ABSTRACT
The impersonality of diagnostic categories can present a cruel contrast to the intense suffering and difficulty experienced by people with Asperger's syndrome (AS) and their families. Classification of sub-types and of levels of severity and chronicity may offer similar clarification in clinicians understanding of people with AS. It is important to remember that people with AS are more than a collection of symptoms: each has his or her own unique personality, needs, preferences, will, and demands, and these deserve as much study as the symptoms themselves. Parents and teachers may be so puzzled and alarmed by the oddness of the AS child, as well as so sympathetic to his very real anxieties, that they become too tolerant of what may be more self-indulgent and relatively simple conduct problems. The person with AS may, instead of taking part in reciprocal, open-ended, free-flowing conversations, force the listener to attend to his "stuff".
