History of Autism

The history of autism as a recognizable disorder is relatively short. Long before there was a definitive explanation of what symptoms could be attributed to autism, people who would now be considered autistic were simply considered insane or mentally retarded. As a result, there is almost no documentation describing what would be considered classic symptoms of autism prior to the early 1900’s. The one exception may be a story in the book The Wild Boy of Aveyron which described a 19^th century boy named Victor. He had been found and it was assumed that he had been “raised” by animals in the forest without any human contact.

Depending on your source of information, sometime between 1908 and 1911, the Swiss psychiatrist, Eugen Bleuler coined the term “autism”. This was a label used to describe a condition whereby one’s reality would be so narrowed that they would “escape from reality”. The word “autism” was derived from the Greek word “autos” meaning “self” and was considered a symptom of schizophrenia (another termed courtesy of Bleuler). In 1943 and 1944 two articles were published as a result of separate studies by Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger where both appropriated Dr. Bleuler’s term “autism” to describe their findings.

Leo Kanner’s paper stated that he began studying a pattern of symptoms in children that would normally be considered as emotionally disturbed or mentally retarded. Kanner noticed that these children were often capable of functions that would not indicate mental retardation. At the same time it didn’t appear that they were necessarily emotionally disturbed, either. He called this Early Infantile Autism, which has become known as Kanner’s Syndrome. Kanner’s research has become quite well-known in the field of Autism and a staple in the history of autism.

Asperger's Syndrome 

On the other hand, Hans Asperger’s paper, written in German and published during World War II was largely ignored. Initially it was believed that what Asperger described as “autistic” was a totally different condition than that described by Kanner. However, further study of the original research showed a form of autism with a range of severity that was closer to normal. Today “Asperger’s syndrome” is a term used to describe the highly intelligent, verbally proficient autistic condition.

In the history of autism and mistakes in diagnosis and treatment, none has caused as much psychological damage as the idea that a bad parent creates an autistic child. In the 50’s and 60’s Freudian psychology, which credited psychological problems with early childhood trauma, espoused a theory that basically blamed bad parenting as the cause of autism. This erroneous theory was based on Dr. Kanner's idea that autism was caused by “refrigerator” mothers. Unfortunately, a generation of parents came to believe that their parenting failures were responsible for their child’s disability.

It wasn’t until Dr. Bernard Rimland’s research and work in assisting parents to be self-advocates that the idea of the root cause of autism changed. With self-education and parental involvement blaming “refrigerator mothers” was eliminated by the early 1970’s as even a consideration in the development of autism.

History of Autism Treatment

The history of autism treatment is actually quite sad. Due to the early practice of blaming the parents for their child’s autism, it was not uncommon for autistic children to be removed from their parents and placed in foster homes. When this experiment failed to “cure” them, different treatments were adopted whose purpose was to take the autistic child through the mental and emotional stages of development that they were deprived of by being in a dysfunctional home environment. As in most other treatment protocols some success was reported, however it wasn’t consistent or successful enough to lead to across-the-board employment of the method.

While the history of autism is interesting, learn more about today's definition of autism.