Autism Spectrum Disorders

Nature and History of Autism Spectrum Disorders

One can logically speculate that ASDs have existed for centuries. Old tales and legends of children and adults with characteristics similar to today's ASDs are scattered throughout history. Stories of the ‘Holy Fools’ of Russia, odd monks, mysterious-acting children, and other individuals who possibly had autism or a related condition can be found in several textbooks. The amount of historical information on ASD is limited for a number of reasons: Families may have kept individuals with ASD from contact with the public; those with mild disabilities may have been perceived to be peculiar, albeit not disabled; some individuals who exhibited bizarre behavior might have been considered possessed or under the influence of magic or spells; some persons with disabilities might have been left to perish in the wild or killed; and medical conditions associated with ASD (e.g., seizures) would have likely resulted in the early death for some.

The words autism and autistic come from the root Greek word autos meaning ‘self.’ In this connection the word autism was probably first used in the early 1900s by Swiss psychologist Eugene Blueler to describe children who had schizophrenic symptomology and had difficulties relating to others. Major recognition for identifying modern-day notions of ASD is credited to Leo Kanner. In his 1943 seminal work, Kanner described a unique group of children whose behavioral anomalies made them qualitatively different from other children with identified disabilities; he used the term autistic to describe them. According to Kanner, these children manifested similar abnormalities from infancy or early childhood, including (a) an inability to relate normally to other people and situations; (b) delayed speech and language development, failure to use developed language for communication purposes, and/or other speech and language irregularities such as echolalia, pronoun reversal and misusage, and extreme literalness; (c) normal physical growth and development; (d) an obsessive insistence on environmental sameness; (e) an extreme fascination and preoccupation with objects; and (f) stereotypic, repetitive, and other self-stimulatory responses. The characteristics of autism as first described by Kanner over half a century ago have been revised, refined, and broadened in recent years, yet current definitions and conceptualizations of ASD continue to reflect many of his original observations.

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