those treatments to be even partially paid for by health insurance companies, the problems must have a diagnosis. It’s not enough that there’s a problem that’s being addressed. It has to be a problem. (Of course, if you treat a problem before it becomes a mental illness, the health insurance company will have ended up saving a significant amount of money, but they don’t pay for early mental health intervention—there has to be a problem. But that’s a story beyond the scope of this article.)

Second, pharmaceutical companies search for ever-wider markets for their products. When more people are diagnosed with a given disorder (perhaps because of less stringent criteria), or a new diagnosis is created, it widens the market for their drugs. They push for “off-label” uses of their medications that in some way reduce a problem, and then they push for that “problem” to be redefined as a problem.

In fact, DSM-5 and the pharmaceutical industry have a significant number of connections: One study found that 70 percent of DSM-5 task-force members have financial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.

Anyone who maintains that the diagnosis put forth in the DSM are science-based is CRAZY...

In a crazy world, sanity must be earned.

 

Wrong Answers Cause Wrong Behavior in Neurotypicals

Social conflict makes me ill. Literally.

Asperger people often find themselves in the awkward position shown by this graphic. Two groups of socially typical people fight over control of The Answer and neither group has a clue that The Answer they are fighting over is no answer at all; each group merely wants control.

The unfortunate Aspie (2) may or may not have the correct answer, but he or she knows that The Answer being fought over is simply not correct: the fight isn't about facts, but about which group is Right.

Asperger individuals are obsessed with problem-solving and want to get everyone on track toward finding a solution. The result is that both groups will turn on the Asperger and attack, often viciously, the one person who might be able to help.

Asperger people need to learn that Neurotypicals aren't looking for solutions at all! They love to fight, and are addicted to negative emotions, aggression and above all Winning, and they will argue unsuccessfully over the same topics again and again.  

Man at the top of a garbage heap, but closer to God.

When I watch popular programs on brain science or read academic papers, I often become irritated. It is of course interesting and useful to understand our most important organ, the generator of all things we subjectively experience. But this fascinating excursion has taken on the dull drama of dismantling a Swiss watch. The need to perfect what is a natural organic object becomes a desire to tinker with and improve upon an organ that is not broken. Some human brains need repair, or medical support, or special understanding, but in the extreme focus on imperfect brains, all brains have become defective; the human brain is viewed as a malfunctioning electrical device and not the core of a unique living being. The result is an explosion of pathologic diagnosis and partitions of humans into normal, abnormal, treatable, sort of treatable and intolerable - a pile of rejects created in the search for a perfect supernatural Man.

Researchers have become Lords of the Brain, the prescribers and manipulators of human destiny. Who are these individuals who have taken it upon themselves to decide which human beings are normal and which ought to be “tweeked, changed or fixed,” whether with drugs or biomedical engineering? Some scientists have abandoned life in order to create perfect obedient robots to replace an imperfect creature of evolution. 

What a dangerous idea. Humans have been ‘perfecting’ the environment for thousands of years; perfecting domestic animals and plants, overriding natural processes and polluting the earth. Know-it-alls have brought us to the brink of self destruction and created a mess of social disharmony and physical suffering justified by an archaic idea: God gave the earth to man to disrupt, loot and rape. Man at the top of a garbage heap, but closer to God.   

Why Don't Psychologists Like Facts?

Recognizing and embracing fact is necessary to understanding reality, but the complex system of  thought and activity that depends on factual evidence (The Scientific Method) is labeled "cognitive distortion" by psychologists. It is no mystery as to why science education in the U.S. is failing miserably.

Empathy; the Religion of Psychology

                                                     

The ease with which the psychological concept of Empathy has been co-opted as a religious / moral value, and infantilized in the process, suggests that rather than having a real existence, Empathy is supernatural. 

The unexplained transfer of emotions, thoughts and experiences between 'normal' humans, without any objective or explicit communication between them, would seem to require a magical transcendence of physical law. The public can be forgiven for assuming that Empathy powers miracles.                                        

Animals Granted Empathy by Psychologists

Animals granted Empathy

 

      

Animal not granted Empathy:
Autistic and Asperger children.                                                
                                                    
                                 

My Asperger Parent

Although undiagnosed, my father was a classic Asperger male who had a terrible time invoking his social rank as The Father. He made attempts to use his status to make me “do what I was told,” but this effort usually fell apart, because deep down he didn’t believe that this was a valid reason for a child to comply with a parent’s wishes. Our relationship wasn’t perfect, but it was thoroughly Asperger.

We developed a deep friendship precisely because he felt it necessary to explain that his requests and concerns had a rational basis such as safety or efficiency, or to quell worry on his part that I would make a mistake or a poor choice. His appeals to my practical good sense usually worked, but I never felt that I had to obey him just because he was my father. This encouraged me to make my own choices, good and bad, and to recover from my mistakes, a task that is infinitely difficult for a perfection-loving Asperger child. Honest exchange sometimes drove us apart, but I never doubted his affection or that he would be there when I needed help. He could and would set personal judgment aside. He wasn’t warm, emotional or full of praise. At times, overcome by frustration and anger at a social world he didn’t understand, he would vanish into the comforting order of nature and science. His knowledge base was phenomenal and he was never too busy to answer my limitless questions, sometimes imparting far more detail than I could possibly absorb. Best of all, he was like me and I was like him, but not exactly.

Each Aspergerger individual has his or her own personality and is affected differently by social constraints. Girls and women have traditionally been excluded from diagnosis and instead have been diagnosed with one or more mental illnesses, a situation that is improving. Females being overlooked as Aspergers can be partly explained by the traditional view that being female is in itself a disorder or defect in many religions and cultures, a social barrier that has been imposed as part of The Pyramid. Women are on the bottom by virtue of their 'crazy' gender.