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You know whats really interesting? Autism and Schizophrenia used to refer to the same condition. The term "autism" was invented by Bleuler, who worked with Freu

You know whats really interesting? Autism and Schizophrenia used to refer to the same condition. The term "autism" was invented by Bleuler, who worked with Freud, as a shortened version of his "autoerotism" and referred to a state where a patient was totally absorbed in their own fantasies to the point of hallucinating them. This becomes clear if you look at Jung's "introvert/extrovert" dichotomy (Jung, who worked in Bleuler's lab!), where someone extremely introverted could be BOTH autistic--not communicating with others--and schizophrenic--absorbed in their own fantasies, not concerned with the real world. Now, clearly, mainstream psychology disassociated these terms sometime in the 60s, when the goal with autism diagnoses was moreso to find and identify "abnormal" children (Hans Asperger famously used Autism diagnoses to euthanize children, that's who "Asperger's Syndrome" is named after!), and Schizophrenia gained its own separate classification. But its interesting to note that there was a time when social disaffection in general was considered a single set of disorders.

dragonwriter 3y ago
> (Hans Asperger famously used Autism diagnoses to euthanize children, that's who "Asperger's Syndrome" is named after!) Asperger was assigned to identify autistic children for exterminatiom, but mafe the case that certain ones were useful to the Reich, which is why “Asperger’s Syndrome” became the name for the manifestation of autism that was seen as a leader impairmemt.
- skissane 3y ago
  He wasn't assigned to identify "autistic children" specifically for extermination. Hans Asperger was a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists in Nazi Germany (post-Anschluss Austria in his case) were expected to evaluate all of their patients for potential extermination, children included. Some psychiatrists refused to cooperate with the regime, at great personal cost to themselves. Other psychiatrists signed up to become enthusiastic members of the Nazi Party. Asperger chose a middle path – he chose not to join the NSDAP, but he joined some of their affiliated organisations; he chose to cooperate with the regime, and be supportive of it–not in an overly enthusiastic way, but with sufficient enthusiasm to ensure his Nazi superiors would not stand in the way of his career advancement. He did successfully argue that some more intelligent children should be spared, on the grounds they had unique skills which could be valuable to the regime. However, less intelligent children, he was happy to refer to be murdered (in most cases without the knowledge or consent of their parents). He wasn't evil in the way in which many devout Nazis were, just in the more banal way of the many who collaborated in the regime's crimes out of personal self-interest, or through coming to believe its propaganda.
  - Haga 3y ago
    [dead]
  - Phlarp 3y ago
    That sounds like "just following orders" with extra steps.
    - skissane 3y ago
      I'm certainly not trying to defend the guy. If anything, I think a lot of people in the "autism community" want to defend him (even if only to a degree), in part because they feel some emotional attachment to the label of "Asperger's" and are trying to shoot down the argument "we shouldn't use that label because it is named after a Nazi collaborator" For all of Asperger's sins, he was too humble to actually name a disorder after himself – he called his disorder "autistic psychopathy". Lorna Wing renamed it after him, because the word "psychopath" had become very stigmatised, and Asperger was using it in an older and broader sense than current discussions of "psychopathy", which is prone to confuse the uneducated layperson. Wing was actually one of the people trying to defend Asperger–before her death, she wasn't aware of the further historical research published on this topic after she died, and who knows whether she would have revised her position if she'd lived to see that–it is understandable she'd want to defend one of the major decisions of her career–and she was (at best) dimly aware of this aspect of Asperger's history when she made that decision I will admit to myself sometimes using "Aspergian" in describing some of my own personality traits, not because I necessarily agree with the term, but simply because it is a useful shorthand which my listener is likely to understand, and as much as I'd love to dump all these details and more on them, it risks overwhelming their time, attention and comprehension
      - DiscourseFan 3y ago
        I myself am of two minds about it. On the one hand, I'm very appreciative of shows like Extraordinary Attorney Woo and the contemporary diagnostic criteria which does seem to assist many people who otherwise wouldn't get very far in this world. There is definitely some sort of disorder called "autism," and you know it when you see it. On the other hand, Autism Spectrum Disorder basically doesn't exist, it was designed specifically to cover as many possible definitions of Autism such that nearly anyone, under the right circumstances, could be labeled as Autistic and be given expensive treatment, and I think there is something dangerous in people self-identifying with this label as it only feeds into the larger psychiatry-industrial complex. It's similar to depression--some people legit can't get out of bed in the morning, but the drugs we use to treat it are handed out like candy, are not approved to be used for the terms that they are, and don't even perform better than a placebo. The problem isn't that some people are "neurodivergent" and others aren't, and neurodivergent people shouldn't be ashamed and should embrace their label. The problem is that everyone is neurodivergent--everyone is "perverse," as Freud famously elucidates in his theory--its just that those who are labeled as "other" under the system get exploited, and everyone else, for fear of the same fate, hide all their psychological proclivities from everyone except from their most intimate acquaintances. And there are some who are lucky enough to avoid both fates, but they are rare among the ruling class, and the commonality of ostensible abnormal psychology among the working class is considered a "problem" to be solved by endless mental health facilities, treatment programs, etc. meanwhile the real pains of being a working class American forces many into addiction, and what they are offered can do nothing much to alleviate the underlying problems which led them there (often times problems, as in the case of the opioid crisis, generated by the very corporate structure which also drives people to treatment for their addiction). I learned about all what you discuss because I wanted to find a genealogy of "Autism" as a why of critiquing it as a medical category. But I don't know, as I said there is definitely some constellation of symptoms and ways of treating them that would fall under an Autism diagnoses, its just that how such a diagnoses came to exist was not through some pure empirical scientific process but a historical, social process that can't be disassociated from the other socio-economic realities.

