Comments on: What does “Kanner” actually mean, historically?

By: stidmama

stidmama — Sat, 03 Feb 2007 12:44:37 +0000

Thank you for pointing out that most people aren’t going to fit the neat little pigeonholes that scientists and politicians want to place them in, or leave them out of.

We homeschooled for three years because my bright but complicated child was not going to get his needs met because the authorities thought he was doing well enough… though he was starting to fall behind in some areas, he started school at such a high level that it was several years before age peers caught up. Now back in public school, I watch for success and try to keep an open line with teachers — but

I know it will be a battle to always get appropriate and timely assistance for this person who doesn’t “look” peculiar or “move” strangely enough to stand out.

By: ballastexistenz

ballastexistenz — Wed, 31 Jan 2007 09:40:18 +0000

Tony Attwood said at some point that Asperger’s daughter confirmed a lot of that.

By: M

Wed, 31 Jan 2007 09:18:24 +0000

Also, in terms of where and when they were – Asperger was working under the Nazis when he examined ‘his’ children. Did he have to believe that they would go on to great things so that they wouldn’t be killed as defectives? Nothing I’ve ever read has even mentioned this – but surely being a psychiatrist in Austria under Nazi rule would have brought him into contact with the T4 programme. Any corrections are welcome, but I find it odd that it’s never mentioned to confirm or deny.

By: Julia

Julia — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 23:21:51 +0000

Some of those sound a little like my two younger children. (I have 3, a singleton and then twins. All 3 redheads.)

But it’s one trait here, two traits there, no single picture really maps onto any of my kids. (And it’s nice that everyone is so unique.)

By: laurentius-rex

laurentius-rex — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 20:53:27 +0000

Some years ago I did some reserch into the medical officer of health reports for Coventry, and what was interesting was the different profiles of leading disabilities back then compared to now.

The leading disabilities were such things as polio, and orthopedic problems resulting from malnutrition and rickets. One might assume that there has been an explosion in cerebral palsy and spina bifida since, well actually what has happened is the diminishment of the former and the survivability of the latter, though spina bifida is going the way of downs I believe, and that is due to abortion.

When I get time I shall have to go back and look for autism, but I doubt if I will find it for rather obvious reasons, that it was not really an accepted diagnosis for a long time after Kanner, and those early respondents to Kanners paper, who saw similar, all had different ascriptions for it within the notions of a childhood psycosis, autism simply being the name that survived for longest out of the competing descriptors for this “niche” disorder.

Nobody cared much in post war UK, and nobody cared much in pre war US.
Autism was just sunk in the morass of Idiocy, Imbecility and Feeble mindedness to use the terminology of the time.

If you were considered ineducable, the finer distinctions did not matter as you were written off anyway. The changes did not really start until the 1960’s in the UK when autism began to be recognised and diagnosed. But the history of autism is mirrored by the history of Tourettes and a host of other neurodiversities.

There is a natural geometry in the spread of ideas. Aspergers paper lay in obscurity for a long time, but how many working pediatricians had ever read Kanners paper by 1955?

Larry

By: Axinar

Axinar — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 20:44:20 +0000

Perhaps the condition is too heterogenous to pigeonhole into the original descriptions of Kanner and Asperger anyway. I made longer commentary on this in my blog ...

By: laurentius-rex

laurentius-rex — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 20:08:13 +0000

There was more difference between Asperger and Kanner than there was between there patients, both shared the same medical education, but one was an expat emigre, the other stayed at home, and such is the nature of science that they were bound to ultimately disagree with each other on what they had independently discovered. That is the social construction of medicine at work for you. Kanner and Asperger were both fallible human beings, and for what it is worth I think Asperger had the more respect of the two.

I have been reading more today about the way DSMIV came about, and as I have always said that is because of politics, because as much as anything the US signed a treaty to recognise the WHO definitions in ICD9 which incidentally are crap anyway, based on little empiricism and at that time still recognising the autistic spectrum as a set of psychoses. The only thing going for DSM was to put PDD in the developmental category.

By: ballastexistenz

ballastexistenz — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 19:27:54 +0000

There wasn’t.

By: bullet

bullet — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 19:25:41 +0000

I read Leo Kanner’s paper shortly after my older son received his diagnosis and was struck by how similar he is to some of the children. He can sing lots of songs, remember large parts of stories, is very good at puzzles and jigsaws and knows colours, numbers and shapes, but his communication and interaction is markedly different from the majority of children his age.

By: Joseph

Joseph — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 18:54:42 +0000

Kanner’s criteria came to be about a “profound lack of affective contact” and repetitive activities of “an elaborate kind”. Initially it was about fine motor skills, feats of memory and such. Mutism was part of the criteria, but it was either mutism or language that doesn’t seem intended for communication. Interestingly, Asperger’s patients also did not fit the Aspie stereotype. I bet there wasn’t a whole lot of difference between Asperger’s patients and Kanner’s patients.