HISTORY OF AUTISM
A few examples of autistic symptoms and treatments
were described long before autism was named. The Table Talk of Martin
Luther contains a story of a 12-year-old boy who may have been severely
autistic. According to Luther's notetaker Mathesius, Luther thought
the boy was a soulless mass of flesh possessed by the devil, and
suggested that he be suffocated. Victor of Aveyron, a feral child
caught in 1798, showed several signs of autism; the medical student
Jean Itard treated him with a behavioral program designed to help
him form social attachments and to induce speech via imitation.
The New Latin word autismus (English translation
autism) was coined by the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler in 1910
as he was defining symptoms of schizophrenia. He derived it from
the Greek word autos (meaning self), and used it to mean morbid
self-admiration, referring to "autistic withdrawal of the patient
to his fantasies, against which any influence from outside becomes
an intolerable disturbance."
The word autism first took its modern sense in
1938 when Hans Asperger of the Vienna University Hospital adopted
Bleuler's terminology "autistic psychopaths" in a lecture
in German about child psychology. Asperger was investigating a form
of Autism Spectrum Disorder now known as Asperger syndrome, though for various reasons
it was not widely recognized as a separate diagnosis
until 1981. Leo Kanner of the Johns Hopkins Hospital first used
autism in its modern sense in English when he introduced the label
early infantile autism in a 1943 report of 11 children with striking
behavioral similarities. Almost all the characteristics described
in Kanner's first paper on the subject, notably "autistic aloneness"
and "insistence on sameness", are still regarded as typical
of the autism spectrum of disorders. It is not known whether Kanner
derived the term independently of Asperger.
Kanner's reuse of autism led to decades of confused
terminology like "infantile schizophrenia", and child
psychiatry's focus on maternal deprivation during the mid-1900s
led to misconceptions of autism as an infant's response to "refrigerator
mothers". Starting in the late 1960s autism was established
as a separate syndrome by demonstrating that it is lifelong, distinguishing
it from intellectual
disability and schizophrenia and from other developmental
disorders, and demonstrating the benefits of involving parents in
active programs of therapy. As late as the mid-1970s there was little
evidence of a genetic role in autism; now it is thought to be one
of the most heritable of all psychiatric conditions.
The rise of parent organizations and the destigmatization
of childhood Autism Spectrum Disorder have deeply affected how we view Autism Spectrum Disorder, its boundaries,
and its treatments. The Internet has helped autistic individuals
bypass nonverbal cues and emotional sharing that they find so hard
to deal with, and has given them a way to form online communities
and work remotely. Sociological and cultural aspects of autism have
developed: some in the community seek a cure, while others believe
that autism is simply another way of being.
Click here for the full
range of autism and Asperger's fact sheets at www.autism-help.org
This autism fact sheet is licensed under the GNU
Free Documentation. It is derivative of autism and Aspergers--related articles at http://en.wikipedia.org
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