Ask someone with Asperger's syndrome.

[Fireball]

For Grandizer and Rev Rye:

Has there been any speculation that perhaps autism is really just a rare type of personality, rather than a legitimate disorder/illness?

Nitpick note: In my personal view, there is a difference between disorder and illness, but that's not the question anyway, so to the actual question:

There certainly has been such speculation, even from people diagnosed with high-functioning autism themselves who believe Asperger's is just a personality style and shouldn't be seen as a disorder at all. And then you have people who just have a general distrust in what psychologists and psychiatrists have to say, and so may not even believe most mental illnesses in the DSM are a thing.

I have also noted concerned/angry parents of children with the really severe types of autism who take issue with people with Asperger's being on the same spectrum of disorder as their children, probably because of the way the media's focus on people with Asperger's tends to portray to the misinformed public that autism as a cool trendy thing that no one should be troubled by, when that is not the reality for parents of children who have constant meltdowns and tend to be really violent and cause nothing but misery for them.

Nevertheless, I disagree that Asperger's is not a disorder, because like I said before, it's not an issue of shyness or introversion or anything of the sort. It's a cluster of symptoms that indicate an impairment in functioning in several domains in life (whether social, occupational, relationships, etc.) for the individual who has these symptoms, even those with the less severe levels (like myself). Even if it should just be counted as nothing more than a personality style, I struggle in life and still have to socialize in an energy-consuming intellectual manner rather than in a relaxed intuitive manner. It would also mean that people like me would no longer have any specialized access to support of any type. If it weren't a disorder, there wouldn't be an organization here in Australia who helps people on the spectrum specifically with employment. If it weren't for them, I wouldn't have been able to get one of the jobs I'm now in. If it weren't a disorder, people would have less empathy for people like me, and blame our failure in social life on such things as stupidity or laziness or whatever, instead of realizing that we genuinely do have trouble with socializing that is due to genetic defects and other biological factors (and a little bit of early environmental factors as well, I'm sure).

All that said, one can have fun debating whether high-functioning, less severe forms of autism are a disorder or not. But no one can reasonably argue that there isn't something "disorderly" about the severe low-functioning types.

Well said. You obviously aren't stupid (not that anyone posted that), so it's a shame that it would be difficult to get a decent job based on an interviewer-perceived personality issue.