|
  he image
often invoked to describe autism is that of a beautiful child imprisoned in a glass
shell. For decades, many parents have
clung to this view, hoping that one day
a means might be found to break the
invisible barrier. Cures have been proclaimed, but not one of them has
been
backed by evidence. The shell remains
intact. Perhaps the time has come for
the whole image to be shattered. Then
at last we might be able to catch a
glimpse of what the minds of autistic
individuals are truly like.
.gif)
Psychological and physiological research
has shown that autistic people
are not living in rich inner worlds but
instead are victims of a biological defect that makes their
minds very different from those of normal individuals. Happily,
however, autistic people are not beyond the reach of emotional contact.
Thus, we can make the world more
hospitable for autistic individuals just
as we can, say, for the blind.
To do so,
we need to understand what autism is
like- a most challenging task. We can
imagine being blind, but autism seems
unfathomable. For centuries, we have
known that blindness is often a peripheral defect at the
sensory-motor level
of the nervous system, but only recently has autism been
appreciated as a
central defect at the highest level of cognitive processing. Autism,
like blind
ness, persists throughout life, and it responds to special efforts in
compensatory education. It can
give rise to triumphant feats of coping but can also lead
to disastrous secondary consequences-
anxiety, panic and depression. Much
can be done to prevent problems. Understanding the nature of
the handicap
must be the first step in any such effort.
 utism existed long before
it was
described and named by Leo
Kanner of the Johns Hopkins
Children's Psychiatric Clinic. Kanner
published his landmark paper in 1943
after he had observed 11 children who
seemed to him to form a recognizable
group. All had in common four traits: a
preference for aloneness, an insistence
on sameness, a liking for elaborate routines
and some abilities that seemed
remarkable compared with the deficits.
Concurrently, though quite independently,
Hans Asperger of the University
Pediatric Clinic in Vienna prepared his
doctoral thesis on the same type of
child. He also used the term "autism"
to refer to the core features of the disorder.
Both men borrowed the label
from adult psychiatry, where it had
been used to refer to the progressive
loss of contact with the outside world
experienced by schizophrenics. Autistic
children seemed to suffer such a
lack of contact with the world around
them from a very early age.
1 Frith, Uta. "Autism" ScientificAmerican.
(June 1993). Pp. 108-114.
|
