Cloudfindings

Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder as an Autism Spectrum Disorder Introduction Obsessive compulsive personality disorder is a psychiatric disorder characterized by overly conscientious, rigid, disagreeable behavior, with intense anxiety, need for control, and social aloofness (Griffin et al. 2016). OcPD can be considered a disorder of excessive conscientiousness (Samuel & Widiger 2011), and some studies have suggested a relationship between OcPD and autism (Gadelkarim et al. 2019), there is still little research on their potential relationship. This post gives evidence for the hypothesis that obsessive compulsive personality disorder is a form of autism spectrum disorder, and is diametrically opposed to schizophrenia spectrum disorders consistent with the diametric model. Overlap Between OcPD and Autism Autism and OcPD seem to have many shared traits, many of which seem to be diametrical to schizotypy [Table 1]. OcPD and autism also appear to have a particularly high frequen...

Identity in Autism Introduction Identity is an important part of social cognition and behavior. In general, identity represents a person’s place in the social world in relation to others, as well as facts and identifiers that distinguish one person from another (Parnas & Zandersen 2018)(Crespi & Dinsdale 2019). Pragmatic language & cognitive empathy may be related to the expression, experience, and understanding of identity, and because autism involves reductions in pragmatic language & cognitive empathic abilities, it may lead to identity being expressed and understood in a non-social way (Baron-Cohen 2005). Identity in autism however does not seem to be well characterized in the literature beyond recognizing general “impairments” in the development of identity. Based on existing empirical evidence and my own personal experience and observation of the expression and experience of identity in autistic people, I provide a hypothesis for how identity is related to autism ...