Were original people designated as autistic. My language skills were less fluent than stuff I normally publish online, but even though I am eating again (I was sick when I wrote it) I still can’t come up with more fluent language for the description I gave of the way ideas of autism have come about. I have read many of the original sources for that and for other areas of psychiatric classification. I recently tried to describe the process that led to modern notions of autism. There are only the people who get called autistic. The reality is more complicated than that.Īutism is not a thing. Someone replied saying they don’t believe in one type or many types of autism but that it seemed from my post as if I believe there are many. But it’s not that the situation itself is contradictory, it’s just that language can be complex that way.įor instance, in my last post I described what could be called, and what are often called, subtypes of autism. Some of those words might even seem contradictory if set side by side. The problem is for any given situation there are many ways you could approach it with words. I start with a situation and then I throw words at it. The way I use words can present problems though. I use words because they are the most readily recognized way to communicate with most people. And that is how I use words - as imperfect translations of situations that present themselves in my mind. I have seen which clusters of words attach most frequently to which situations. I suspect to many people they would seem like an absence of thought. They are also silent - no words pop in to describe them, there is no “loudness” about them, they don’t announce themselves with any kind of fanfare. Symbols would have a better chance translating. They are not symbols of those observations. My thoughts, such as I am aware of, are mostly observations of the world, that I have allowed to slowly and quietly settle themselves into patterns. It’s that on a fundamental level the thoughts don’t translate. And it’s not just that I haven’t found the absolute best combination of words to translate my thoughts with.

The way my thoughts work creates some similar problems for language.

Then they just fall apart, dissolve, vanish. Then they start contradicting each other or getting paradoxical. The closer you get to the heart of things, the more words fall apart.

Fireworks problem visual logic