Asperger's Theory Of Infantile Autism

Many people who don’t know what autism is would think that it’s a new issue in modern society, but it has become far more predominant today compared to previous years. The term autism comes from the Greek word “autos”, meaning “self”. The word autism was first used in 1908 by a swiss psychiatrist named Eugene Bleuler. He used it to describe a schizophrenic patient who had withdrawn into his own world. However, the innovators into autism research were Hans Asperger and Leo Kanner. While they were not working together, they were both doing studies during the 1940s. Leo Kanner, an American child psychiatrist, started by studying the behaviors of 11 children. What he discovered in their behaviors are both pros and cons. The pros are that they had good intellectual potential and can recollect things relatively well. Nevertheless, the cons are difficulty in socializing, adapting to change, repeating words, just to name a few. Kanner referred to their condition as Kanner’s syndrome, which was later named Early Infantile Autism. Similarly, Hans Asperger also studied a group of children that mimicked Kanner’s descriptions. One thing that’s different from Asperger’s research compared to Kanner’s research is that the children he observed did not have echolalia as a linguistic problem because they spoke like young adults. Additionally, Hans did mention that the children he evaluated were clumsy and had difficulty with fine motor skills. Hans Asperger described the milder form of autism

Two other events were in 1980 when the term “infantile autism” was added to the DSM and in 1991 when autism was added to the Individualized with Disabilities Education Act. In 1943, Dr. Leo Kanner published a paper, "Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact,” in the Nervous Child journal. He described the behavior and upbringing of eleven children with autism, along with the parent’s socioeconomic and educational background. The children were between the ages of two and eight years old and were highly intelligent.

Autism has undergone significant definition changes in the past. The term was first used in 1912 by the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler from the Greek word for self—autos—in his description of patients with “schizophrenic thinking divorced from both logic and reality” (Rorvik 249). However, an established set of guidelines for diagnosis would not be established until 1943, when Leo Kanner, a German émigré to the United States, wrote “Autistic Disturbances of Affective Content”, a landmark essay in which he “described eleven children who, from infancy, had seemed to cut off from their parents…[and] existed in their own, often impenetrable world” (Pollak 250). The common features that he noticed in those eleven children were

Eugen Blueler, a psychiatrist, was the first to introduce the name "Autism" but he diagnosed this disease to a schizophrenic adult. Leo Kanner distinguished the two later in order to clarify the understanding of the disability. (Forty-six)

Autism has become one of the top disabilities in California’s developmental system. Today, the rise of autism is increasing by 10 - 17 percent each year. (Madeleine 3) "The disease was first identified by child psychologist Leo Kanner in 1943 at Johns Hopkins University" (Little 2). Autism is a disorder that is usually detected within the first three years. According to the Autism Society of America, 1 in 166 individuals are diagnosed with autism, making it more common than the pediatric cancer, diabetes, and AIDS combined. Boys are four times more likely to have it than girls. People with autism have a hard time communicating verbally and physically. They have special ways of gathering and reacting to information presented to them.

Autism was first described in 1943 by Leo Kanner, a doctor at Johns Hopkins Hospital and the first self-described child psychiatrist, in a paper he wrote titled, "Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact." Dr. Kanner described a similar disorder, but different from childhood schizophrenia. Autism, which has symptoms of schizophrenia, describes withdrawn symptoms or social interaction problems, and was included in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 3rd Ed. (DSM-III) under the name Infantile Autism in 1980. This was later changed to autism in the revised DSM-III in 1987. The authors indicated

In 1912, Paul Eugen Bleuler, a Swiss psychiatrist, coined the word “autism” within the American Journal of Insanity. The term, derived from the Greek autos meaning “self”, described what he believed to be the childhood form of schizophrenia. Bleuler authored The Textbook of Psychiatry in 1916 which set the standard for many years until an Austrian-American physician, Leo Kanner, published his landmark article titled “Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact” in the journal The Nervous Child in 1943 describing eight boys and three girls between the ages of 2 and 8 who displayed an extreme preference for solitude from birth onward, had persistent interests, repetitive behaviors, lack of imagination and language difficulties 9.

