A very real condition which a person may be born with. "Symptoms" include lack of social skills, and difficulty reading/understanding social "cues", body language, &c, difficulty forming and maintaining friendships and relationships, and the like. However, it affects people in different ways. Some (such as me) may well "grow out" of it, and ultimately the "disorder" becomes less obvious in the social environment, in which
case it's best described as a
retardation of social development. However, others fare less well and suffer lifelong problems as a result of the condition.
Other characteristics may include higher than average intelligence and vocabulary, and ultimately a tendency to see the
world a different way, which can be
scary to some neurotypicals.
It's a difference I have had to cope with all my life, having been diagnosed at the age of 7 and has caused me real difficulties in life (and to a certain degree, still does). I am not the only one it causes real difficulty to; indeed there is growing awareness of the problems faced by people with
autistic-spectrum disorders, however some people seem to think the disorder is somehow "fake" or "not real" (I refer of course to some of the other definitions posted on here).
However, this does not bother me, rather it amuses me that a group of fat, comfortable individuals with time on their hands to spend posting ill-informed,
pig-ignorant, and sometimes downright
illiterate definitions on
UD seem to think that their
opinion somehow matters more than that of the
world's smartest and most experienced people in the field of psychiatry.
