How long has autism been around? From the offset I’d like to answer one burning question and get one thing straight… how long has autism been around? It is important for people to realise that evidence of autism or autism spectrum disorder (ASD) has been around for over a century! It is not a new disorder that has been on the rise since the 1990s like many believe.
Since the first portrayal of autistic behaviours in the early 1800s, the classification and criteria for diagnosing autism have changed drastically. Yes, you read that correctly, autism has been around since the 1800s! The first Diagnostic Statistical Manual (DSM-I) considered autism as a childhood type of schizophrenia (American Psychiatric Association, 1952) though autism later was separated from schizophrenia, being identified on its own. Over time autism has developed into a spectrum as the DSM-5 (2013) specifies. As prevalence of autism increases, the criteria and definition are likely to evolve further.
So then how long has autism been around? In 1798 before the word autism was used, French physician Jean-Marc Gaspard Itard depicted Victor the Wild Boy of Aveyron. Victor was found after 11 years of isolation in the woods. He was described as being socially withdrawn and having language and intellectual disabilities. Itard classified Victor as being developmentally different from children his age. His explanation of Victor’s predispositions would later be officially categorised as autistic (Itard, 1932).
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Paul Eugen Bleuler, a Swiss psychiatrist, was the first to use the word ‘autism’ to describe particular indicators of schizophrenic patients where they withdrew from others (Greydanus & Toledo-Pereyra, 2012). Following, in 1927, Eugene Minkowski, termed autism as the “trouble generator” of schizophrenia (Minkowski, 2001).
In the early 1900’s autism was considered to be caused by emotional or psychological factors rather than biological or physical, stemming from the Freudian psychoanalytic theory. These descriptions for autism were commonly recognised in the medical field and lingered because of the lack of research examining the cause of autism.
Researchers who were supporters of the psychogenic explanation concentrated explicitly on parenting styles as the fundamental cause of autistic behaviours in children. In 1943, Kanner described autism as the “children’s inability to relate themselves in the ordinary way to people and situations from the beginning of life,” and disconnected autism from schizophrenia and created its own category called “infantile autism” (Kanner, 1943). Kanner went on to describe autism as “an extreme autistic aloneness that, whenever possible, disregards, ignores, shuts out anything that comes to the child from the outside” (Kanner, 1943). Kanner introduced his view of “refrigerator mothers,” which stated the cause of autism was a “lack of maternal warmth.” Kanner made this his main reason for the cause of autism (Kanner, 1943).
Since Kanner categorised ‘infantile autism’ separate to schizophrenia, Hans Asperger, a German paediatrician, acknowledged a milder form of autism. In 1944 he recognised this milder form of autism in his study of boys of high intelligence who were socially challenged and displayed restricted interests (Asperger & Frith, 1991).
Bruno Bettelheim, a childhood psychologist popularised the “refrigerator mothers” theory in the 1950’s. Bettelheim’s accusations that parents were causing autism developed a range of therapeutic approaches. The most apparent approach that Bettelheim suggested was to remove children from the damaging impact of their parents and reside in treatment accommodations (Mesibov, Shea, & Schopler, 2005). He explained that the “emotionally cold parents had produced the autistic features in their children through unconscious feelings of hostility and rejection.” He also went on to compare the parents of autistic children to that of the guards at concentration camps and their children to their captives (Mesibov, Shea, & Schopler, 2005).
The notion that parents were the reason for their child’s autism was provocative. A much-needed different approach began in the 1960s. Research was now evolving to focus on and understand the biological and behavioural mechanisms of autism, not just the psychogenic and emotional causes. Early investigations began with Stella Chess who researched autism as a neurological disease in the 1960s (Pearce, 2007).
In 1964, Bernard Rimland founded the Autism Society of America. Rimland contested Bettelheim’s ‘refrigerator mother’ theory by extending the belief that autism had a biological origin. In his book, Infantile autism: The syndrome and its implications for a neural theory of behavior, Rimland negated the “refrigerator mothers” theory and suggested that genetics were responsible for autism (Edelson, 2014).
So, there it is in a nutshell. I hope the brief historical run through has answered the question, how long has autism been around? But it’s not done yet! Stay tuned for a continuation of how autism has evolved throughout the years in my next blog post.
Until next time…
Voula Valanidas