I have my suspicion that the condition is a form of "extreme expression of normal traits". I imagine that we can find people who are the opposite of autistic, who are highly expressed, but are less able to find order and so on, and we just refer to them as "ditzy" "stupid but social" or whatever else. To us, as a society, where all interactions are social, such people are "normal" as such people function "higher than normal" within the interactions we judge people by. That's kind of a stupid theory though, and I'm no expert on the situation. If anyone knows if a condition like this exists, or knows why exactly I'm talking out my ass, I'd appreciate a comment! That, or the "spectrum" is just a large number of disorders/mental situations that have yet to be discovered in a way where they can be easily diagnosed. Most people who are "autistic" are just "people who act in this way". Imagine we diagnosed the flu/cold/etc with that, calling an extreme infection just a "strong flu" or a coughing fit a "weak flu". In reality the different viruses cause similar symptoms, but are actually different.
This is hard for me to process. The experiences I've had with an autistic family member and other people I've worked with at church... make me feel like... I dunno - it makes me feel like saying "You live with an autistic child and then tell me that it's not a medical phenomenon."And so, more than seventy years after the work of Kanner and Asperger, vigorous dissent has emerged over whether autism is a medical phenomenon at all, whether what was discovered was a disease, a disability, or another mode of normalcy.
This is tough for me as well. I grew up before autism was really a thing, having been out of high school long before that "Rainman" movie. If I was 10 today there is no doubt that I'd have been diagnosed and maybe sent on a different life trajectory than where I ended up. Maybe medical is not the correct way to look at this? More like we are all different and see the world in different ways, and what we call 'autism' is the natural spectrum of variation in the way human brains work? Just as with any other form of variation, some of those points on the line will be beneficial and help, some will be tough to deal with but neutral, and some harmful. I think that as we as a people dig deeper into how the brain works that these more extreme conditions will be treated as a sort of 'normal' (not the correct word but the best I can offer) instead of something more akin to a disease like say cancer that needs to be treated and excised to make the person whole and healthy....that it's not a medical phenomenon.
Interesting to see some history on this. My little brother is ASD and we've sort of reverse diagnosed my dad with it so this has always been a subject of interest for my family. I've had many heated debates over the neuro-divergent versus high/low functioning aspect with my own parents. The last news I saw was on the potential for epinephrine to help slow dopamine reuptake and I'm interested to see what the coming decade does for ASD knowledge.