The appalling story behind the man Asperger’s is named for. Outside of a few endnotes, this book never mentions Steve Silberman’s NeuroTribes. That’s remarkable, because for all practical purposes, Asperger’s Children is a through point-by-point demolition of Silberman’s saintly portrait of Hans Asperger, based on honest research by a real historian. Edith Sheffer is a Senior Fellow […]

  What’s in a name? Ever since 1981, when the writing of Austrian paediatrician Hans Asperger was introduced to an English-language audience, autism professionals have embraced Asperger syndrome (AS) as a condition. It excludes the most debilitating intellectual, communication and physical difficulties associated with classic autism. Between 1994 and 2013, AS was an official diagnosis […]

Across the medical world, Dr Hans Asperger has been been regarded with a kind of reverance. Not only is his name immortalised as a medical term for those on the high-functioning end of the autism spectrum, he spent many years looking after such people within the Austrian mental care system. But as Edith Sheffer, an […]

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 […]