I am glad you raised this point. I am not a neuropsychologist so please treat this comment with a low level of confidence. Anecdotally, I have heard multiple times of psychologists wrongly diagnosing people as being on the Autism spectrum when really those patients were narcissists. For instance, someone with Asperger may violate social conventions because they don’t understand them. Someone with narcissism may violate social conventions because although they understand them, they don’t care or they actually enjoy the transgression. Someone with Asperger will have affective empathy but lower cognitive empathy so it may look like they don’t care about others suffering. A narcissist may truly not care about someone else’s suffering. I think it tends to especially the case for covert narcissism (also called vulnerable narcissism) because some of the behaviors are very similar. I may be wrong but I doubt that Asperger people are more prone to being sexual assailants. However, I believe narcissists certainly are more prone to it, and they would be the type to pretend to be neuro-atypical in order to justify their behaviors. I think this is terrible because it probably has the adverse effect of creating fear of people with Aspergers, who in my opinion don’t deserve this reputation.
Thank you for this clarification. I’m not saying that people on the autism spectrum are more prone to being sexual assailants (I don’t know of any statistics on this), but they experience sexual victimhood more often (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2022.852203/full). From the comments I understand that it comes across that way, and I will think about how to rephrase it—open to suggestions.
I am glad you raised this point. I am not a neuropsychologist so please treat this comment with a low level of confidence. Anecdotally, I have heard multiple times of psychologists wrongly diagnosing people as being on the Autism spectrum when really those patients were narcissists. For instance, someone with Asperger may violate social conventions because they don’t understand them. Someone with narcissism may violate social conventions because although they understand them, they don’t care or they actually enjoy the transgression. Someone with Asperger will have affective empathy but lower cognitive empathy so it may look like they don’t care about others suffering. A narcissist may truly not care about someone else’s suffering. I think it tends to especially the case for covert narcissism (also called vulnerable narcissism) because some of the behaviors are very similar. I may be wrong but I doubt that Asperger people are more prone to being sexual assailants. However, I believe narcissists certainly are more prone to it, and they would be the type to pretend to be neuro-atypical in order to justify their behaviors. I think this is terrible because it probably has the adverse effect of creating fear of people with Aspergers, who in my opinion don’t deserve this reputation.
Thank you for this clarification. I’m not saying that people on the autism spectrum are more prone to being sexual assailants (I don’t know of any statistics on this), but they experience sexual victimhood more often (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnbeh.2022.852203/full). From the comments I understand that it comes across that way, and I will think about how to rephrase it—open to suggestions.
Also, I should add that some people can have both!