>>11939117Yes, arguably. All of them existed. There's no reason to assume the contrary.
>>11939299Autism is so vaguely defined (there are only three criteria), so broad in what it covers that it has actually become an utterly useless label.
The three criteria are:
1.Socially abnormal behaviour.
2.Stereotyped movements or repetitive gestures.
3.Communication issues.
This is not specific at all. It also is based purely on behavioral aspects. You don't even need to deny the existence of autism to see that two people with the same diagnosis may have completely different problems.
People with mental retardation are grouped together with those that are intellectually gifted. People that as adults still need to shit in their diapers are grouped together with overly cleanly librarians or engineers.
I'm not here to dismiss the severely autistic. We know that many of them are a lot more intelligent than originally believed.
That those same severely autisitc people suffer from a lot of conditions that should be treated on their own like epilepsy, motor control, anxiety etc.
This is why some people think of intelligent loners or nerds when speaking of autism whereas others think of severely challenged "retards". It would be far easier to argue that both show autistic traits as defined by the set of behavioral traits but actually have completely different issues and problems.
