Most of us think of Dr. Hans Asperger as a benevolent and compassionate Austrian psychiatrist whose penetrating analysis of pediatric “psychopathy” led to our present understanding of the autism spectrum of disorders. He has been regarded as a considerate defender of children with disabilities and a leader among Vienna psychiatrists. In this groundbreaking study of […]
Julia Boyd reviews Asperger’s Children by Edith Sheffer To anyone who thought of Hans Asperger as a brilliant doctor whose pioneering work in child psychiatry led to a more enlightened understanding of autism, Edith Sheffer’s book will come as a nasty shock. At first, he seems set to emerge a hero. After all, anyone who could […]
Long-deceased Viennese doctors, unless they’re called Freud, rarely make newspaper headlines. But one has recently done so on both sides of the Atlantic. On April 19, the academic open-access journal Molecular Autism published a detailed article by the Austrian medical historian Herwig Czech about Hans Asperger, the Viennese pediatrician whose name has since the 1980s designated a […]
What we now call autism has surely been a part of the human condition for as long as human beings have existed. But the way different cultures understand, talk about and treat people who exhibit the symptoms of autism — difficulty or disinterest in social interactions, repetitive behaviors and language impairments — can vary widely. […]
Looking for summer books that test your brain but are still accessible? Author and podcaster Steve Almond (@stevealmondjoy), whose most recent book is “Bad Stories,” joins Here & Now‘s Robin Young to share some of his picks. His list features works by mostly women writers (with the exception of Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” and Hartley Lin’s “Young Frances”) […]
A review of the new book by Edith Sheffer, Asperger’s Children: The Origin of Autism in Nazi Vienna. Dear fellow oddballs: this man is not your friend, and never was. One day recently I was minding my own business and planning to write either a long article or a short book about how many of our […]