Saturday, April 30, 2011

Neurocriticism of neurobigotry grabbing attention

Congratulations to The Neurocritic, whose recent blog post exposing the untruth of some outrageous things that Prof. Simon Baron-Cohen has recently been writing about people who have been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder appears in the top ten of results of a Google search on the name of the professor, and congratulations to Michelle Dawson who was apparently the first person to notice the surprising apparent inconsistency between the professor's negative characterization of people with BPD and a body of evidence in the literature about BPD and the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test results.

Simon Baron-Cohen, Empathy, and the Atrocities in Afghanistan.
The Neurocritic
March 30, 2011
http://neurocritic.blogspot.com/2011/03/simon-baron-cohen-empathy-and.html

10 comments:

Socrates said...

yea! like a lot of very brainy people, the professor can be mighty dumb at times...

People with BPD are all-purpose whipping boys/girls for health professionals...

Lili Marlene said...

I guess it should be someone else's turn to be the whipping boys.

Lili Marlene said...

I'm still trying to figure out the cryptic message at your blog. Wonderful picture of ... is it a cock?

Socrates said...

"Socrates uncovered his head and said his last words: 'Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius. Do pay it. Don't forget.'"

More on my take on professionals' attitude to BPD here. They really do get it worse that autistics...

Lili Marlene said...

That Tara quack reminds me an awful lot of that Cassandra rubbish. If I really wanted to be wealthy I'd be doing what they are doing.

Lili Marlene said...

No one does batshit insane like Gloria Swanson.

krex said...

ALready late for work but excited to read your new link....Having been "almost" Dxed BPD in 1990...pre-Asperger....Even the psych doing the DXing was perplexed by my odd assortment of "traits' and said ....."You appear to have some BPD behaviors but with different motivations then someone who is BPD ....odd" Even knowing nothing of autism the guy figured out that behavior is not as important as what motivated the behavior . ie...someone may self harm for attention and another may self harm do to sensory overload and stress . I'm glad he had the insight to look beneath the surface rather then skim it....good advice for others studying autism...me thinks.

Lili Marlene said...

For quite some time I've had a suspicion that there are just as many female autists as male, but diagnosed with something other than autism. This type of pattern is thought by some to happen with some personality disorders - one for males, and another PD for related females. And for quite some time I've suspected that a possible incorrect psychiatric label for hidden autistic females might be borderline. I have confirmed in a private discussion that there are indeed some women who have both BPD and an autistic diagnosis.

Justthisguy said...

I just made a comment on Dr. Helen's blog (she is the wife of the Instapundit) about how I don't think Baron-Cohen understands the difference between sympathy and empathy.

Oh, and Soc? Nice to see you engaging with people again! I hope and trust that that means you are feeling better, and doing better in the world.

Justthisguy said...

Answering Lili's comment at 1:29 am:

Of the very few women in my life who have been willing to so much as give me the time of day, it seems that all of them were "a bit strange." One gal flat-out asked me shortly after I met her, "Do you rock, too?"

As I said to the Autism Diva, of fond memory: "Neurotypical women frighten me."

As I recall, she concurred, by return of email.