4 ms·

Was autism super rare historically? Surely there were plenty of cases over the centuries?

guerrilla 3y ago
I wonder about this too but there are people who definitely seem to have been autistic, e.g. Kant, so it can't have been that extremely rare.
- jimmytidey 3y ago
  Because of his regular schedule?
  - guerrilla 3y ago
    Quoting Quora of all things here but: > As autistic myself and student of philosophy, I’d say: probably, yes. I’ve read books that contain testimonials from Kant’s students and collegues. He showed ASD traits such as: (emotional and almost pathological) attachment to very strict routines; inability to control irritability and stress; inability to focus properly in certain situations (a famous example was given by his students: one day at a lesson he got stressed and refused to continue his speech because he felt unable to concentrate due to a missing button on a student’s jacket); he admitted to feel the inability to tell lies, even if for good purposes; in his writings he excuses many times for not being able to be clear about what he meant because he had an hard time putting himself in the reader’s shoes; he was described as socially akward and indifferent to social norms and costumes (famous was is dated and old-fashioned way of dressing), and to social relationships. We can’t of course be sure about Kant being autistic, but there is a possibility. His "regular schedule" was more than that... It was a very detailed and strict routine which he was extremely attached to. I think his way of thinking so abstractly and also being unable to summarize himself are also things that resonate for me.
    - jimmytidey 3y ago
      OK - I see there is a pretty strong case here. One of the most astonishing Kant facts I've read (I've no idea how this could be verified) is that despite the sea being an hour away Königsberg, where he lived his whole life, he never felt the need to go and see the sea.
- yung_steezy 3y ago
  Wow TIL! The categorical imperative is making more sense now
- pyuser583 3y ago
  Most of the biographical stuff I see about Kant emphasizes his stereotypical Prussian traits. Now that I think about “Prussian virtues” and autism have some overlap.
NikkiA 3y ago
It would just have been labelled either 'eccentricity' or 'mental retardation' depending on the functioning level in antiquity, I imagine.
- hourago 3y ago
  > depending on the functioning level in antiquity, I imagine. The classical difference between them is money. When a powerful person acted "crazy" the term used was "eccentricity".
  - NikkiA 3y ago
    Mostly, yes. but there were clearly common people in history that were described as 'somewhat eccentric' but still managed a normal-ish life otherwise. The chances are most of those were people who would today be labelled 'high functioning autistic' or 20 years ago would have been labelled as having aspergers. What money/class-status afforded was the ability to be more eccentric without being pushed into an institution.
  - lolinder 3y ago
    That's the meme, and it probably did go that way (crazy -> eccentric), but it's also true that someone who was just a little bit off would have been called eccentric whatever their social class. It would not have been a very effective euphemism for a crazy rich person if it didn't also have the nicer meaning for everyone, rich or poor.
- pyuser583 3y ago
  The article says the doctors weren’t familiar with what they were seeing. It was rare enough that psychiatrists, who were very much looking for new ailments, just weren’t seeing what he had in other people.
- furyofantares 3y ago
  > It would just have been labelled either 'eccentricity' or 'mental retardation' depending on the functioning level in antiquity, I imagine. Or, sometimes, in 1985.
CitizenKane 3y ago
To our knowledge it has been at a steady level throughout human history. Kant was mentioned in this thread, Henry Cavendish was also thought to be autistic. From Wikipedia: > Cavendish was taciturn and solitary and regarded by many as eccentric. He communicated with his female servants only by notes. By one account, Cavendish had a back staircase added to his house to avoid encountering his housekeeper, because he was especially shy of women. There are other threads that go back further as well, and at least in certain cultures there's a fairly broad overlap between shamanism, autism, and related neurological conditions. I've seen some studies tracking certain genetic mutations back and some at least are thought to have come about when humans started becoming human. I haven't been able to find them again but there are quite a few studies that can be found via Google Scholar on the subject.
- chrisco255 3y ago
  To our knowledge? What documented knowledge are you going off of? You have a source on incident rates of autism going back 10, 20, 50, 100, 150, 200 years?
