The History Behind "Aspergers"

Aspergers  is characterized by impairments in social interaction and restricted interests and behaviors as seen in autism, but its early developmental course is marked by a lack of any clinically significant delay in spoken or receptive language, cognitive development, self-help skills, and curiosity about the environment. All-absorbing and intense circumscribed interests and one-sided verbosity as well motor clumsiness are typical of the condition, but are not required for diagnosis.

In 1944, Hans Asperger, an Austrian pediatrician with interest in special education, described four kids who had difficulty integrating socially into groups. Unaware of Kanner's description of early infantile autism published just the year before, Asperger called the condition he described "autistic psychopathy", indicating a stable personality disorder marked by social isolation.

Despite preserved intellectual skills, the kids showed marked paucity of nonverbal communication involving both gestures and affective tone of voice, poor empathy and a tendency to intellectualize emotions, an inclination to engage in long winded, one-sided, and sometimes incoherent speech, rather formalistic speech (he called them "little professors"), all-absorbing interests involving unusual topics which dominated their conversation, and motoric clumsiness. Unlike Kanner's patients, these kids were not as withdrawn or aloof; they also developed, sometimes precociously, highly grammatical speech, and could not in fact be diagnosed in the first years of life.

Discarding the possibility of a psychogenic origin, Asperger highlighted the familial nature of the condition, and even hypothesized that the personality traits were primarily male transmitted. Aspergers work, originally published in German, became widely known to the English speaking world only in 1981, when Lorna Wing published a series of cases showing similar symptoms. Her codification of the syndrome, however, blurred somewhat the differences between Kanner's and Aspergers descriptions, as she included a small number of girls and mildly mentally retarded kids, as well as some kids who had presented with some language delays in their first years of life. Since then, several studies have attempted to validate AS as distinct from autism without mental retardation, although comparability of findings has been difficult due to the lack of consensual diagnostic criteria for the condition.3

Aspergers was not accorded official recognition before the publication of ICD-10 and DSM-IV, although it was first reported in the German literature in 1944. Aspergers work was known primarily in German speaking countries, and it was only in the 1970's that the first comparisons with Kanner's work were made, primarily by Dutch researchers such as Van Krevelen, who were familiar with both English and German literatures. The initial attempts at comparing the two conditions were difficult because of major differences in the patients described – Kanner's patients were both younger and more cognitively impaired. Also, Aspergers conceptualization was influenced by accounts of schizophrenia and personality disorders, whereas Kanner had been influenced by the work of Arnold Gesell and his developmental approach.

Attempts at codifying Aspergers prose into a categorical definition for the condition were made by several influential researchers in Europe and North America, but no consensual definition emerged until the advent of ICD-10. And given the reduced empirical validation of the ICD-10 and DSM-IV criteria, the definition of the condition is likely to change as new and more rigorous studies emerge in the near future.

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