Understanding Lee

http://cogsci.stackexchange.com/questions/5987/what-are-the-differences-between-aspergers-syndrome-and-schizoid-personality-di wrote:What are the differences between Asperger's Syndrome and Schizoid Personality Disorder?

They are specifically listed as two separate disorders in the ICD, but what are the differences between Asperger's Syndrome and Schizoid Personality Disorder?

Since both result in a withdrawal from social situations, the two can seem quite similar to an outside observer; is there any accurate method used to distinguish between the two in a subject?

lee harvey oswald's cold war wrote:In 1949, a series of delinquent case studies was syndicated. It was a hot topic in all major cities, but particularly in New York with its troubled mix of ethnic races clinging to invisible neighborhood borders and ancient hostilities. Cramped and decaying tenements, rat infested halls and alleys and a vocal, hostile nativist element within the larger community all tempered the steel,  all fed the resentment in the offspring of these immigrants. 
            We want to focus on the case of “Tommie” published on October 23, 1949.
            Tommie is a small, thin 13 year old with tousled hair and blazing brown eyes. He is captured after a failed burglary of a jewelry store. Tommie is bitter, hostile and defiant. At the station, the Sergeant notes Tommie looks ragged and half-starved. He has been sleeping rough for months after running away from home and has once even snatched the purse of an old lady. Institutions had not changed him in the past, let alone contained him. He is “incorrigible” and headed by big time trouble as an adult.
            The Sergeant orders he be taken to Youth House, adding that they should be warned about him.
            Tommie is hauled, kicking and screaming, to the youth detention center and turned over to Executive Director, Dr. Frank Cohen.
The officer warns Cohen that no institution will house him anymore, but the smiling director assures the officer that they will take him. At this point, Tommie recalls being told by a former inmate that kids are never punished in Youth House and sets out to test the gossip by calling the officer a “big flatfoot” and spitting on his shoe.
            Tommie is not punished, so he tries again by threatening to spit in Dr. Cohen’s face. Dr. Cohen only laughs and commences booking Tommie in before explaining the routine. There are four dormitory floors where the boys sleep in individual bedrooms. There is also a recreation room with a supervisor ready to help any time of the day or night. The boys rise at 7:00 a.m., take a shower, dress, spread their bed and go down to the cafeteria for breakfast. At 8:30, school commences. Noon is lunchtime, and after 3:00 p.m. there is time for recreation until dinner and then bed. A boy could enroll in art or woodworking classes, read, swim, work out in the gym – or else take up some special study - something for the future.
            Young Tommie remains cynical. But Dr. Cohen explains Youth House is like a laboratory. “We study the boys’ problems, and they cooperate. We help every boy find the good in himself, discover his latent abilities and build on these. Eighty-two percent of our boys are allowed to go home to try again, Tommie. You’d like that? Going home to your mother?”          
            During the remainder of the story, we find out that Tommie has been punished with 200 lashes of a belt at another institute, is intelligent and has a flair for electronics. But a breakthrough looks unlikely. Tommie smashes equipment regularly and is aloof from the other boys. It all turns around only after Tommie is voted to sit on the Youth Council.
            We also learn that Tommie’s mother is to blame for all of his bad deeds. He apparently loved his mother, but had been hurt by her and felt he had been a burden. Investigations would reveal that his father had deserted them when Tommie was small, and that his mother had been “a respectable woman, but a morbid, nagging complainer, consumed with self-pity because she had to work, and never let Tommie forget how she was slaving to support him.”
            But thanks to Youth House, this story has a happy ending; a mother and child reunion.
            There is only one problem. The story, supposedly to be taken as a factual case study, was most likely pure fiction, or heavily fictionalized. Doubt arises on the basis that “Tommie’s” stay – according to this story – was said to be “months” and this not only well exceeded the average incarceration, but also exceeds the legal maximum of 45 days. Also, even if Youth House at that time had been well run, it could not possibly have been the Nirvana this story paints it as being, given the later record. What can be noted however, are the similarities between “Tommie” and Lee Oswald, and more particularly in how Tommie’s mother, and Marguerite Oswald are depicted
            Lee, like Tommie, was 13. He was described by Dr. Hartogs in his Warren Commission testimony as a “medium sized, slender, curly-haired youngster, pale-faced,” while “Tommie” was small, thin and tousled-haired. Both were without fathers. “Tommie” had called a police officer a “flatfoot” – Oswald had called an attendance officer a “damned Yankee.” Both had their intelligence noted at Youth House, as was their respective aloofness from the other boys and non-compliance with regard to activities. The similarities could be described as positively spooky and prescient.
Released in May after a two-week observation period and returned to P.S. 44, Oswald’s attendance record improved, but his attitude did not. It was reported to his Parole Officer that he was refusing to do any work and spent his time flying paper planes around class. It was also reported that he had struck out at some of his class mates. 
            Social Worker, Evelyn Strickman meanwhile had described Marguerite as a “smartly dressed, gray haired woman, very self-possessed and alert while making a superficial appearance of affability.” She continued, “I felt that essentially she was defensive, rigid, selfish and very much of a snob.” Dr. Hartogs was no less damning of Marguerite when he wrote, “Lee has to be diagnosed as personality pattern disturbance with schizoid features and passive-aggressive tendencies. Lee has to be seen as an emotionally, quite disturbed youngster who suffers the impact of really existing emotional isolation and deprivation, lack of affection, absence of family life and rejection by a self-involved and conflicted mother.” Compare to the assessment of Tommie’s mother, “a respectable woman, but a morbid, nagging complainer, consumed with self-pity because she had to work, and never let Tommie forget how she was slaving to support him.”
“Positively spooky and prescient” hardly seems sufficient. 

