Asperger’s Syndrome is on the spectrum of a developmental disorder named Autism. Asperger’s Syndrome is called AS for short. It’s a mild case of autism, perhaps the most mild type of autism. Not like people with PDD-NOS and Williams Syndrome, children born with Asperger’s usually have some natural gifts at the same time, for example, math, music or science. Many celebrities suffered from this disorder in the history, it’s said that the ex-president Bush have it too. The only thing that people with Asperger’s cannot be gifted is social ability. They have difficulty in reading expressions, understanding body languages. In a word, they don’t know how to communicate with others naturally. However, they mean people no harm, that’s the biggest difference between people with Asperger’s Syndrome and Sociopaths.
Sociopaths have the ability to communicate with people normally, and they can sense what society considers right and wrong, however, they have no conscience and cannot feel empathy, guilt and remorse like we often do. Some serial killers are sociopaths, they disrespect the rights of others,but they have nothing to do with Asperger’s.
People with antisocial personality disorder are called sociopaths. In the 1830’s this disorder was called “moral insanity”. The main characteristics of sociopaths are Grandiose Sense of Self, Pathological Lying, Shallow Emotions, Impulsive Nature, Unreliability and Parasitic Lifestyle. If this disorder is not treated in childhood, it can develop into adulthood. Treatment for antisocial personality disorder is usually through group psychotherapy.
So, the two are different things.
Research has found out that animals think the way like autism savants. Even some people with autism claimed that their thinking processes are like an animal’s. Animals are visual thinkers, they store their memories with pictures. In other words, animals make visual associations, just like autistic people. Fear is the most important emotion in animals, especially prey animals as sheep or horses. Fear is also the main emtion in autistic children.
Since animals and autism savants have those things in common, they seem to be more easy to understand each other, and make friends. Probably this is why they use animals as a treatment of autism, animal therapy, including service dog therapy, dophin therapy, horse-riding therapy and so on. Children are always happy to be with these cute animals.
So, according to all these similarties between animals and people suffer from autism, we could be very curious, is it possible that dogs or cats or horses can have autism? Well, some dog’s owner found that his dog has entirely shut down within itself and is no longer able to communicate or play with others. And they also show plenty of autistic behaviors, for example, repeating movements, not responding to their names, avoiding eye contact, developing deep trance states. For a cat, it paces endlessly in a ritualistic way.
In brief, pet animals showed autistic behaviors because of the lack of attention, which is called “Attention Energy”. Animals need this attention energy to keep normal and alive. Once the attention they achieve is much too little, they would develop autism-like behaviors for the sake of attention.
Therefore, to solve this problem, and put autism-like dogs or cats back to normal, you need to spend more time with the pet, let it feel the warmth of love, play with it with caring concerns. In conclusion, pets need attention and love just like children. If you don’t give them enough, they will get “sick”. Just think about it, you are the most important person in its life, but, it is far from the most important thing to you. It’s an unequal relationship in the first place. So, give the animal more love!