Wednesday, February 1, 2012

NY Times Op-Ed: I Had Asperger Syndrome. Briefly.

 Timely Op-Ed piece in The New York Times by Benjamin Nugent, the director of creative writing at Southern New Hampshire University, who is author of “American Nerd: The Story of My People.”

For a brief, heady period in the history of autism spectrum diagnosis, in the late ’90s, I had Asperger syndrome.
There’s an educational video from that time, called “Understanding Asperger’s,” in which I appear. I am the affected 20-year-old in the wannabe-hipster vintage polo shirt talking about how keen his understanding of literature is and how misunderstood he was in fifth grade. The film was a research project directed by my mother, a psychology professor and Asperger specialist, and another expert in her department. It presents me as a young man living a full, meaningful life, despite his mental abnormality.

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