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Mick Purdy wrote: I'm sure that in his own way, what ever way that might be, he would have communicated to Fritz or whoever during those interrogations exactly where he was when the shots rang out.


It certainly does not mean he would have shouted that from the roof tops. Far from it, after all if we are right about PM being Oswald it would have been a simple "matter of fact". 

Terry W. Martin wrote:Also, it should be noted that in any intelligence op the participants would not divulge information until they had a better understanding how things were playing out. Lee did not know he was going to be shot and thought he had time to reconnoiter.

Too bad that needed time never happened.

Terry W. Martin wrote:Also, it should be noted that in any intelligence op the participants would not divulge information until they had a better understanding how things were playing out. Lee did not know he was going to be shot and thought he had time to reconnoiter.

Too bad that needed time never happened.

greg parker wrote:I think Lee Farley was right - that Oswald was placed inside the building to watch Molina. If that is true, he has every reason to believe help will be forthcoming.

But what if it was a merely a pretext to get him in there? It may have slowly dawned on him that help was not going to come, and why.

That said, his fate was always sealed in my opinion from the time they had to start fabricating the case against him. His death - imo - was as much about stopping a trial as it was about stopping him talking - even if all he could spill was that he was placed in the building to spy on someone. That in itself would lead to the culprits.

I do have some doubts that he made any call to Raleigh. I think the call was more likely incoming. 

But as I posted last month, I think this needs to be put into the mix:

Comments by an Asperger's patient to a specialist in that field...

"My response to pain and temperature seems to be similar to my response to trivial or traumatic events. At low levels of stimulation the response is exaggerated, but at higher levels the senses seem to shut down and I can function better than normal in most instances. A trivial event can quite dramatically hamper my ability to function, but when faced with trauma, I can think logically and act calmly and efficiently when others would panic under the same situation."

Thus when Marina forgot to put butter on the table for dinner, he would lose it. When he is under arrest for killing a cop and the assassination of a president, he is calm and efficient.

He was wired differently and that is evident in just about every remembrance of him, as well as in the NY court and Youth House documents. 

That is not to say his perception of his predicament didn't alter over that weekend when no cavalry arrived...

Personality Disorders: Current Scientific Status and Ongoing Controversies.2018 wrote:Schizoid personality disorder
Clinical description and overlap with other conditions:

DSM-5 describes schizoid personality disorder as marked by “a pervasive pattern of detachment from social relationships and a restricted range of emotions in interpersonal settings” (American Psychiatric Association, 2013, p. 653). Its key diagnostic criteria include a  decided preference for solitary activities; indifference to praise or criticism; a paucity of powerful outwardly expressed emotions; and lack of interest in long-term romantic relationships. As associated features, DSM-5 notes that individuals with this condition are frequently described as drifting aimlessly from one life pursuit to another, as having few or no close friends, as being loners, and as dating infrequently. In contrast to individuals with avoidant personality disorder, who typically yearn for social contact but are terrified of rejection, individuals with schizoid personality disorder typically have little interest in social contact (Millon, 1969). At the risk of
oversimplification, they are alone but not lonely. The enigmatic character of Rupert Pupkin, portrayed by Robert DeNiro in the film The King of Comedy (1982), displays many of the hallmark features of this condition.

Data suggest that self-described “asexuals” are substantially over-represented among individuals with this condition (Triebwasser, Chemerinski, Roussos, & Siever, 2012) and that this condition is associated with perhaps the greatest interpersonal and achievement-related impairment of any DSM personality disorder (e.g., Cramer, Torgersen, & Kringlen, 2006). There is substantial diagnostic overlap between schizoid personality disorder and what DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 2000) called “Asperger’s syndrome,” which in DSM-5 would be classified as a high functioning form of autism spectrum disorder (Mittal, Kalus, Bernstein, & Siever, 2007); nevertheless, it is unclear whether these two conditions share important etiological underpinnings.