No, you’re not misunderstanding the word disorder. Autism encompasses a greater degree of heterogeneity than most other disorders. At some point in the future,

No, you’re not misunderstanding the word disorder. Autism encompasses a greater degree of heterogeneity than most other disorders. At some point in the future, we may very well break autism into several distinct sub groups. But at this time, efforts to do so have mostly failed. The removal of Asperger’s as a separate disorder being an example of this difficulty.