Is Ben Afflecks "Accountant" ASPD as well as ASD/AS?

I just watched the movie "The Accountant". The protagonist, Christian Wolff, has high functioning autism. He un-cooks the books for criminal entities and murders people without remorse. This movie caused controversy with many in the Autistic community because of the fact he is a killer and a criminal.

Would this character be an example of someone who is both Autistic and a psychopath?

Well, it says on the wikipedia page that he has high-functioning autism, so there's your answer to the first part of the question.

Also, violence and even a lack of remorse doesn't necessarily equate to psychopathy.

this is fiction. it simply doesn't do to take it too seriously. the purpose of such characters is to intrigue and titillate. they're certainly not intended to be accurate portrayals of the medical conditions that they purportedly represent. as far as i'm concerned, autism and psychopathy are independent diagnoses. they're not comorbid.

If he was a real person rather than a character, we'd have to look at his history and symptoms to determine whether he's got ASPD or anything else.

However; I seem to recall reading that you can't get a PD diagnosis if you have an already present diagnosis of autism.. (may or may not be remembering that correctly )
therefore, I guess he'd more accurately be described as someone with autism, who also happens to murder people and lack remorse.

seabreezeblue wrote:However; I seem to recall reading that you can't get a PD diagnosis if you have an already present diagnosis of autism.. (may or may not be remembering that correctly )

It has precedence, but it depends on whether the PD can be explained entirely on an autistic disorder basis.

It is impossible for SPD and StPD, but it is possible for others, as far as I know (they are specifically excluded since they are implied to some degree already in the definition). AvPD and OCPD, paranoid would be the most common. Some would be really unlikely, like HPD, BPD.

The accountant would never have been diagnosed with ASPD, he just does not meet the criteria.

seabreezeblue wrote:I guess he'd more accurately be described as someone with autism, who also happens to murder people and lack remorse.

... eek!!! i candidly don't accept that these characteristics are consistent with autism. where they exist, it's these that describe the presentation, not autism. this is why fiction is so prone to be nonsense (and why i have so little time for it - garbage in / garbage out).

shock_the_monkey wrote:... eek!!! i candidly don't accept that these characteristics are consistent with autism. where they exist, it's these that describe the presentation, no autism. this is why fiction is so prone to be nonsense (and why i have so little time for it - garbage in / garbage out).

There are plenty of violent people with autism just as there are plenty of violent neurotypicals. Once again, autism and violent/antisocial behavior are in no way mutually exclusive.

jag140 wrote:

shock_the_monkey wrote:... eek!!! i candidly don't accept that these characteristics are consistent with autism. where they exist, it's these that describe the presentation, not autism. this is why fiction is so prone to be nonsense (and why i have so little time for it - garbage in / garbage out).

There are plenty of violent people with autism just as there are plenty of violent neurotypicals. Once again, autism and violent/antisocial behavior are in no way mutually exclusive.

... you're misunderstanding what i'm saying here, because you're basically repeating my statement that autism and psychopathy are independent conditions. the subtlety here is assuming that autism is linked in some way to psychopathy. in other words that autism predisposes psychopathy. i'm clearly stating that where psychopathy is present, this is the dominant condition, not autism. people that are autistic are, on average, much less willfully aberrant than NTs, in my opinion.