- Madmallard 3y ago
  This is literally all conjecture.
Der_Einzige 3y ago
[flagged]
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- tom_ 3y ago
  Could easily have been about the same, only with autistic people beaten, possibly literally, into unhappy submission. As with left-handedness and homosexuality, in many cases it's probably not impossible to pass unnoticed if needs really must.
  - peterfirefly 3y ago
    And most of the worst cases likely wouldn't have survived childhood.
hammock 3y ago
[flagged]
- dtech 3y ago
  Do you have any sources that back up increasing prevalism over better recognition and broader diagnostic criteria? Afaik almost everyone chalks it up to those 2.
- maxbond 3y ago
  Nope, we're just learning to recognize it better, destigmatizing it so more people seek out a diagnosis in the first place, recognizing it's a spectrum and that people with a more subtle expression of autism can still be diagnosed, etc, etc, etc. I know someone in their 50s who was diagnosed recently. They've been who they are their whole life. I know a lot of adults who have similar personality traits that haven't been diagnosed - I don't know how many would be, if they were to speak to a professional, but it's not 0. (I think there's maybe a 25% chance I could get an autism diagnosis, were I to talk to my doctor about it. People have encouraged me to, but I personally don't see how that information would be useful to me.) These adults are the "missing" children from your statistics.
- oxymoron 3y ago
  I think it’s at least relevant to note that a lot of things relating to autism was completely redefined in DSM-V. DSM-IV had many different diagnosis such as classic autism, autism spectrum disorder, aspergers and PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder - Not Otherwise Specified). All of those was merged into a single diagnosis titled ”Autism Spectrum Disorder”, where the criterias are communication difficulties and stereotypical behavior. My understanding is that this was mostly due to poor diagnosis stability with the prior set of diagnosis. It seems at least plausible that this general simplification of diagnosis criteria has contributed to an increase in the number of diagnosis. (It’s also worth remembering that any comparison over time has to bundle all of the previously distinct diagnosis to come up with an apples-to-apples comparison.)
msla 3y ago
If you go back far enough, autism wasn't distinguished from schizophrenia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_autism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_autism > Eugen Bleuler was a Swiss psychiatrist who was the director of the Burghölzli mental hospital, which was associated with the University of Zurich. > In April 1908 he gave a lecture explaining that dementia praecox was very different to other forms of dementia.[34] He proposed that it be given the unique name schizophrenia - a split mind. The term would be increasingly adopted over the next fifty years. > What is now known as "schizophrenia" is different from what Bleuler described. He included what is today considered as autism, schizoid personality disorder and various schizophrenia spectrum disorders in his definition. > The Neo-Latin word autismus (English translation autism) was coined by Blueuler in July 1910.[35] He first used it in print to describe a symptom of schizophrenia in the scientific paper "Zur Theorie des schizophrenen Negativismus"[36] (On the theory of schizophrenic negativism). He derived autismus from the Greek word: αὐτός, romanized: autós, lit. 'self', and used it to mean morbid self-admiration, referring to "autistic withdrawal of the patient to his fantasies, against which any influence from outside becomes an intolerable disturbance".[35][36] > Bleuler created the term in reference to Sigmund Freud's term autoerotismus, shortening the latter term because he did not believe sexuality to be critical in the etiology of autistic symptoms.[36] He characterized the autistic patient as one who "wants to shut himself off from reality".[36] Autistic people, then, are those "most severe schizophrenics, who no longer have any intercourse at all, live in a world of their own".[37] > Bleuler believed that the idiosyncratic behaviours of people with schizophrenia displaying autistic behaviour were due to them engaging with personal fantasy rather than with the world as it is.[1] He believed they drew on an early childhood mental state that was unable to form theory of mind.[1] Point being, trying to track the incidence of mental and neurological disorders through history is even more difficult than most would imagine.
- caddemon 3y ago
  It's also pretty clear that, unless research totally stalls, 100 years from now we will have articles discussing how various yet to be coined disorders were all lumped under the label "autism".

