There is a lot of stuff floating around the internet about Autism, from ridiculous assertions about causality to silly things about what someone with Autism can do in their life. This is the first in an ongoing series where your WDC team grabs professional therapists and psychiatrists to talk about what different diagnoses mean, what they look like in terms of symptom clusters, and then armchair analyze our favorite literary and fictional characters through these lenses. Our first volunteer is Elizabeth Mueller, a marriage and family therapist and awesome goalie.
- Elizabeth’s practice
Mentions and notes:
- Athletes with autism
- Famous people retroactively diagnosed with autism:
- Leonardo da Vinci – Artist
- Vincent van Gogh – Artist
- Albert Einstein – Mathematician
- Steven Spielberg – Director
- Alfred Hitchcock – Director
- Thomas Edison – Inventor
- Alexander Graham Bell – Inventor
- Benjamin Franklin – Inventor
- Henry Ford – Inventor
- Ludwig van Beethoven – Musician
- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart – Musician
- Bob Dylan – Musician
- James Taylor – Singer-Songwriter & Guitarist
- John Denver – Singer-Songwriter & Record Producer
- Charles Darwin – Naturalist & Geologist
- Carl Jung – Psychiatrist & Psychotherapist
- Lionel Messi – Football Player
- Samuel Clemens – Writer
- George Orwell – Writer
- Jane Austen – Writer
- Charles M. Schulz – Cartoonist
Reference materials:
- DSM-5-TR
- A “What is Autism Spectrum Disorder” with convenient bullets
- How to diagnose Autism
- The History of Autism
- What about Aspergers?
- Siblings have autism? You might too!
- A Neurological approach to “character”
- Unmasking Autism
This image demonstrates that all three diagnostic conditions (ASD, ADHD, SPD) are individual diagnoses
and can be experienced independently of the others. However, these are frequently co-morbid
conditions (existing at the same time), which is reflected in the areas that they overlap where there can
be partial overlap or total overlap. For example, an individual can meet criteria for an ASD diagnosis and
an ADHD diagnosis and not meet criteria for SPD, or criteria met for ADHD with SPD but not met for ASD.
Not meeting criteria does not mean that some characteristics cannot be present, it just means that the
full criteria to meet the diagnosis is not observed or reported.