Hans Asperger (1906-1980) Rozema English 330

The Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger first recognized and diagnosed the neurodevelopmental disorder that is today known as Spectrum Disorder. Working with talented colleagues such as George Frankle and Anni Weiss in the Children’s Clinic of during the 1930s, Asperger treated hundreds of children who shared a series of symptoms: a narrow or obsessive interest in a specialized topic, social awkwardness and isolation, physical clumsiness, precocious language use, and rigid thinking. Asperger called these patients “little professors,” and believed that their condition was common, not rare. Describing these children in a 1938 paper, Asperger borrowed the term “autistic psychotherapy” from an earlier Swiss psychiatrist, Paul Bleuler. Notably, Asperger believed that the condition was innate at birth, not emergent over time, which distinguishes autism from schizophrenia. In another key distinction from many researchers of his time, Asperger thought the condition was genetically determined through a wide expression of genes, not environmentally induced. Asperger believed his patients could contribute to society in meaningful ways, and his methods of instruction (heilpedagogik, or therapy education) emphasized their unique cognitive strengths.

Asperger Syndrome (or Asperger’s Syndrome) became an official diagnosis in 1994, with the publication of DSM-4. The presence of the diagnosis owes largely to the work of , a British psychiatrist who clarified and expanded upon Asperger’s original observations after a long period of neglect had left Asperger a virtual unknown. Wing noted that some children with the disorder had impoverished language skills, relying on echolalia, or repeating existing language in new and often inappropriate contexts. So too, other children were not unusually bright, as Asperger believed, but relied on route memory instead of comprehension. The inclusion of in the DSM-IV (along with the related PDD-NOS from the DSM- III Revision) resulted in an enormous increase in diagnoses and the so-called autism epidemic of the 1990s and 2000s. The uptick in diagnoses itself led to widespread fears about environmental toxins and vaccinations.

Though Asperger Syndrome was removed from the latest edition of the DSM-5, Asperger’s work remains enormously influential, even as the controversy surrounding his alleged continues to linger. Silberman refutes this theory in Neurotribes, but other researchers have uncovered evidence that they believe paints a different picture. Asperger’s influence can also be seen in contemporary works of fiction, which have employed Aspergian narrators and characters repeatedly in recent years, especially in young adult literature. It has also become fashionable—and perhaps too easy—to diagnose historical literary characters and authors with Asperger’s Syndrome.

Leo Kanner (1894-1981) Rozema English 330

Leo Kanner was born in the Ukraine, near the Russian border. Like Hans Asperger, his fate was deeply connected to World War Two: Kanner emigrated to South Dakota in 1923, shortly after a young Adolf Hitler was arrested for an attempted coup. In the war years, Kanner helped hundreds of Jews escape Nazi-occupied countries, including family members, though his own mother and brother were killed in genocidal purges. Kanner became prominent in the field of psychiatry after moving from South Dakota to Baltimore, where he worked with the noted psychiatrist Adolf Meyer at Child Study Home at Johns Hopkins University. Here, he published Child Psychiatry (1935), a practical handbook that advanced a holistic understanding of children. After Asperger colleagues George Frankl and Anni Weiss joined The Child Study Home in 1937, Kanner began working with the case of Donald Trippet, a high-functioning autistic child whom Kanner labeled schizophrenic. In this context, the term indicated a fundamental disconnection between the patient and his environment, particularly in the socio-emotional realm.

Kanner was not satisfied with the diagnosis of schizophrenia, however, because individuals suffering from this disorder typically experienced onset after puberty and suffered from hallucinations. In 1943, he published an article entitled “Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact,” in which he described case studiers of eleven individuals. These individuals, Kanner observed, shared two key characteristics: social isolation and fear of change. He also believed that their condition was relatively rare. Eventually, Kanner labeled the disorder early infantile autism, a term that narrowed the diagnosis to children, eclipsed the broader understanding that Hans Asperger had advanced, and subsequently dominated the psychiatric field for the next 40 years.

If the controversy surrounding Asperger entails his possible allegiance to Nazi doctrine, the reputation of Kanner is enveloped by claims no less damaging—chiefly, that his interpretation of autism began the long tradition of blaming parents, especially mothers, for the condition. Largely focused on the lack of socio-emotional reciprocity in his patients, Kanner noted that many parents of autistic children were educated professionals who seemed emotionally distant from their children. And as Freudian psychoanalysis gained in popularity in the 1950s, Kanner hopped on the bandwagon and pursued the idea that toxic parenting led to what most psychiatrists still labeled childhood schizophrenia. The rise and popularity of Bruno Bettelheim, another psychiatrist with roots in the Holocaust, can be blamed, to some degree, on Leo Kanner. Did Kanner’s view of autism shape how it is depiction in fiction? Perhaps not as clearly as did Asperger’s, but it may exist in the cold, distant parents of some autism-themed works.