There's a good discussion of this in the

https://www.amazon.com/Autism-Matrix-Gil-Eyal/dp/074564399X

and you can ask the question of why schizotypy

https://www.amazon.com/Schizotypy-Schizophrenia-View-Experim...

is ignored which is that by being a developmental disability "autism" avoids the stigma that a diagnosis of severe mental ilness would bring (e.g. confirmed bipolar Kanye West thinks he is autistic, Elon Musk who sure acts like he's bipolar but is not diagnosed also thinks he is autistic) If you told the parents of the kid who's being bullied in first grade who shows some signs of anxiety and seems to be dressed oddly that he has a 10% chance of losing his mind completely as a young adult they'd be horrified. Tell them that he has autism and they can get more resources.

Whether schizotypy is dimensional (you have more or less of it) or taxonic (you have it or you don't) is a primary controversy. One fact is that the 'schizogene' postulated by Meehl which would make it taxonic certainly does not exist or efforts to find it would have born fruit in the genomic age.

The dimensional view is personified by Gordon Claridge who edited a few conference proceedings which may be closer to the truth but fail to tell a compelling story. You might read these and walk away thinking "nothing more to see here folks"

This monograph

https://www.amazon.com/Schizotypy-Schizophrenia-View-Experim...

by Mark Lenzenweger tells a compelling story that might be less true. My life made 100% more sense the day it fell into my hands after decades of looking for answers.

I don't really like the DSM definition of STPD; today I could mark up my first psych eval with a highlighter and add a few symptoms I've experience sense and satisfy it, but as a person who reads about psychodiagnosis for fun I read it and missed it numerous times. (Also despite my condition causing me a lot of trouble, I don't feel like I'm really that ill.) If Lenzenweger is right, it could be diagnosed by an eye tracking test.

As for school uniforms I think they have some good points and some bad points. As a kid they might have done me some good but I probably would have been resistant, as I was to many things. And for bullying I'll share

https://www.amazon.com/Bullying-Social-Destruction-Laura-Mar...

and also

https://www.amazon.com/Sense-Honor-Bluejacket-Books/dp/15575...

written by USMC officer, journalist, novelist and US Senator Jim Webb which is a compelling but even-handed account of the role of hazing in promoting group cohesion that was recommended to me by one of his classmates from the Naval Academy one day when I was giving blood.

I see the connection of (1) 5-10% of people are born with the genetic predisposition of schizotaxia, (2) most of those people are going to experience negative social learning that leads to the schizotypal personality organization, (3) 100% percent of people who develop schizophrenia spectrum disorders were born with schizotaxia, perhaps 10% of them will go on to develop serious psychosis. I think what they are observing is the co-occurrence of (2) and (3)

See

https://www.amazon.com/Loners-Life-Path-Unusual-Children/dp/...

and

https://www.amazon.com/Schizotypy-Schizophrenia-View-Experim...

The latter book is a bit controversial because it sees schizotypy as "you have it or you don't have it" and there are many reasons to believe it is dimensional as pushed here

https://www.amazon.com/Schizotypy-dimensions-Advances-Mental...

but the dimensional team can't tell compelling stories around the practical psychopathology the way Lenzenweger does. Notably Bleuler, who named schizophrenia, found that the parents and family of schizophrenics were a bit "odd" and socially withdrawn more than 100 years ago.

It irks me that you can find just a handful of conference proceedings on a condition which affects tens of millions of people in the U.S and that both ADHD and Autism have boomed in popularity because they both are associated with expensive or addictive treatments. Since nobody has a way to monetize schizotypy (if anything antipsychotic drugs could make you more unhinged) there is no budget to popularize it.

You're right. To my credit, I haven't in years. It's an example of the "splitting" at the root of "schizo" which helps me be able to be a member of two contradictory groups at the same time until the contradictions build up and I get expelled from both. It is not so much about being deceptive but about sincerely seeing the humanity in everyone and trying to play both roles, though there is a way you get drawn into increasing levels of duplicity if you go down that route.

It's also a demonstration of how the "false self" comes out of having the experience of having to hide a vulnerability from people. (I really was prone to paranoid ideation, but the way I was treated in elementary school "proved" they really were out to get me. Boy was I furious at a friend of mine who showed contempt for the private school he went to because my parents were able to get me into private school for just one year and I was treated like... a human being and actually made some friends.) Schizotypes can oddly be very cagey sometimes yet they struggle to avoid random offputting statements that get them in trouble.

When I hear "I was bullied as a kid", I can't help but think of

https://www.amazon.com/Loners-Life-Path-Unusual-Children/dp/...

and the interpretation of that book in

https://www.amazon.com/Schizotypy-Schizophrenia-View-Experim...

and wonder if Asperger's is just a fad diagnosis for this.