I think Chris may have picked up that Asperger's is the "smart/savant" side of autism, which he thinks really cramps his academic achievements to date.
makes me think, if the asperger's diagnosis had never existed and it had all been autism spectrum disorder from day one, or chris had been born after the DSM-5, what would he rail against? I'm sure there would have had to be some diagnosis he hates; he's not complete without it.
I actually think he HAS Aspergers in a mild form, rather than Autism.
(Both conditions are put under the same term today though... Autism Spectrum Disorder)
Descriptions of it have a lot in common with Chris's symptoms, especially in terms of speech.
Unfortunately, he doesn't seem to have any of Aspergers more positive symptoms.
also, aspie speech tends to use very specific words (the whole "little professors" thing) because aspies feel they can't get across their point unless they use a word that means *exactly* what they want to say. this is how i end up using words like "superfluous" in everyday conversation. chris repeatedly fails to understand meanings of words and doesn't really give a shit about the way he expresses his words.
Actually, guess what is a symptom though:
"Some of them may even display selective mutism, speaking not at all to most people and excessively to specific people. " (Wikipedia)
Which sounds exactly like what happened with Chris!
One area that's absolutely worthy of further research (that likely can never happen) is to define exactly how much Chris understands about his own condition. Chris's description of autism has never been more elaborate than reading the listing on Wikipedia, and he's never demonstrated that those words mean anything to him. Chris defines his entire life by the word "autism", and yet a case could easily be made that he has no idea what autism even is.
