Thanks for the pointer to the book!

I think it’s too simplistic to say that autistic spectrum disorder is merely a mentalist spectrum disorder… I think the passage confuses “mentalism” with the personality trait of Neuroticism[1].

Still, I like the idea of reducing a number of diseases to relatively few conceptual causes.

The 21st century will be the century of the brain and the mind.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits#Neuroticism

“Mental disorders can be located along a dimension of mentalism (aka ‘theory-ofmind,’ ‘folk-psychology’ or ‘people skills’) defined as our evolved ability to comprehend others’ actions and behaviour in purely mental terms (such as intention, belief, desire, emotion etc.). Autistics, notoriously, are poor where mentalistic skills like inferring intention or understanding false belief are concerned. ASDs therefore belong on the hypo-mentalistic side of the continuum. However, what we would now term psychotic spectrum disorders (PSDs) can be typified as hyper-mentalistic: paranoid schizophrenics, for example, symptomatically over-interpret intention either positively in erotomania (delusions that others are in love with you) or negatively in delusions of persecution. They also entertain bizarre false beliefs about themselves and others, and generally exhibit excessive mentalism, often enshrined in quasi-religious or mystical delusions. Indeed, the symptoms and signs of autism and psychoses like paranoid schizophrenia exhibit a remarkable pattern of antithesis:”