sounds a lot like aspergers. My sister’s fiance is a high functioning autistic man, he works in IT and does well, just got a scholarship and a stipend for a PhD program in museum conservation. Looks like they’re getting married and going to Pennsylvania (He got his scholarship and stipend from Drexel). He is very bright, smarter than me I believe, but he has some social difficulties and mainly talks about facts, you can kind of tell that he is different.
He gets to the point and is extremely logical. I like him better than most normal people. I have a rare personality type, I am an INTJ, which means I am not autistic by any means (ive been evaluated) but have more in common with autistic people than 99% of the population. I am very logical and tend to talk about facts, but I can make jokes and blend in socially with small talk and an understanding of body language and social cues and that sort of stuff. He basically talks non-stop about facts. I like it, he’s smart and sees the world differently and hell he functions extremely highly, I almost wish I was like him. He works upwards of 60 hours a week and just got a scholarship and a stipend to grad school, that’s about as highly functioning as can be!
I have an old friend from high school who has aspergers, he is dis-inhibited and often vulgar, bright and very highly functioning. I guess the autism spectrum has a lot of variety within it. I have a cousin who is autistic and very good at art, but you would not say that he is highly functioning, he needs support.
So yeah, the autism spectrum has all sorts of people in it. Impaired people, extremely highly functioning people who make autism look like an adaptive trait, and people who function very highly, like a normal person but have some notably abnormal behaviors like making sex jokes every minute (my old friend from high school).
Simon Baron Cohen thinks that autism is an extreme form of the male brain. His theory was covered in lectures in my classes and I think he is correct. I am very masculine and logical, I feel like I am one step away from my logical thinking being abnormal. I just didn’t show up as autistic when I was evaluated, I tested highly for aggression and also psychopathy, as well as off the chart for paranoid scz. I also tested very highly for trauma, which the evaluator stressed the most to me, he said it was a major problem and required therapy.
I have paranoid schizophrenia, it’s basically gone due to effective meds (yay) but I have some psychopathy that comes out in my aggression and sexual behavior (competitive powerlifting, martial arts in the past, and not feeling any guilt for getting someone to cheat on their partner, for example)
The thing about psychopathy is that once you know that you have it, you have less of it. I used to be pretty disturbed, in junior high I was the “serial killer” kid who listened to metal and drew pictures of people killing each other and played violent video games. I still listen to metal but I don’t draw people killing eachother and I am aware of having a very short fuse and a lower level of empathy than most people. I am not 100% psychopathic, I came out as 75%, so I still do feel empathy, I think puppies and babies are cute, it feels wrong to hurt a person unless they try to hurt me, ect. but if someone insults me or I am in a competitive situation, it’s survival of the fittest and I lose my sense of empathy. Like in martial arts, I was courteous and respectful in sparring matches, I would bow before and after fighting, but I was vicious and brutal and enjoyed breaking people’s morale.