Diagnoses of autism in the US in the last quarter-century have dramatically increased in both number and subtlety, as both psychiatrists and the general public have grown more knowledgeable and sensitive to detecting and understanding what autism is and how it manifests itself. Although the term autism was first introduced in 1911 by Swiss psychiatrist […]
Watch the recording of a lecture from Dr. Sheffer, whose book on famous child psychiatrist Hans Asperger is as illuminating as it is heartbreaking. Asperger, long depicted as a compassionate and devoted researcher who sought to define autism as a diagnostic category that could be treated, was in fact deeply influenced by Nazi psychiatry. In […]
Author and Historian Edith Sheffer will visit the National WW II Museum Thursday evening to discuss her new book that uncovers the links between autism and Nazism. The book, “Asperger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna,” was released May 1 and explores how a diagnosis common today – autism affects over 2 million people in the […]
“For success in science and art,” the Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger once proposed, “a dash of autism is essential.” For success in medicine during the heyday of the Third Reich, as Edith Sheffer’s account of his career shows, the requirement was different. More than a dash of Gemüt—which Nazi psychiatrists defined as commitment to community (just what […]
In the book “Asperger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna,” Edith Sheffer writes about the doctor who first diagnosed Asperger’s Syndrome. Sheffer tells NPR’s Michel Martin how Hans Asperger’s Nazi ties were hidden for years. For full transcript please click here
Edith Sheffer has written a book that defies easy categorization — an appropriate, if perhaps inadvertent, response to her fascinating and terrible subject matter. In “Asperger’s Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna,” she shows how the Third Reich’s obsession with categories and labels was inextricable from its murderousness; what at first seems to […]