dragonwriter 3y ago

> (Hans Asperger famously used Autism diagnoses to euthanize children, that's who "Asperger's Syndrome" is named after!) Asperger was assigned to identify autistic children for exterminatiom, but mafe the case that certain ones were useful to the Reich, which is why “Asperger’s Syndrome” became the name for the manifestation of autism that was seen as a leader impairmemt.

skissane 3y ago
He wasn't assigned to identify "autistic children" specifically for extermination. Hans Asperger was a psychiatrist. Psychiatrists in Nazi Germany (post-Anschluss Austria in his case) were expected to evaluate all of their patients for potential extermination, children included. Some psychiatrists refused to cooperate with the regime, at great personal cost to themselves. Other psychiatrists signed up to become enthusiastic members of the Nazi Party. Asperger chose a middle path – he chose not to join the NSDAP, but he joined some of their affiliated organisations; he chose to cooperate with the regime, and be supportive of it–not in an overly enthusiastic way, but with sufficient enthusiasm to ensure his Nazi superiors would not stand in the way of his career advancement. He did successfully argue that some more intelligent children should be spared, on the grounds they had unique skills which could be valuable to the regime. However, less intelligent children, he was happy to refer to be murdered (in most cases without the knowledge or consent of their parents). He wasn't evil in the way in which many devout Nazis were, just in the more banal way of the many who collaborated in the regime's crimes out of personal self-interest, or through coming to believe its propaganda.
- Haga 3y ago
  [dead]
- Phlarp 3y ago
  That sounds like "just following orders" with extra steps.
  - skissane 3y ago
    I'm certainly not trying to defend the guy. If anything, I think a lot of people in the "autism community" want to defend him (even if only to a degree), in part because they feel some emotional attachment to the label of "Asperger's" and are trying to shoot down the argument "we shouldn't use that label because it is named after a Nazi collaborator" For all of Asperger's sins, he was too humble to actually name a disorder after himself – he called his disorder "autistic psychopathy". Lorna Wing renamed it after him, because the word "psychopath" had become very stigmatised, and Asperger was using it in an older and broader sense than current discussions of "psychopathy", which is prone to confuse the uneducated layperson. Wing was actually one of the people trying to defend Asperger–before her death, she wasn't aware of the further historical research published on this topic after she died, and who knows whether she would have revised her position if she'd lived to see that–it is understandable she'd want to defend one of the major decisions of her career–and she was (at best) dimly aware of this aspect of Asperger's history when she made that decision I will admit to myself sometimes using "Aspergian" in describing some of my own personality traits, not because I necessarily agree with the term, but simply because it is a useful shorthand which my listener is likely to understand, and as much as I'd love to dump all these details and more on them, it risks overwhelming their time, attention and comprehension
    - DiscourseFan 3y ago
      I myself am of two minds about it. On the one hand, I'm very appreciative of shows like Extraordinary Attorney Woo and the contemporary diagnostic criteria which does seem to assist many people who otherwise wouldn't get very far in this world. There is definitely some sort of disorder called "autism," and you know it when you see it. On the other hand, Autism Spectrum Disorder basically doesn't exist, it was designed specifically to cover as many possible definitions of Autism such that nearly anyone, under the right circumstances, could be labeled as Autistic and be given expensive treatment, and I think there is something dangerous in people self-identifying with this label as it only feeds into the larger psychiatry-industrial complex. It's similar to depression--some people legit can't get out of bed in the morning, but the drugs we use to treat it are handed out like candy, are not approved to be used for the terms that they are, and don't even perform better than a placebo. The problem isn't that some people are "neurodivergent" and others aren't, and neurodivergent people shouldn't be ashamed and should embrace their label. The problem is that everyone is neurodivergent--everyone is "perverse," as Freud famously elucidates in his theory--its just that those who are labeled as "other" under the system get exploited, and everyone else, for fear of the same fate, hide all their psychological proclivities from everyone except from their most intimate acquaintances. And there are some who are lucky enough to avoid both fates, but they are rare among the ruling class, and the commonality of ostensible abnormal psychology among the working class is considered a "problem" to be solved by endless mental health facilities, treatment programs, etc. meanwhile the real pains of being a working class American forces many into addiction, and what they are offered can do nothing much to alleviate the underlying problems which led them there (often times problems, as in the case of the opioid crisis, generated by the very corporate structure which also drives people to treatment for their addiction). I learned about all what you discuss because I wanted to find a genealogy of "Autism" as a why of critiquing it as a medical category. But I don't know, as I said there is definitely some constellation of symptoms and ways of treating them that would fall under an Autism diagnoses, its just that how such a diagnoses came to exist was not through some pure empirical scientific process but a historical, social process that can't be disassociated from the other socio-economic realities.