According to the CDC, autism is “a developmental disability that can cause significant social, communication and behavioral challenges (Facts About Autism, 2016)”. Autism was first discussed in 1943 by Dr. Leo Kanner, after he observed 11 children who had fixations on the inanimate environment rather than people (Quick Facts About Autism). It affects about one percent of the population, and is

Autism, which wasn 't used as a medical term until 1911 by a Swiss psychiatrist by the name of Eugene Bleuler, was originally used to describe symptoms of schizophrenia (“History of Autism,” n.d.). Not until the 1940 's was it used to describe symptoms of children with social and emotional difficulties (“History of Autism,” n.d.). Around this same time, Asperger 's syndrome, named after Hans Asperger, was identified (“History of Autism,” n.d.). Throughout this time, autism and schizophrenia remained as associated disorders (“History of Autism,” n.d.). By the 1960 's autism became known as its own separate disorder, and was no longer associated with schizophrenia (“History of Autism,” n.d.). Up until the 1980 's autism was treated in a severe manner. Treatment included electric shock treatment and LSD (“History of Autism,” n.d.). Finally, by the 1980 's autism was beginning to be better understood and more promising treatments became available.

Since the early nineteenth century, Eugen Bleuler, a Swiss psychiatrist was the first to use the term autism to identify schizophrenic patients. Autism and schizophrenia correlated in the minds of doctors and psychologists for many years until they started differentiating them. A German scientist named Hans Asperger describes a "milder" form of autism now known as Asperger 's Syndrome (Sole-Smith). The cases he reported were all boys who were highly intelligent but had trouble with social interactions and specific obsessive interests (Sole-Smith). The word autism is rooted from the Greek word "aulos", describing people who are socially impaired with an emotional barrier. According to "Autism,” Gale states,

autism was first described in the 1940s. Leo Kanner in the United States and Hans Asperger in Austria independently published papers describing children with severe social and communicative impairments. Both Kanner and Asperger used the term "autism" (meaning “alone”) to describe the syndromes they had identified. Kanner described children who had impoverished social relationships from early in life, employed deviant language, and were subject to behavioral stereotypies. Asperger’s description identified children with normal IQs and normal language development who suffered from social and some types of communicative impairments. (slaughter)

It wasn’t until 1943 when the classification of autism was introduced by Dr. Leo Kanner. Dr. Kanner, a psychiatrist from John Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, reported on eleven child patients

The word ‘autism’ comes from the green work ‘autos’ meaning ‘self’, or a secluded individual. This term was first used to describe patients with schizophrenia who seemed to be withdrawn. In the early forties, analyzers began to use this word to label this to children with social and emotional problems. The history of autism dates back to the 1600’s, but in 1943, the first case of autism was reported by Leo Kanner, describing them as “an obsessive insistence on persistent sameness.” (Dan Brennan)

Autism is more formally known as Autistic Spectrum Disorder. According to Vatanoglu-Lutz (2014) , “Autism is considered as one of the five pervasive developmental disorders, which are characterized by widespread abnormalities of social interactions and communication, and severely restricted interests and highly repetitive behavior” (p. 426). Although there is much known about autism today, in past years very little was known. In 1910 Eugen Bleuler was the first to use the word autism and a couple of years later Doctors Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger were among the first to diagnose this developmental disability. Leo Kanner, but, was originally from Austria, was a psychiatrist who studied at the University of Berlin. In 1943 Kanner studied 11 of his patients and included them in a paper he titled as Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact. This paper was later read by Hans Asperger. Asperger used Kanner’s paper as reference to diagnose 4 of his

The term “autism” has been used for approximately one hundred years. Autism comes from the Greek word “autos” which means “self.” Self applies to autism because people are taken away from their social life and isolate themselves. A Switzerland psychiatrist, Eugen Bleuler, was the first person ever to use the word autism in 1911 towards symptoms of schizophrenia. From 1940 through the 1990s, doctors have had many theories on how autism affects children. They came to the conclusion that autism medically affects each child differently. Towards the 1980s