My best friend, does he have autism?

[Allison1985]

Hey, one of my best friends is 33 years old. I am starting to wonder if he has autism.

He does not understand emotional cues or sarcasm. He stares off all the time. He has to plan everything out everyday. If he gets overwhelmed he rocks back and forth. He is highly intelligent with an high iq around 150. I saw him the other night and he started pacing back and forth and almost seemed as though he was in a trance. This was after he started crying for an hour over something he misunderstood I said as a joke and he thought I was angry at him.

If you talk to him on the phone he starts to have conversations about subjects such as talking about history for a few hours or a movie and the characters as opposed to regular common day small talk. He also gets hyper focused on things. Just curious what your thoughts on this are.

 

[Bolletje]

It’s possible. We can’t diagnose him for you. What’s it to you?

 

[Tom]

Sounds a lot like HFA.

 

[LearnedCoward]

You are describing autistic-like traits, but I can't tell if he's diagnosably autistic or not from three brief paragraphs about someone I have almost certainly never met. Besides, why would it matter to you what kind of diagnostic label he has?