> I really think in a lot of ways it'd help to have a couple of smaller buckets inside the giant bucket that is ASD.
The reason we don't is because it's not possible. Every time someone tries to make a high / medium / low-functioning distinction, some PhD gymnast running three companies and a dog shelter who can't reliably feed herself has a weeks-long non-verbal episode after she wore the wrong colours to an investor meeting, and completely ruins their categorisation system thereby.
If there's one thing all autistic people have in common, it's not being well-described by the paradigms according to which you want to bucket them.
That's not to say there aren't apparent subtypes of autism, just as there are apparent subtypes of allism. But they're hard to pin down, and they're not really useful for what you want to use them for: there are people in each of them who live happy, fulfilled lives, and who struggle to function on a daily basis – and who could be described by both of those clauses, for that matter.
The reason we don't is because it's not possible. Every time someone tries to make a high / medium / low-functioning distinction, some PhD gymnast running three companies and a dog shelter who can't reliably feed herself has a weeks-long non-verbal episode after she wore the wrong colours to an investor meeting, and completely ruins their categorisation system thereby.
If there's one thing all autistic people have in common, it's not being well-described by the paradigms according to which you want to bucket them.
That's not to say there aren't apparent subtypes of autism, just as there are apparent subtypes of allism. But they're hard to pin down, and they're not really useful for what you want to use them for: there are people in each of them who live happy, fulfilled lives, and who struggle to function on a daily basis – and who could be described by both of those clauses, for that matter.