People with Aspergers often have to turn off emotions because they are too intense, the rationality is a coping mechanism. People perceive a lack of emotion, bu

People with Aspergers often have to turn off emotions because they are too intense, the rationality is a coping mechanism. People perceive a lack of emotion, but really it is just that it is easier to view the world as rational than it is to cope with accepting the irrationality. I say this with three psychiatrist-diagnosed (pre DSM revision) "Aspies" in my immediate family. Feeling emotions, feeling empathy and having a sense of duty towards others are three different things. Lacking emotions would probably be considered an affective disorder or unipolar depression. Lacking empathy can be antisocial personality disorder or other personality disorders at the most extreme end. And lacking a sense of duty towards others could be anything really. I have found that Aspies actually want to help the world, and that the hard part is actually doing the interfacing with the world. Phone calls with neutrotypical people, pretending to be extroverted enough to keep a job, trying to explain things and take people's fear response into consideration without just reducing it to a question of binaries and logic. That is the hard part.