wow, July already. Time's flying this year.
it's been an active month for this blog, with me introducing the other two writers at the moment, JJ and Esther, even though my posting has kind of stopped outside of the monthly one at the moment (simply because there was nothing that massively inspired me to write)
for this month, I thought I'd cover a topic I saw done in a video by Autistic content creator History Scope (see the original video here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zx62-79XXno&t=2s) and I thought I'd summarise it, since the original video is around 40 minutes long.
Autism has a long and complicated history, but it can be simplified somewhat to a basic timeline of crucial events:
1924 - a children's psychologist named Grunya Sukhareva published papers detailing how she diagnosed children with "Schizoid Psychopathy" which she described as being "a disorder whose clinical picture shares certain features with schizophrenia, but which yet differs profoundly from schizophrenia"
what she'd basically found was that while Autism (which was commonly misdiagnosed as schizophrenia in the early 1900s) was incredibly similar to schizophrenia, at the same time, it was nothing at all alike, and managed to exist in the strange position of simultaneously fitting both descriptions.
her work was largely forgotten, possibly down to the fact that it wasn't translated to English for a long time (originally written in Russian and only translated to German until 2013) - however, some also blame the fact that society was incredibly sexist in the early 20th century, much more so than today, and therefore it was disregarded because she was a woman.
Her research is considered to be almost a century ahead of the rest of the field on Autism was at the time, being nearly at the level current understanding is.
the next crucial point, unfortunately leads us to the Nazis. The next 'pioneer' in Autism research was a man named Hans Asperger, an Austrian scientist who worked under the Nazi party during WW2.
If the name Asperger sounds familiar, we're going to get there soon enough.
Asperger had the job of deciding which children were considered psychologically 'pure' enough to continue living freely and have the right to go on to have children.
While doing this research, Asperger discovered that some children shared similarities with each other that nobody else did. He also noticed the similarities between ASD and Schizophrenia.
Many of his subjects did not have any problem with language, and in fact spoke more like adults than children, were clumsier and had a tendency to walk differently to the other children.
Asperger chose to name the traits he saw in these children 'Autistic Psychopathy' - this would later become known as Asperger's syndrome, also known as High Functioning/Level 1 Autism today.
As with Sukhareva, much of Asperger's research would go forgotten for a long time, as his work was buried in the depths of history alongside all other Nazi research at the conclusion of WW2.
now we come to the third and final pioneer in Autism's crucial points, Leo Kanner. Kanner had studied Asperger's work and decided to focus on studying Autism. Kanner, as the first western psychologist to study Autism, was the only one of the three to have work recognised by other psychologists.
Kanner's subjects were also diagnosed originally with Schizophrenia, however he quickly realised this was not the correct term, and diagnosed them with 'Kanner Syndrome' which would later become Autism.
Kanner worked to create a theory on Autism, noting that children lived in their own private worlds, able to amuse themselves for hours with nothing but arm movements, while getting incredibly upset if something as simple as a toy was moved.
Kanner also ignored Asperger's work, which is likely to do with the fact that Kanner grew up Jewish, it is unclear whether he saw Sukhareva's work.
He continued to study Autistic children and noticed more of the common traits we recognise today (good memory, average+ intelligence, liking routines, difficulties with social interactions, etc.)
it is important to remind here that not every autistic person will have these traits. You can be autistic while being good with social skills, and also be autistic while being terrible with social skills (and the same for the rest)
Kanner didn't realise this, so many children went undiagnosed simply because they didn't fit his very closed set of traits. He believed that for every 2000 people, only one would be Autistic. These days, the official statistic sits around 1 in 54, while many speculate it's nearer to 1 in 10, as many Autistic people go undiagnosed.
the theory behind the cause of Autism at the time was emotional disturbance from parents who had not provided enough love and care to their children in the very early stages of life (obviously not true, but early childhood was a popular blame for mental conditions/illnesses at the time)
Kanner also believed that Autism was a children's condition only, which comes down to the idea of 'Masking' (a whole separate topic in itself but to quickly sum it up - and a post will be coming later about masking - it's an Autistic person hiding their traits) which is something adults are a lot better at than children, and also something adults are more likely to do.
next up, Launa Wing, a neurotypical parent of an Autistic daughter, partnered up with her colleague Judith Gould to prove Autism was more common than the belief of the time (1 in 2000) as support for Autistic people at the time was abysmal (still is, but not to the same point, there was literally no support in the 80s for Autistic people)
the two quickly discovered that Autism was not one singular condition, but an entire broad range of conditions, which they classified as the Autism Spectrum, and split into 4 different conditions.
