Michael Fitzgerald, a scientist in the field of autism, has a new book published: Young, Violent, and Dangerous to Know. I haven’t read the book, but, according to the description, Fitzgerald proposes a new subdiagnosis of Asperger’s Syndrome that is typical of serial killers.
Now serial killers are a small group of criminals. It is rather intuitive to consider most of them as having at least some serious psychopathic disorder, if you can call a flaw of moral development a mental disorder at all. If the majority of serial killers have an empathy deficit, and if we decide that empathy deficit is a mental disorder, then it is all fine with me to diagnose that majority of serial killers (but not serial killers by definition!) with that disorder.
It is also fine with me, if there is any evidence to support it, that what I shall call empathy deficit disorder will be classified as a subdiagnosis of Asperger’s. I can’t see the evidence here, given how Asperger’s Syndrome as it is conceptualized today is a developmental disability rather than a psychopathic disorder. If we want to go back to the original, psychopathic definition of Hans Asperger, that’s fine with me, too, but then we are using a theoretical framework that is different from the one surrounding modern Asperger’s, and we’re essentially talking about two different concepts of a disorder that may or may not have similar characteristics. (I don’t know enough about Hans Asperger’s cases to compare them in terms of characteristics to modern Asperger’s.) One may even question whether we’re talking about the same disorder.
Now I don’t actually even have a problem if my disorder were associated with serial killing. It already is associated with famous murder cases in the Netherlands, even though none of the murderers in these cases have actually been diagnosed. As long as criminal justice and psychiatry are kept separate, a mental diagnosis, even if that one is factually associated with an increased risk of committing crimes like murder, should not affect how we as people are being perceived. But the problem is that psychiatry and criminal justice are not kept separate.
The very creation of crime-based disorders, as in Fitzgerald’s “criminal autistic psychopathy”, connects psychiatry and criminal justice on a level they shouldn’t be connected on: if you have been diagnosed with a “criminal” disorder, you must be a criminal, and if you committed a crime, say, serial murder, you must have said disorder. This is troubling on more levels than ableism, because you can be convicted by a psychiatrist and found mentally disordered by a judge. That is not how the system, with all its risk of false convictions even in the case of serial murder and incorrect assessments of mental state, should work.
There has been in the blogosphere some calumniation of the once Sainted Tony Atwood for his association with what one might term some of the low lifes of the autistic world.
Well that may be.
I do think however that we should not allow Prof Fitzgerald to make his assertions unchallenged. For one thing they fail to properly understand the cultural mileu of Aspergers original paper and the linguistic differences in the use of “psychopathy” between 40′s Austria and Noughties England. He also does not seem to me to show much depth in the understanding of AS, questions of empathy or much intellectual rigour at all. Just my opinions but I would love to debate them face to face and see him perplexed with the complexity of philosophical issues that clinical psychiatry does not equip one to deal with.
He has appropriated to himself this genre of retro diagnosis, and I agree we have all been amused by the parlour game while the going has been good. I have even contributed my own hero into the pot Michelangelo, and prof Fitzgerald it seems has duly obliged and painted him into the spectrum
But in keeping with my general campaign regarding ethics, he does need to be brought in to heel and reminded that the consequences of his academic parlour game affect real people like you or I, who can be damned by the argumentum ad verecundiam that his academic authority carries.
I had cause to make a similar complaint some time ago when Prof David Canter of Liverpool University made assertions in the popular press regarding Barry George, who has subsequently been found innocent. I complained to the PCC and his University both.
That should be a warning., that just because one is an established academic it does not give one carte blanche to throw out ad hominems with regard to a particular class of people. It has real world consequences.
Perhaps we should consider taking cause with Prof Fitzgeralds alma mater as to whether this is the sort of speculation they would like there academics to be seen indulging in.
For all I know he is a likeable guy on our side for the most part, but he needs to be brought to order.
I agree that academic standing does not allow you to toss around diagnoses without realizing the consequences. We had a similar issue to the one you bring up in the Netherlands in 2003, when Menno Oosterhooff, a psychiatrist specializing in autism, stated in the media that Volkert van der G., who killed politician Pim Fortuyn, has Asperger’s. This was not based on a clinical evaluation, but solely on Oosterhoff’s interpretation of Van der G.’s portrayal in the media. Unfortunately, Van der G., who was never diagnosed with Asperrger’s, had his formal complaint dismissed because he was not in a patient-physician relationship with Oosterhoff.
[...] Asperger’s Syndrome and Serial Killers ‘The very creation of crime-based disorders, as in Fitzgerald’s “criminal autistic [...]
One notices your aspeger very clearly because of the details you go in to while you didn’t get anywhere with the text. Like it gets stuck in the details.
I didn’t have a problem with her post. As an English academic, I found it very analytical and thought provoking.
As did I.
Why do people seem to think that details are so unimportant? That’s where the important issues lie, in the details!
I am probably the person outside of the police who has read more of the chat logs, emails and posts of William Melchert-Dinkel than anyone else. Ironically I have a son who has been diagnosed with Aspergers and spent twenty years caring for autistic young people.
I can say, for certain, that in his correspondence with vulnerable people WMD made use of empathy and an intuitive knowledge of the psychology of his victims. That he realised that what he was doing was wrong is demonstrated by his ‘going quiet’ after deaths and after warnings put out about his activities.
Perhaps his obsession with suicide, as a single minded pursuit can be seen as an autistic trait but empathy, whether genuine or phony, was a weapon he used.