Fascinating. I've been reading a lot (and blogging about) the Baron Cohen and autism theories for a while now and I've been wondering when the other shoe will drop. When (if?) will a syndrome be connected with the extreme female brain?

However, might I make a prediction? There will be outrage in some feminist circles (as there already is over Baron Cohen's classifications)that it is the "extreme female" brain type that is associated with paranoid schizophrenia.

A lot of that could be avoided by referring to the "extreme empathic" brain type I think?

Only a suggestion mind. For there will be at least one person who starts screaming that this is tantamount to claiming that all women are half mad.

I think Crespi and Badcock are going too far in saying that paranoid schizophrenia is an example of an extreme female brain. It is a disease which happens equally among male and females.

As for saying,

"The female brain tends toward empathizing and mentalizing thinking, treating machines and objects as if they were other people. They attribute minds, thoughts, and feelings to inanimate objects. That, according to Crespi and Badcock, is the essence of paranoid schizophrenia."

That doesn't seem to be true either. A lot of paranoid schizophrenics talk to people, not inanimate objects. And schizophrenia can lead to antisocial and non-empathetic behavior. Most symptoms of paranoid schizophrenia don't even involve the outside world. Such as hearing voices or laughter, a lot of schizophrenics are aware that it's inside their own head.

I'm focusing on schizophrenia because i don't know much about autism. But it seems like only small aspects of both diseases are being manipulated in order to fit the "extreme male brain" and "extreme female brain" thesis.

hold on, there's something else I just thought of. The scientist in A beautiful mind--I'm stuck about the name now, can't remember--wasn't the condition he had/still battles paranoid schizophrenia? and it was combined with some traits that sounded pretty systemizing to me, which I admit is not much since I'm not trained or anything, I'm intelligent but I'm no specialist ;) How do those combine, because I think the movie was pretty representative of what happened, was it not?

According to this theory, a person (whether male or female) has a particular “brain type”. There are three common brain types: for some individuals, empathising is stronger than systemising. This is called the female brain, or a brain of type E. For other individuals, systemising is stronger than empathising. This is called the male brain, or a brain of type S. Yet other individuals are equally strong in their systemising and empathising. This is called the “balanced brain”, or a brain of type B. There are now tests you can take to see which type (E, S, or B) you are. Not which type you’d like to be, but which you actually are. A key feature of this theory is that your sex cannot tell you which type of brain you have. Not all men have the male brain, and not all women have the female brain. The central claim of this new theory is only that on average, more males than females have a brain of type S, and more females than males have a brain of type E.

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johnsmith

Wide Circles

it is better to think that there is a spectrum/range of different types of minds spread between the two extremes you have talked about.conditioning of the mind can make you shift a little to either side whichever is best suited to you at a particular time frame and scenario eg; your job type etc.

reading this just stated questing and Assumptions.
i'm asking to know what is that ideal or thought. that Metaphoric seed of Destruction sending my sister to lose her self. she lost who she was, no longer Brainy artist. a lost child in a world that is not real, controlled voices not there.

Ok so I suck at sentence coherency. I am asking what send a genius to loony town? How do autistic sons be come normal as genies daughters become paranoid whack jobs.
I like to know how I can get my sister back.

Baron-Cohen's overgeneralization passing as a theory has been discussed and refuted by dozens, if not hundreds, of people on the autistic spectrum. Many of us have a problem with *displaying* empathy in socially approved and expected ways, but most of us do not lack empathy or, for that matter, theory of mind. Maybe some day this nonsense and that about "male brains" and "female brains" will fade away, but I'm not holding my breath. Since anyone on the spectrum is more or less automatically assumed to be incapable of either awareness of others, or of self-awareness, it isn't really necessary to listen to any who claim otherwise. Please, feel free to talk among yourselves without regard to reality.