So I flipped through the 13 page preview but don't see the connection between Asperger's and Dr. Michael Newton's work on past life regression because this information was included as the last chapter of your book and was therefore not available for preview.
I noted in your table of contents that Chapter 10 had the rather disturbing title: "Are Asperger's Individuals Empathy-Deficient Psychopaths." Oxford Dictionary defines the term "psychopath" as "a person suffering from chronic mental disorder with abnormal or violent social behavior." If this definition is correct (and it must be since it Oxford printed it), it follows that Asperger's CANNOT be a mental illness. The APA's Diagnostic manual states that Asperger's "cannot be caused by trauma or neglect and it cannot be cured with therapy or a change in lifestyle or attitude. Current research suggests it is not even the result of brain damage and is in fact, at least in part, genetic." In short, Asperger's is NOT a mental disorder.
To my knowledge there is also no link between violence and high functioning autism. Woodbury-Smith (2006) compared the rates of offending in 25 people with ASD matched to a sample from the general population. They found no increased risk for violence. A concurrent study conducted by Stål (2006), looked at 11 studies involving 22 patients and 29 violent incidents. He found that the type of violence committed by people with ASD was far less calculated and destructive than psychopathic violence.
I would further point out that psychopaths lack the capacity for empathy. People with Asperger's have empathy but often lack the ability to communicate this due to our problems with social awkwardness.
Without having read chapter 10 of your book, I must respectfully disagree with the question stated in the chapter's title i.e. Are Asperger's Individuals Empathy-Deficient Psychopaths." The answer to that would not only be no, it would be a resounding HELL NO! People with Asperger's are NOT empathy deficient psychopaths.
I found the title of your book, " Asperger Syndrome, Hybrid Souls and Hybrid Selves" to be intriguing ... but after looking through the table of contents and reading the preview, I regret that I do not find your work to be sufficiently interesting to want to purchase it.
I do hope that chapter 10 did not conclude that there was ANY LINK between Asperger's and psychopathic behavior. There is already a great deal of erroneous information out there and those of us who are Aspies do not need public opinion turned against us for fear that we might become violent and dangerous.
Thank you for taking the trouble to look up my book and write about it here.
I agree with you about ASD and psychopathy not being related. My choice of title for Chapter 10 'Are Asperger individuals empathy-deficient psychopaths?' is precisely to debunk the conflation in many people's minds between Aspergers and psychopathy. Here are some examples in the media:
* On 14 December 2012, 20-year-old Adam Lanza fatally shot twenty children and six adult staff members in a mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Connecticut, USA. Lanza was suspected of being an Asperger. Many Aspergers came out, up in arms, to say what an insult this was to mild-mannered, anti-aggressive Asperger individuals.
* On 24 March 2015, an airline pilot Andreas Lubitz deliberately crashed his plane into the Alps, killing 150 passengers and crew. Lubitz was described in the media as a loner, an Asperger, and ‘the Adam Lanza of air travel’ .
* In 1999, four women were murdered near the Yosemite National Park, California, by Cary Stayner who was sentenced to death for the murders and remains on death row. Forensic psychologist Dr Katherine Ramsland claims that serial killer Cary Stayner was diagnosed as having a high-functioning autism, “which probably was Asperger’s disorder”. “You would have difficulty reading them,” she says , “because they don’t have the same depth of emotion or bonding – social bonding – or ability to interact with other people, even reading other people’s emotions.”
These anecdotes show how prepared people are to conflate Asperger Syndrome with having mental problems or being somehow disabled or diseased.
I critique Dr Katherine Ramslands' stereotyped view particularly, by arguing that she has obviously never heard of people on the autistic spectrum who feel so much that they come across as too intense socially. She has obviously not come across people who try desperately to show their usefulness and worth to others but are rebuffed because they don’t exude the many subtle cues of neurotypical belonging.
> "In short, Asperger's is NOT a mental disorder."
I agree, and have addressed this in Chp 15 'Prejudice against Asperger's reflected in labels'.
Also, my arguments about the links between Asperger Syndrome and hybrid souls are presented in Chp 5. I could not open the book with this chapter as I had to put many premises in place first, and build up to it. I would have made it Chp 1 if I could have, as it was my very first blog post on this topic, but some readers might need more context to make sense of it, as admittedly it's not the most orthodox idea! That said, I also think that each chapter can be read as a stand-alone topic - just one facet of the many debates surrounding neurotypicality and neurodiversity.
Many books on AS and ASD are first-person accounts. I wanted to do something different by using a neutral, 'third-person' tone in this book (referring to both Aspergers and NTs as "they" and "them") in order to be as objective and balanced as possible. My aim is to neither demonise/ pathologise Aspergers, nor to idealise/ romanticise. I wonder if you perhaps mistook this 'detached' style of writing for my actual arguments, examples and messages?
Thanks again for your review. It's good to know about those studies that you cite, and I'm glad you found my title intriguing ('Asperger Syndrome, Hybrid Souls and Hybrid Selves') - it's certainly kept me engaged almost solidly for the past 3 years or so!
