Well, it's at the point where I at least don't feel comfortable claiming it or discussing it on the internet in most locales, because the general assumption (I believe) is that one is fake-claiming.
So yup.
The general assumption is, that if you don't have a psychologist's diagnosis of Asperger's Syndrome, you are self-diagnosing. This isn't the same thing as faking, because if you're faking then you would know it, and that's just plain malicious. More likely, the people whom are declaring themselves to have Aspergers are doing so as a psychological excuse. It's not a conscious action. Individuals whom are socially inept hear about the pop psychology version of Aspergers and think "Wow, that sounds kind of like me, I must not be at fault for my social ineptitude!". Of course, none of these people are actually psychologists, and even if they were bias would still cause any self-diagnosis to be illegitimate.
I know this for a fact because, while I never actually self-diagnosed myself with Aspergers, a couple of years ago I did have suspicions about it when I first heard of Aspergers. Of course, upon
actually studying the disorder instead of just going with it's popular psychology variant, it was quite clear that I did not have Aspergers and was just falling into the common assumption that exists among socially inept but otherwise psychologically typical individuals.
Of course, some people on the internet are, as always, jerks and will not believe that a person does have a psychologist's diagnosis no matter what they say on the matter. That more depends on the community, though.
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Topic: Things that made you sad today thread. (Read 9797717 times)