Autism Diaries XXXII: But is he psychotic?

So J takes pleasure in upsetting other people--a pleasure intense enough to drive much of his social interaction--and to have made me wonder whether, in addition to being deaf and autistic, my son might also be psychotic.

Especially since his mischievous perspective-taking may be unusual for autism. I suspect that most kids with autism checklist scores are as high as J's are neither as interested in other people's reactions, nor as capable of anticipating those reactions, as he is. And that it's more common for their various misbehaviors and social "mistakes" to fade rather than to intensify when people manage to convey to them the effect they're having on others.

But is J really a devious psychopath who derives pleasure whenever others feel pain? I had only to ask myself this question a couple of times before realizing something. It's not pain in general, but anger, frustration, and embarrassment, that J gets off on. And the pleasure he feels isn't general joy, but amusement in particular. In other words, he's not someone who feels happy when he sees (or imagines) people suffering; rather, he's a kid who thinks it's funny when he sees (or imagines) people getting angry, frustrated, or embarraassed--and what inspires his mirth is more people's overt reactions than their internal feelings.

In this respect, is he really that different from the rest of us? I'm thinking of all the times I've had to stifle a laugh when watching certain people lose their tempers; of all the amusement I get from shows and movies in which certain characters make fools of themselves or go apoplectic with rage (my first taste of this: the hapless, short-tempered Otto the Director from Electric Company). Indeed, aren't lost tempers, awkward moments, and public humiliations the basis for some of our most comical fictional scenes--even when the victims are characters for whom we also feel sympathy? Think Faulty Towers, The Office, or Curb Your Enthusiasm. What is it about watching someone lose his temper, or get stuck in an awkward, embarrassing situation, that people find so amusing?

For most of us, of course, such scenes are most entertaining when fictional. In real life, we tend to empathize, at least somewhat, with the victims, and this empathy tends to temper our mirth. What distinguishes J from the rest of us, perhaps, isn't so much that he finds anger and embarrassment so amusing, but that, lacking the gut-level empathy that typical people feel towards flesh and blood humans, he treats real life people as fictional characters.

Indeed, if J sees the social life around him as one big interactive sitcom whose interacting audience consists of just one person, that would explain quite a bit about the one-of-a-kind comedy with which he's been entertaining all those around him for going on 15 years.