Asperger Syndrome - History

History

Named after the Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger (1906–1980), Asperger syndrome is a relatively new diagnosis in the field of autism. As a child, Asperger appears to have exhibited some features of the very condition named after him, such as remoteness and talent in language. In 1944, Asperger described four children in his practice who had difficulty in integrating themselves socially. The children lacked nonverbal communication skills, failed to demonstrate empathy with their peers, and were physically clumsy. Asperger called the condition "autistic psychopathy" and described it as primarily marked by social isolation. Fifty years later, several standardizations of AS as a diagnosis were tentatively proposed, many of which diverge significantly from Asperger's original work.

Unlike today's AS, autistic psychopathy could be found in people of all levels of intelligence, including those with mental retardation. In the context of the Nazi eugenics policy of sterilizing and killing social deviants and the mentally handicapped, Asperger passionately defended the value of autistic individuals, writing "We are convinced, then, that autistic people have their place in the organism of the social community. They fulfill their role well, perhaps better than anyone else could, and we are talking of people who as children had the greatest difficulties and caused untold worries to their care-givers." Asperger also called his young patients "little professors", and believed some would be capable of exceptional achievement and original thought later in life. His paper was published during wartime and in German, so it was not widely read elsewhere.

Lorna Wing popularized the term Asperger syndrome in the English-speaking medical community in her 1981 publication of a series of case studies of children showing similar symptoms, and Uta Frith translated Asperger's paper to English in 1991. Sets of diagnostic criteria were outlined by Gillberg and Gillberg in 1989 and by Szatmari et al. in the same year. AS became a standard diagnosis in 1992, when it was included in the tenth edition of the World Health Organization's diagnostic manual, International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10); in 1994, it was added to the fourth edition of the American Psychiatric Association's diagnostic reference, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV).

Hundreds of books, articles and websites now describe AS, and prevalence estimates have increased dramatically for ASD, with AS recognized as an important subgroup. Whether it should be seen as distinct from high-functioning autism is a fundamental issue requiring further study, and there are questions about the empirical validation of the DSM-IV and ICD-10 criteria.