While in Jamaica, I got into an "argument" with my dad about Asperger's Syndrome. I was planning on blogging about it, but didn't get around to it yet. Meanwhile, here's an excerpt of an e-mail he sent to me after the trip, and my reply to it.

I think you should see Dr. Lysy about Asberger Syndrome because this has been going on for many years now. I think you should try to deal with it. As I told you on the trip, I would like to come with you to see Dr. Lysy.

I’m guessing it’s not intentional, but your paragraph on Asperger’s Syndrome is quite insulting. Yes, it’s been “going on for many years”. In fact, it’s been going on for over 26 years. Asperger’s Syndrome is something you’re born with. And I have been dealing with it. Every day I deal with it, just like blind people deal with their blindness every day, and deaf people deal with their deafness every day.

It’s also quite irritating when you lecture me on how I should take care of my own medical appointments given that I’m an adult now. I never asked you to make an appointment with Lysy for me. I’m not even particularly interested in seeing him. If I do go see him, I’m doing it as a favor to you. The more you annoy me with your condescending tone, the less inclined I am to follow through with this favor to you. (That said, thanks for getting me the number. It makes it a bit easier for me to make the appointment). Presumably you’re free “any time”, so that I can just make the appointment whenever, notify you, and expect you to be able to show up on time?

I’m still debating whether it’s even worth my time to see him. My impression of you, dad, is that you have two barriers preventing you from really gaining anything out of this meeting with Lysy. First of all, you seem particularly vulnerable to confirmation bias, which means you vividly remember any information which confirms your preconceived beliefs, and filter out and/or quickly forget any information which counters them. As such, I predict that if Dr. Lysy says something along the lines of “Asperger’s Syndrome is a spectrum syndrome, and your son happens to fall upon the high-functioning side of the spectrum; what that means is that he is capable of functioning within society” you’ll filter that and walk away with the conclusion of “My son doesn’t Have Asperger’s, just as I had suspected all along.”

I don’t have a nice simple name for the second issue like I did with “confirmation bias”. What happens when someone speaks to you is that rather than trying to empathize a topic or theme of discussion with the other person, you seem to have a topic already in mind, and you keep trying to pull the conversation back to that topic. For example, when we got our luggage searched, I started a conversation with you where the topic I had in mind was “the contrast between the general stereotype that governmental organizations are bureaucratic and sluggish, against the reality we are facing where the agents are extremely alert and effective”, but you kept trying to steer it back to “I am unhappy to be held longer in customs.”

Do you even really care about me? You don’t need to actually answer me, because I’m sure you’re reply will be “yes”, whether it happens to be honest or not. So I don’t want you to actually tell me the answer to that question, but I do want you to actually think about the question. I don’t know if you realize it, but it takes a lot of courage for a person to reveal their vulnerabilities to someone else. I’m talking about myself: It took me a lot of courage to try to talk to you about what I think about my having Asperger’s Syndrome. And to be quite frank, you can be a very scary person. I remember how you told me that the employees at your restaurant would always be more nervous when you were around, dropping more plates and making more mistakes, so you stopped showing up. Parenting tip: when your son tries to have a heart-to-heart talk with you about the problems he’s facing through life, you should probably listen to his problems, rather than interrupt the second sentence with “I already know all your problems” and shut the conversation down.

As you can probably infer from this e-mail, I can be quite a verbose person. I had quite a lot to say about Asperger’s. As we talked on the trip, I realized you really didn’t seem to know me very well at all: When you asked me if I still kept in touch with my friends from university, and I had to tell you I had no friends from university… This was my opening opportunity to start what could have been a several hour introspective discussion on Asperger’s and austism and my sense of identity. And I know I have enough material to cover several hours with a receptive audience, because I’ve already spent several hours talking about this with my friends. There’s one person in particular with whom I’ve easily spent over 80 hours talking about Asperger’s. So I started to talk to you. I remember the two sentences I managed to get out before you shut me out. The first sentence was “Let me tell you something about Asperger’s”. The second sentence was “If you have Asperger’s — that is to say, a person who has Asperger’s — usually… ” and that’s when you interrupted me, telling me you already knew and understood all my problems. And that’s all I ever told you about Asperger’s.

So again, do you really care? Should I bother doing you the favor of seeing Dr Lysy with you, or is it all a big waste of my time?

The most charitable position I can take towards you is that yes, you do care, but you’re scared. It scares you that there might be something wrong with your son, your own flesh and blood. So you want to push any such thought out of your mind. You don’t even want to think about it, much less talk about it. I won’t elaborate too much further on this amateur psychoanalysis, as my eyes are already tearing up and I don’t want to be embarrassed at my workplace. I find this theory plausible because you seem willing enough to listen to me talk about other, less threatening, aspects of myself (e.g. drumming). The scientist in me requires that my theory postulates some verifiable prediction, and that prediction is that you would be equally reticent to talk about other threatening aspects of myself. I think the prediction is confirmed, as you also don’t like to talk about my scoliosis, or at least you give oversimplified (and “bad”, as confirmed by Dr Lysy) advice (e.g. “just stand straight”).

So we’ll see about Dr Lysy. Maybe I’ll make an appointment, maybe I won’t. But I’m not in the mood to talk to you about Asperger’s anymore.