This is potentially a very upsetting subject and I don't want to send everybody scurrying for cover. However if we face it we have extremely valuable ammunition to achieve AFF objectives. However it is a double edged sword and might be best by private email. I would appreciate feedback. The history revolves around a single word that was dropped from Asperger's original description "autistic psychopathy" for psychiatric marketting purposes.
I'm not exactly sure where your thread is going, but I have had similar thoughts about why Dr. Asperger called it "autistic." Yes, we show autistic traits, but there are other neurological syndromes that show autistic traits, but are not considered autistic or a PDD. It just leaves me scratching my head. I mean if he had decided to lump it in with another category-- say anxiety or shizophrenia, would we be calling ourselves high functioning schizophrenics?
Anyway it's my understanding that "psychopathy" really just meant "psychologically abnormal." It was only later that "psychopath" or "pscho" became jargon for "sociopath" or "violent crazy person."
I'm not exactly sure where your thread is going, but I have had similar thoughts about why Dr. Asperger called it "autistic." Yes, we show autistic traits, but there are other neurological syndromes that show autistic traits, but are not considered autistic or a PDD. It just leaves me scratching my head. I mean if he had decided to lump it in with another category-- say anxiety or shizophrenia, would we be calling ourselves high functioning schizophrenics?
As for why it was called autism, here's a pertinent quote from the wikipedia entry:
The New Latin word autismus (English translation autism) was coined by the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler in 1910 as he was defining symptoms of schizophrenia. He derived it from the Greek word autos (meaning 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."
The word autism first took its modern sense in 1938 when the Viennese pediatrician Hans Asperger adopted Bleuler's terminology "autistic psychopaths" in a lecture in German about child psychology.
Anyway it's my understanding that "psychopathy" really just meant "psychologically abnormal." It was only later that "psychopath" or "pscho" became jargon for "sociopath" or "violent crazy person."
Wikipedia also says that "psychopathy" was once used to describe any kind of mental illness.
Yes, the term "autism" was originally used for schizophrenics, and the term "autistic thought" is still applied to them to this day (well, so says the latest edition of my Medical Terminology book in any case).
Yes it's interesting that autism was once considered closely with schizophrenia but is now considered something divergent, a PDD. Who's to say which is right?
That would have made him a psychopathologist.
That would have made him a psychopathologist.
Why don't you ask Autistic Shoes to put his essay on the table here, anyway? I don't think anyone would be particularly upset.
Hello,
According to Tony Attwood, Dr. Asperger’s calling AS “psychopathy” had no intent of implying that AS caused violent and/or mentally ill behavior. “Psychopathy” in 1940’s Austrian medical terminology meant (what would today be called) a “personality disorder”, which is a neutral term. Dr. Asperger was actually highly positive about the syndrome and (if alive today) would probably be anti-cure.
Will