I wonder about this too but there are people who definitely seem to have been autistic, e.g. Kant, so it can't have been that extremely rare.

jimmytidey 3y ago
Because of his regular schedule?
- guerrilla 3y ago
  Quoting Quora of all things here but: > As autistic myself and student of philosophy, I’d say: probably, yes. I’ve read books that contain testimonials from Kant’s students and collegues. He showed ASD traits such as: (emotional and almost pathological) attachment to very strict routines; inability to control irritability and stress; inability to focus properly in certain situations (a famous example was given by his students: one day at a lesson he got stressed and refused to continue his speech because he felt unable to concentrate due to a missing button on a student’s jacket); he admitted to feel the inability to tell lies, even if for good purposes; in his writings he excuses many times for not being able to be clear about what he meant because he had an hard time putting himself in the reader’s shoes; he was described as socially akward and indifferent to social norms and costumes (famous was is dated and old-fashioned way of dressing), and to social relationships. We can’t of course be sure about Kant being autistic, but there is a possibility. His "regular schedule" was more than that... It was a very detailed and strict routine which he was extremely attached to. I think his way of thinking so abstractly and also being unable to summarize himself are also things that resonate for me.
  - jimmytidey 3y ago
    OK - I see there is a pretty strong case here. One of the most astonishing Kant facts I've read (I've no idea how this could be verified) is that despite the sea being an hour away Königsberg, where he lived his whole life, he never felt the need to go and see the sea.
yung_steezy 3y ago
Wow TIL! The categorical imperative is making more sense now
pyuser583 3y ago
Most of the biographical stuff I see about Kant emphasizes his stereotypical Prussian traits. Now that I think about “Prussian virtues” and autism have some overlap.

NikkiA 3y ago

It would just have been labelled either 'eccentricity' or 'mental retardation' depending on the functioning level in antiquity, I imagine.

hourago 3y ago
> depending on the functioning level in antiquity, I imagine. The classical difference between them is money. When a powerful person acted "crazy" the term used was "eccentricity".
- NikkiA 3y ago
  Mostly, yes. but there were clearly common people in history that were described as 'somewhat eccentric' but still managed a normal-ish life otherwise. The chances are most of those were people who would today be labelled 'high functioning autistic' or 20 years ago would have been labelled as having aspergers. What money/class-status afforded was the ability to be more eccentric without being pushed into an institution.
- lolinder 3y ago
  That's the meme, and it probably did go that way (crazy -> eccentric), but it's also true that someone who was just a little bit off would have been called eccentric whatever their social class. It would not have been a very effective euphemism for a crazy rich person if it didn't also have the nicer meaning for everyone, rich or poor.
pyuser583 3y ago
The article says the doctors weren’t familiar with what they were seeing. It was rare enough that psychiatrists, who were very much looking for new ailments, just weren’t seeing what he had in other people.
furyofantares 3y ago
> It would just have been labelled either 'eccentricity' or 'mental retardation' depending on the functioning level in antiquity, I imagine. Or, sometimes, in 1985.

CitizenKane 3y ago

To our knowledge it has been at a steady level throughout human history. Kant was mentioned in this thread, Henry Cavendish was also thought to be autistic. From Wikipedia: > Cavendish was taciturn and solitary and regarded by many as eccentric. He communicated with his female servants only by notes. By one account, Cavendish had a back staircase added to his house to avoid encountering his housekeeper, because he was especially shy of women. There are other threads that go back further as well, and at least in certain cultures there's a fairly broad overlap between shamanism, autism, and related neurological conditions. I've seen some studies tracking certain genetic mutations back and some at least are thought to have come about when humans started becoming human. I haven't been able to find them again but there are quite a few studies that can be found via Google Scholar on the subject.

chrisco255 3y ago
To our knowledge? What documented knowledge are you going off of? You have a source on incident rates of autism going back 10, 20, 50, 100, 150, 200 years?
Madmallard 3y ago
This is literally all conjecture.

