Wednesday, October 25, 2006

Autism: The Word

Autism is a neurological condition that I am very familiar with. My daughter, Rei, is moderately autistic and goes to school 8 hours every day for therapy, learning and social integration. She's not even 4 yet!

While reading an excellent article (linked in the source below) in Scientific American Online, I found this interesting little bit of trivial information.

The word autism bascially means "self state." Many autistic individuals are very much involved in their own world.

The word autism was coined by Paul Bleuler in 1912. However, it wasn't until the 1940's that autism was really being studied as a neurological disorder. Even though the word existed, it wasn't being used to describe the disorder we know today. Until the 1940's, there was no word for the condition at all. Many autistic individuals were mislabeled schizophrenic, retarded or just mentally ill. Autism is not an illness; it's a developmental disorder.

Two individuals who "discovered" the disorder did so at the same time and without any contact with one another. One was a American psychiatrist named Leo Kanner. The other was Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger. The article in Scientific American Online states that neither one was aware of the other's work. Nevertheless, both of them, independently named the disorder they were studying, "autism."


Sources: Scientific American: Broken Mirrors: A Theory of Autism [ SPECIAL SECTION: NEUROSCIENCE ], Online Etymology Dictionary

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