jkelly@fas.harvard.edu wrote:
Incidentally, I also misread your post. After reading the first few paragraphs, it seemed to me that you were trying to describe what is called "pathologizing". But then, as an example, you gave... a pathology. So whatever point you were trying to make was completely opaque to me as well.
I found his choice of Asperger's as the example quite illustrating, since there is some controversy over whether (and/or from what point in the continuum) it should be considered a pathology instead of merely a personality type, and in particular whether it is useful to view it as either one to the exclusion of the other.
Given that there exists a continuous spectrum of behavior from normality via various degrees of Asperger's to full blown autism, it does not really make much sense that attitudes towards such behavior should change discontinuously at some point. Unfortunately, people often do have such a discontinuity between "normal" and "abnormal". I don't believe this was quite the point Karl was trying to make, but it does seem to me to be the point in his argument that you missed.
(I'm genuinely trying to explain my viewpoint here, since I _did_ find Karl's post rather illuminating. I'm not really trying to argue about which viewpoint is "right".)