Self-Discovery and Asperger Syndrome: a Personal Story

A highly-personal account of an adult's life with Asperger's Syndrome.


I don't remember when I first heard of Asperger's Syndrome.

When I was a child, Asperger's Syndrome simply didn't exist. It wasn't even described in English until I was eight, and it didn't enter the DSM until I was nineteen. It's not like the introduction of a new diagnosis prompts people to systematically examine the schools, in any case. Either way, when I was a child, I knew what autism was: it was the classic Idiot Savant, staring into the distance and not saying much and calculating the weekday of August nineteenth, 4087BC. It certainly wasn't me.