How likely is it that Donald Trump has Asperger's Syndrome? Answer only with empirical evidence

https://www.quora.com/How-likely-is-it-that-Donald-Trump-has-Aspergers-Syndrome-Answer-only-with-empirical-evidence

Em Oakland: Does Donald Trump Have Asperger’s Syndrome?

So, let’s break Asperger’s syndrome down a bit, shall we?

Asperger’s syndrome is a type of autism spectrum disorder and as such, can be broken down into four main areas of differences/difficulties.

Social

The core difference between Aspies [those with Asperger’s syndrome] and neurotypicals [non-autistic people] in terms of socialisation is that neurotypicals intuitively understand how to socialise and communicate with other neurotypicals. Aspies don’t. They have to learn how to socialise with neurotypicals and they often struggle. What that looks like in more detail, is this:

- Unable to relate to peers.
- May seek out company of those either much younger or much older than them.
- Gets drained by being in groups of people for too long and regains energy by being on their own.
- Has significant difficulties establishing and maintaining friendships and relationships. That means an Aspie could go through their entire lives making very few or even no friends.
- Brutally honest/blunt. You always know if an Aspie doesn’t like something - they say exactly what they think.
- Doesn’t understand the subtleties of social interaction and doesn’t take part in small talk with neurotypicals.
- May struggle reading social cues, including body language, facial expressions, etc.
- May experience anxiety when around large groups of people [social anxiety].
- Most Aspies also have special interests [also called obsessions. Some prefer the term special interests, I don’t mind either way]. These can be on any subject - with males, it’s more likely to be something practical, i.e. building things out of Lego, and with females, it’s more likely to be something creative, i.e. writing stories - and these special interests, an Aspie may have just one, or more than one, and they can research their special interest and talk about it at length.

Emotional

- Aspies often have intense emotions, and might experience long lasting tides of emotion, or fleeting emotions [it varies from person to person].
- Aspies are natural worry warts - they will worry a lot and can be more prone to stress and anxiety, among other things.
- Aspies often have difficulty expressing their emotions. If you were to ask an Aspie how they were feeling about something, or just how they’re feeling that day, the chances are that the reply you will get is “I don’t know.” That doesn’t mean that they don’t know how they’re feeling, or that they’re not feeling anything. What it means is that they don’t know how to grasp one of the many feelings they have in their head, label it and describe it in words. This is called alexithymia.
- May experience extreme emotional outbursts, also known as meltdowns, or may become quiet, unresponsive and withdrawn, also known as shutdowns.

Behavioural

- Aspies may have stereotypical behaviours, i.e. hand flapping, tapping, etc. These are also known as self-stimulatory behaviours or stims.
- Most [although not all] will have rigid routines and will not like any changes to those routines. One example is if at school and a supply teacher comes in, this can upset an Aspie and potentially cause trouble.

Sensory

Most if not all autistic people have differences in how their brain perceives sensory input. These differences can be hypersensitive [oversensitive] or hyposensitive [undersensitive].

Hypersensitive
- Vision/light - those with light hypersensitivity will find most lights, even every day lights, i.e. room lights, car lights, etc. very bright, and they might find wearing Irlens [coloured glasses] or sunglasses helpful.
- Smell - those with a hypersensitive sense of smell can be overwhelmed by aromas they pick up, such as perfumes, etc.
- Sound - those with hypersensitivity to sound will find everyday noises very loud and overwhelming.
- Taste - those with hypersensitivity to taste won’t like certain foods or certain flavours.
- Touch - those with hypersensitivity to touch will find touch either very uncomfortable, or even painful, depending on how severe their hypersensitivity is.

Hyposensitivity
- Vision/light - those that are hyposensitive to light will find lights not bright enough or may enjoy certain lights such as lava lamps, etc.
- Smell - those that are hyposensitive to smell will have little to no sense of smell.
- Sound - those with hyposensitive hearing will like loud music and may use music as a thought blocker.
- Taste - those with hyposensitive taste basically won’t have any food hypersensitivity and will eat things other Aspies won’t. I don’t know too much about this one.
- Touch - those with hyposensitive touch often have a disconnect with their body and often seek more input from other people, i.e. hugs, cuddles, etc. and may like different textures of things and may also benefit from having a weight on top of them, i.e. a weighted blanket.

That’s pretty much everything…

So, let’s see about what I know about Donald Trump [please bear in mind that I am not any sort of health professional, and am only comparing what I know of him with the above list of autism/Asperger’s syndrome traits/features].

First of all, from what I’ve seen in interviews, videoclips, and heard other people say about Donald Trump, pretty much all of the social stuff I mentioned in my list for Asperger’s syndrome doesn’t apply to Donald Trump. He seems to be very able socially. I can’t tell that he has any anxiety, or any struggles understanding social rules, etc. In fact, I would say that he seems to understand social rules enough to be able to manipulate people effectively.

As for the emotional stuff, there’s only one thing I would point out and it only links to Asperger’s syndrome very superficially, and that is that I have noticed Donald Trump have the occasional anger outburst. However the huge difference here is that people with Asperger’s syndrome don’t just have angry outbursts if they do get angry, or may not be angry people at all. Their outbursts might be sad or despairing outbursts, or on the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, happy or joyful outbursts. Besides that, I haven’t seen Donald Trump display that much emotion, to be honest, and people with Asperger’s syndrome are definitely emotional people.

Also, I haven’t seen any of the behavioural or sensory aspects of Asperger’s syndrome in Donald Trump.

So, based on him only having a couple of traits at most, and those only being linked to Asperger’s syndrome very tangentially/superficially, I would say he definitely does not have Asperger’s syndrome.

As other people have noted, as he has aged, he has now started showing the early signs of dementia.

But with the notes I made in my Aspie vs Donald Trump comparison:

Appears to have a very good understanding of social rules and conventions, appears to have no social difficulties whatsoever. Appears to be able to manipulate people. Can be angry when he doesn’t get his way, but besides that, shows next to no emotion that I can tell. And I’ve also heard that he seems to think he’s the best thing that happened to America, or something like that, and he is definitely very self-centered.

Those symptoms would point to narcissistic personality disorder [NPD], not Asperger’s syndrome.