http://www.vaporia.com/autism/autismfaq-hist.html
It has been presumed that before the discovery of the pattern of symptoms
now known as autism, that people did exist with the syndrome, and were lumped
together either with the mentally retarded or the insane. We might expect to
have inherited sufficiently-detailed descriptions of such people that we would
be able to see a pattern suggesting autism among them, but there have not been
many descriptions that suggest autism. One such description is of a boy found
in the 19th century and named Victor. At the time, some assumed he had grown up
without human contact in the forest. The story was recorded in the book The
Wild Boy of Aveyron.
Leo Kanner published his first paper identifying autistic children in 1943,
asserting he had noticed such children since 1938 (see reference to Kanner,
"Autistic Disturbance of Affective Contact", see Selected
Articles section below). Before Kanner noticed and recorded a pattern of
symptoms, such children would be classified as emotionally disturbed or
mentally retarded. Kanner observed that these children often demonstrated
capabilities that showed that they were not merely slow learners, yet they
didn't fit the patterns of emotionally disturbed children. Thus he invented a
new category, which he called Early Infantile Autism, which has since sometimes
been called Kanner's Syndrome. Hans Asperger (see section Well Known Researchers
and Practicioners and reference to Asperger, "Autistic Psychopathy in
Childhood" in Selected
Articles section below) essentially made the same discoveries at the same
time, independently of Kanner, but the patients he identified all had speech,
so the term Asperger's Syndrome or Asperger Syndrome is often used to label
autistic people who have speech.
Note that before before Kanner incorporated it into his label, the word
"autism" already had a meaning: "escape from reality"
(coined, I think, by Eugen Bleuler in 1912, who had already coined the term
"schizophrenia"). Kanner borrowed Bleuler's term either because
Kanner indeed believed the children were trying to escape from reality, or he
felt that whatever was going on, the children gave that impression. Today, one
hears the word autism in the context of Kanner's syndrome much more often than
one hears it used with Bleuler's original meaning, and someone who regularly
deals with Kanner's syndrome might misunderstand when the word is used in its
original sense. For example, if a psychologist says "I sense some autism
in this patient," s/he could be using established terminology to say the
particular patient is escaping from reality, yet s/he would not necessarily be
talking about someone who suffers from the developmental disorder that this FAQ
is about.
After Kanner and Asperger's discovery, parents were observed to treat their
autistic children without the warmth and affection which is normally observed
between parent and child. Freudian psychology had a ready-made theory waiting
for this syndrome and this observation: that if certain basic psychological
bonds between parent and child fail to form that the child will fail to
progress. A Freudian theory of autism remained in vogue in the 50s and early
60s. Though the theory fit Freudian psychology hand-in-glove, there are two
obvious alternative possible explanations that the Freudian theory dismisses:
one is that the parents' observed stilted interaction with the child was the
result of the child's Autistic behavior; the other is that Autism is an extreme
instance of a genetically-inherited personality trait that was present to a
milder extent in such observed parents.
Based upon psychological theories of the basis of autism, some children were
removed to their parents' home and put in foster care to see if they would
recover. When this proved insufficient to cure them, some attempts were made to
bring children through psychological states which they missed out on by virtue
of being in a dysfunctional family. Some success has been reported (as has been
reported for every treatment ever put forward) but no clear-cut success that
would lead to universal, long-term adoption of the methods.
Above and beyond the distinction between the concept that Bleuler coined the
word "autism" to label and the syndrome that is the subject of this
document, the syndrome has been broadened somewhat since Kanner first published
his paper. Kanner reported a rate of occurrence of 1 in 10000 whereas the ASA
states the rate as 15 in 10000. Kanner first identified people who were clearly
not mentally retarded (since this was the unexplained group of people at the
time). Since then, it has been observed that some mentally retarded people have
autistic symptoms whereas others don't; so it is thought that the conditions
overlap. This explains some of the difference in the reported rates of
occurrence, though some now claim that it doesn't fully explain it.
Other terms that have been applied to what we now call "autism".
Childhood schizophrenia, infantile autism, Aspergers Syndrome, Kanner's
Syndrome. Probably lots of autistic people used to be termed retarded, or
schizophrenic, though obviously those terms (as then used) were not as specific
as our current "autism" label.
The parents of autistic children are naturally less-than-objective about
their own roles in the cause of their childrens' conditions. In the 60s, this
was fueled by a widespread belief that the condition was caused by the way the
parents treated their children. When evidence to the contrary (see section Theories) was
uncovered yet not widely known, parents had to act as their own advocates.
Parents still sometimes find themselves in the position of trying to explain
how the fault does not lie with themselves since the general public's
information on autism is still sometimes dated or wrong.
There remain a lot of controversies about treatment and probably have been
from almost the first. See section above, "Controversies".
This article and book, written by a prime advocate of the Freudian theory of
the cause of autism were highly influential in attitudes about Autism for a
long time.
Bruno Bettelheim.
"Joey: A 'mechanical
boy.'" Scientific American, 200, 116-127.
Bruno Bettelheim.
The Empty Fortress: Infantile
autism and the birth of the self (Collier-MacMillan, 1967).
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