I know the title above is rather ambitious for a single blog post, but I do want to give you an idea of how it came about and how some of the statistics might be deceiving. I have been studying this topic for a few weeks now and thought I knew enough to put out a continuous series of posts on the subject, but as my snippet on This N’ That Sunday mentioned I just didn’t know how much I didn’t know. So, I am going to put out bits and pieces of what I have been learning as I go along. After all, a blog is not supposed to be novel length but instead snippet of info.
To the layman, it seems that “Autism” just came on the scene in the late 1980s. Before that is was almost unknown by the general public. In reality, the term itself was coined in 1908 to describe a subset of schizophrenic patients who were especially withdrawn and self-absorbed.
Hans Asperger brought it to the forefront in the field of psychiatry in 1944 when he describes a “milder” form of autism now known as Asperger’s Syndrome. The cases he reported were all boys who were highly intelligent but had trouble with social interactions and sometimes specific obsessive interests.
After World War II there was a lot of psychoanalytic work done on autism where researchers looked solely at the negative impact on life experiences. At that time Autism was not considered biological or genetic. In 1980 “Infantile autism” is listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) for the first time; the condition is also officially separated from childhood schizophrenia.
It was not until 1988 when the movie Rain Man is released which stars Dustin Hoffman as an autistic savant that Autism became widely known to the general public. At that time Asperger’s Syndrome was not included in the DSM category.
Finally, in 2013, The DSM-5 folds all subcategories of the condition into one umbrella diagnosis of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Asperger’s Syndrome is no longer considered a separate condition. I have some strong feelings about that but I will leave them to another post. ASD is defined by two categories: 1) Impaired social communication and/or interaction. 2) Restricted and/or repetitive behaviors.
Some say folding Asperger’s into the DSM category was a mistake since it is significantly different when it comes to life experiences from much of the rest of the autism spectrum. More on that in a near future post.
Footnote: The source for much of this history is from the Parents.com website.
Even though I was never a Boy Scout, I am a person who tries to be prepared for the challenges I will be facing. If I want to discuss a controversial topic I try to study both sides to see where my feelings might reside. “Think For Yourself” is one of my primary mantras in my life. I simply don’t let others tell me what to think. But then again, maybe that is one of the reasons I was never a Boy Scout (ha).
the real craziness of 2017 is best expressed in terms of constitutional theory. Our Constitution vests the entire executive power in a single individual. No worse joke has been played on the American people than the very fact that tens of thousands of eighth graders have a far better grasp of the Constitution than Donald Trump, even though he swore a sacred oath to “preserve, protect, and defend” it on January 20, before the record crowds he deluded himself to see assembled before him. That’s not just political craziness; it’s truly meshugah in every sense of the term. Just try to imagine a conversation with Jefferson, Madison, either Adams, or Abraham Lincoln—strong constitutionalists all—on one side of the table, and the current chief executive on the other. That would be crazy, too!
I ran across an interesting very concise history of the period between 1870 and 1970 and how it may just be repeating itself today. It is worth a read if you have a couple of minutes today.
It’s nice to know where you came from but it is more important to know where you are going and we as a world and especially a country don’t seem to have any idea about our future.
We need to start speaking and writing in the same language — I know the Christian and Jewish bibles say God mixed up all our languages because we were starting to get too smart. That really doesn’t make a lot of sense, particularly in today’s world. 🙂 All our different languages just get in the way of communication effectively with each other. We as a world need to pick a language and then all agree that everyone must learn to speak that language in xx (you fill in the blank) years.