Der_Einzige 3y ago

[flagged]

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
tom_ 3y ago
Could easily have been about the same, only with autistic people beaten, possibly literally, into unhappy submission. As with left-handedness and homosexuality, in many cases it's probably not impossible to pass unnoticed if needs really must.
- peterfirefly 3y ago
  And most of the worst cases likely wouldn't have survived childhood.

hammock 3y ago

[flagged]

dtech 3y ago
Do you have any sources that back up increasing prevalism over better recognition and broader diagnostic criteria? Afaik almost everyone chalks it up to those 2.
maxbond 3y ago
Nope, we're just learning to recognize it better, destigmatizing it so more people seek out a diagnosis in the first place, recognizing it's a spectrum and that people with a more subtle expression of autism can still be diagnosed, etc, etc, etc. I know someone in their 50s who was diagnosed recently. They've been who they are their whole life. I know a lot of adults who have similar personality traits that haven't been diagnosed - I don't know how many would be, if they were to speak to a professional, but it's not 0. (I think there's maybe a 25% chance I could get an autism diagnosis, were I to talk to my doctor about it. People have encouraged me to, but I personally don't see how that information would be useful to me.) These adults are the "missing" children from your statistics.
oxymoron 3y ago
I think it’s at least relevant to note that a lot of things relating to autism was completely redefined in DSM-V. DSM-IV had many different diagnosis such as classic autism, autism spectrum disorder, aspergers and PDD-NOS (Pervasive Developmental Disorder - Not Otherwise Specified). All of those was merged into a single diagnosis titled ”Autism Spectrum Disorder”, where the criterias are communication difficulties and stereotypical behavior. My understanding is that this was mostly due to poor diagnosis stability with the prior set of diagnosis. It seems at least plausible that this general simplification of diagnosis criteria has contributed to an increase in the number of diagnosis. (It’s also worth remembering that any comparison over time has to bundle all of the previously distinct diagnosis to come up with an apples-to-apples comparison.)

msla 3y ago

If you go back far enough, autism wasn't distinguished from schizophrenia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_autism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_autism > Eugen Bleuler was a Swiss psychiatrist who was the director of the Burghölzli mental hospital, which was associated with the University of Zurich. > In April 1908 he gave a lecture explaining that dementia praecox was very different to other forms of dementia.[34] He proposed that it be given the unique name schizophrenia - a split mind. The term would be increasingly adopted over the next fifty years. > What is now known as "schizophrenia" is different from what Bleuler described. He included what is today considered as autism, schizoid personality disorder and various schizophrenia spectrum disorders in his definition. > The Neo-Latin word autismus (English translation autism) was coined by Blueuler in July 1910.[35] He first used it in print to describe a symptom of schizophrenia in the scientific paper "Zur Theorie des schizophrenen Negativismus"[36] (On the theory of schizophrenic negativism). He derived autismus from the Greek word: αὐτός, romanized: autós, lit. 'self', and used it to mean morbid self-admiration, referring to "autistic withdrawal of the patient to his fantasies, against which any influence from outside becomes an intolerable disturbance".[35][36] > Bleuler created the term in reference to Sigmund Freud's term autoerotismus, shortening the latter term because he did not believe sexuality to be critical in the etiology of autistic symptoms.[36] He characterized the autistic patient as one who "wants to shut himself off from reality".[36] Autistic people, then, are those "most severe schizophrenics, who no longer have any intercourse at all, live in a world of their own".[37] > Bleuler believed that the idiosyncratic behaviours of people with schizophrenia displaying autistic behaviour were due to them engaging with personal fantasy rather than with the world as it is.[1] He believed they drew on an early childhood mental state that was unable to form theory of mind.[1] Point being, trying to track the incidence of mental and neurological disorders through history is even more difficult than most would imagine.

caddemon 3y ago
It's also pretty clear that, unless research totally stalls, 100 years from now we will have articles discussing how various yet to be coined disorders were all lumped under the label "autism".