Classic Autism (the standard diagnosis created by the works of the 3 previous psychologists)
Heller's Syndrome (similar to the first, but shows up much later than the others)
Asperger's Syndrome (significant social difficulty, often nonverbal communication - this swapped places later to the lowest diagnosis)
PDD-NOS (pervasive developmental disorder not otherwise specified - Autistic, but doesn't fit any of the other 3)
some people claim that Autism is being more frequently diagnosed due to correlations with Vaccines, Dairy consumption, technology, and many, MANY, more things, when in reality, it's just being recognised more. We discovered Pluto in 1930, doesn't mean it didn't exist before that.
the next answer to exist was 'Theory of Mind' which led to the "Autistic people can't feel empathy" stereotype which is just flat out wrong. Many Autistic people actually feel empathy so strongly, the term for it is Hyper-empathy, to a point that the concept somebody else is upset is enough to upset them too.
The stereotype was born of the studies completed when creating Theory of Mind. One had Autistic people assigning emotions to faces (a common struggle of Autistic people is reading faces) and when they couldn't, it was just assumed they could not feel empathy towards someone else's emotional state.
the next problem with this stereotype came from the media. Autistic people are portrayed in one of very few ways in the media.
they are always men, Autistic women get very little representation, and in most cases they are white.
They are also then either:
nerdy or
weird or
super-genius or
the 'quiet kid'
and in all cases but option 3, they are portrayed as being a burden on those who have to "put up with them" and only being kept around because they have good analytical skills.
The media portrays Autism as a tragedy to anyone who has to deal with Autistic people, and to Autistic people themselves.
This is where we get into cures, and the many people who have become so terrified of the "debilitating disease" Autism is represented as in the media as to seek a cure ASAP.
one of the main 'cures' is ABA (I've already done a post discussing the issues around ABA, feel free to check that out for more information on that.)
we also cannot discuss cures and treatments without getting into the lovely 'charity' Autism Speaks. Founded in 2005 after the founder's grandchild was diagnosed as Autistic, Autism Speaks is behind the puzzle piece symbols, the main driving force in hunting for a 'cure' or 'treatment' to Autism, a massive supporter of ABA, one of the primary causes of the 'vaccines cause Autism' argument, and way WAY more.
now we get to the modern day, where Autism is diagnosed in the following ways:
High-Functioning Autism, formerly Aspergers (generally known as Level 1 Autism for those who don't like the functioning labels but don't want to associate themselves with a Nazi) - social difficulties present, in most cases, support requirements are minimal, and children diagnosed at Level 1 are usually verbal.
Autism, or Level 2 Autism - the standard mid-level diagnosis. Support needs may be higher, but not high enough to fit into Level 3, can be verbal or non-verbal.
Severe Autism, or Level 3 Autism - frequently non-verbal, this is the stereotype for when you think of a 'Ret**d' - the child will often have no social skills, may have incredibly poor motor skills and control of their body as a whole, and is likely to have frequent meltdowns, and heavy co-morbidities with other conditions such as dyspraxia, ADHD, and epilepsy.
Autism is still incredibly misunderstood, and in a world where every group seems to be challenging the status quo at once, it's easy for people to just label Autistic people as "another group attention seeking" while abuse still occurs to children through methods such as ABA, and parents still refuse to vaccinate their children on the grounds that it might "make them Autistic"
This was an incredibly shortened version of the video I mentioned at the start, and I recommend you check the original video out for more information, he goes into much more detail than I could fit into a blog post.
Thank you all for reading, I believe the other two have something in the works at the moment, and at some point once I'm done drafting it up, I'll release my next post related to Masking, and why it's harmful.
Stay safe everyone!
- Josh.