History of Autism

History of Autism

A brief review of Autism though the years of research

Jennifer Taylor

Allen School

Internship/ Examination Process- MIBC 112

Professor Sharon Lipka, MA,BS (CTE), C-RT(R)AS, ARRT

February 7, 2013

Leo Kanner made the first formal documentation of autism in 1943. The work he presented focused on a group of eleven children who shared the same difficulties. He became aware that these children suffered from social isolation, a psychological malady, which he called “infantile autism”. (Sigman & Capps, 1997) He states about his patients, “There is from the start an extreme autistic aloneness that, whenever possible, disregards, ignores, and shuts out anything that comes to the child from the outside.” (1943) Kanner also observed that these children had a “desire for sameness”, and displayed exceptional skills in areas such as vocabulary or memorization, which he called “islets of ability”. (Sigman & Capps, 1997) The children that he observed also showed more interest to pictures and objects, rather than people. Follow- up studies of Kanner (1971) also provided insight on the developing autistic child. He found that sociability increased with age, yet there was still significant problems in having interpersonal relationships.

Kanner concluded that autistic children enter the world without the ability to have affective contact with people, in the same way that physically handicapped children enter the world. He noted that this extreme social isolation was present at birth, and he believed autism had a biological cause rather than an emotional one. (Schopler& Mesibov, 1986) The development of research on autism took on a different view during the 1950s and 1960s. Psychoanalysts argued during this time that autism was a “schizophrenic withdrawal from reality”. ”(Schopler & Mesibov, 1986) Bettelheim (1967), one of the major psychoanalytic theorists of the time, argued that autism was the result of cold and rejecting parents. He...