(Get) out of my head.
Most Community fans assume Abed has Asperger’s syndrome. Many of the signs are there: His inability to pick up on others’ feelings, his tendency to relate more to film and TV than to actual people, his obsessive analyzing and categorizing of events. From the beginning, Harmon didn’t want to specify the character’s pathology, but out of curiosity he eventually started looking into Asperger’s.
“So, in a very naive way— and I’ve never told anybody this before— I started researching the disorder,” Harmon says. “I started looking up these symptoms, just to know what they are. And the more I looked them up, the more familiar they started to seem. Then I started taking these Internet tests.” The tests came up positive.
When he began writing Community, Harmon thought the character he related to most was Winger, who had “all the defense mechanisms that I acquired,” Harmon says. But the more online tests for Asperger’s he took, the more he began to wonder if he was just as similar to Abed. It had never occurred to him before, he says, because he has always been so oversensitive.
Eventually, Harmon met with a doctor and came to understand that symptoms of the disorder lie on a spectrum, and that in fact there is a place on it for people with inappropriate emotional reactions and deep empathy. Harmon now sees that he may fit somewhere on that spectrum, though figuring out exactly where could take years.
I don’t want to go so far as to say “this is me”, but reading this article, and reading through Dan Harmon’s interviews on The A.V. Club and his Tumblr, and just… I see so much of that in myself. The insecurities. The throwing SOMETHING at the wall, and hoping it sticks. For me, it wasn’t TV and movies I quoted at people to relate, it was song lyrics. They felt like the only way I could express myself for a long time.
I know I’m an Aspie. I know very few people who I can sit down and talk this stuff out with. I know that of the very few Christians I know who are aspies, they’re either hardcore Calvinists (that explicit “THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD WORKS” stuff suits Aspies down to the GROUND), or are struggling to hold onto their faith. There seems to be no middle ground.
On the other hand, the majority of aspies I know are atheists of varying degrees. Their world is logical, and anything that falls outside of their worldview is regarded as bullshit.
This would be considerably easier if I didn’t believe in God.
(Source: Wired)
