[enobrev]

I think there's something of a pendulum here, and I agree it's swayed too far to over-diagnosing ourselves. But I also think of my father who passed a couple years ago.

We didn't have much of a relationship. He had friends, but never close ones. He was weirdly mean or weirdly seclusive or weirdly awkward at times - and also incredibly intelligent and occasionally gracious and hilarious.

After he passed, I wondered if he might have been somewhere on the spectrum - but his peculiarities were simply ignored. A poor boy, in a poor urban neighborhood, with a dead father, being raised by an immigrant mother and immigrant siblings doesn't get diagnosed with much of anything - if they see doctors at all. And hey, he had a near photographic memory, and did great in school, so what's there to worry about?

It's always been "how he was", and that's probably ok, but I do wonder if he would have had a better or somehow different life if he knew more about _why_ he was the way he was.