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streamdreams

Early Aspergers publications

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As part of my therapy my psychiatrist is encoring me to face my past and understand it in aspberger terms rather that with denial. In on sense it?s really tough to face reality but the results are starting to shoe and prove positive. She wants to repair my self esteem.

 

Any way according Jessica Peers who wrote Asparagus Dreams she was diagnosed in 1990, perhaps 1989 at least she started in the school then. Despite countless visits to pediatric and educational psychiatrists, during the early 80?s , no body had an answerer for my problems .

 

Please done get me wrong when I ask question, I am not trying to discredit Jessica, just understand my own situation. What was known about Asperger?s before Uta Fith published her translation in 1991, something must have been know, but what and when. I do know the NAS published A mind of one's own: A guide to the special difficulties and need of the more able person with autism or Asperger Syndrome by Digby Tantam also in 1991

Edited by streamdreams

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I raised this at a meeting once and I was told that AS was known before 1991 in the west, the clinical psychologist at the meeting said she had covered AS in her training in New Zealand in the 80s.

 

Zemanski

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Was it reported in any medical or psychology journals or were the findings contained in some obscure conference report that is almost impossible to get hold of?

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Despite countless visits to pediatric and educational psychiatrists, during the early 80?s , no body had an answerer for my problems .

 

Between 1985 and 1990 I visited a doctor or a psychologist at least once a term and they had no answer and no explanation for my problems. Neither did any of the reps or educational pyschologists from the LEA.

 

My father spent a lot of time during 1988 scouring hospital and university libraries for any books which described my problems. He had no success whatsoever on finding anything that closely matched AS. There were books on autism but he ruled it out as autism tended to include things like involuntarily throwing stuff at ceilings, being unable to communicate, and having little sense in who they are or what they are really doing. There just didn't seem to be any books which mentioned obsessive interests, poor written work yet high intelligence, bad at socialising, and general clumsiness. Mild schizophrenia appeared to be the closest match, but he was unconvinced I was schizophrenic and hoped I would never be diagnosed as schizophrenic because it could have severe consequences. Therefore, he concluded that the doctors and psychologists were right and that there was nothing psychologically wrong with me. It was all down to bad behaviour. I asked him if he could write a paper for a psychology or medical journal describing me in the hope that someone else knows of somebody with similar conditions. He refused on the grounds that it could bring shame on the family and he could be accused of bad parenting.

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Asperger's Syndrome was not called by that name until given it in 1982 by Lorna Wing after she had Asperger's work translated.

 

He called Asperger's Syndrome 'Autistic Psychopathy' which later became 'Autism', seperate from Leo Kanner's work.

 

Asperger claimed he was taken out of context with his 'Psychopathy' term as he had not meant for it to be taken that Autistics were psychopaths, but it was a description of the nature of Autism: it was inherent and not a seperate or distinguishable part of the person but a factor in their entire make up.

 

Carol Gray and Tony Attwood co-wrote 'Discover of Aspie', an article pulling back the curtain on the basis of defining Asperger's Syndrome as a disorder and pointing out that this was a value-laden assumption rooted in old prejudices about disability which have not been reviewed since Autism was first described. The article demonstrates how Asperger's Syndrome as a unique and precious branch of human development has more validity than the 'deficeit-based' model.

 

The full original article is hard to get hold of, but I found a large extract: http://www.thegraycenter.org/page.asp?conI...catID=4&sctID=8

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Hi streamdreams -

In purely historical terms, autism first became 'known' in the early forties through the work of Leo Kanner, who recognised a specific set of behaviours or 'symptoms' he referred to as 'early infantile autism'. At around the same time, Hans Asperger was (independently) undertaking research into the behaviour patterns that later formed the initial diagnostic criteria for Asperger Syndrome...

In real terms, broader knowledge of the two conditions didn't really start to emerge until the 70's - mostly in connection with the 'typical' Kanner definition, and still very patchy in terms of general recognition and understanding in/by medical professionals.

Over the next decade general recognition of both conditions improved greatly, and understanding began to emerge about the 'spectrum' rather than concentrating on the fairly rigid patterns of behaviour predicted by Kanner/Asperger. Unfortunately, the amount of 'cr*p' that flew about (refrigerator mothers/bad parenting/abuse related etc) also grew at a similar rate, with some of those prejudices STILL in the back of some professionals heads despite all the evidence to the contrary!

Most of the bigger steps forward occurred very recently, but with that said I think we still know MUCH MUCH less than we think we know, even if most professionals are far to arrogant to admit it!

That's a very quick potted history, and i'm not sure if it's what you're looking for - but i hope it helps!

I don't think she's really got her pulse on the 'here and now' of autism, but one professional who was writing/recording THROUGHOUT these periods is Lorna Wing, so she's probably a good source for an historical perspective. For a personal view, I don't think you can go wrong with Donna Williams... She was the first austistic person to write/publish first hand of her condition, and 'Nobody Nowhere' was a real eye opener. I always think it's a real pity that so much of what she wrote seems to be completely overlooked by professionals: She was writing about the impact of food allergies long before the AIA or Paul Shattock's team, for example...

Good luick with your 'quest'

L&P

BD :D

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There were actually some before Donna Williams who wrote their own stories, but Donna Williams is described as 'high-functioning', therefore she is permitted a platform to speak about being 'high-functioning'. Those before her were so undeniabley 'low-functioning' that it was assumed they could not possibly be as 'low-functioning' as they said they were, so they were ignored.

 

David Eastham(low-functioning too) is the earliest I can think of, he wrote 'Understand: Fifty memowriter poems' which was published in 1985. When was Nobody Nowhere published?

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The earliest I could find, when writing a brief history for my university course was 1981 - here's the reference:

 

Wing, L. (1981). Asperger syndrome: a clinical account. Psychological Medicine. 1981 Feb;11(1):115-29.

Available online at last accessed on 22/05/05.http://www.mugsy.org/wing2.htm last accessed on 22/05/05.

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Found this for you:

 

http://www.mugsy.org/wing2.htm

 

It traces the history of Aspergers as a seperate diagnosis in it's own right from the mid 1940's on. Hope it is of some use to you.

Oops - that'll teach me to reply first and read the other postings later!

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David Eastham(low-functioning too) is the earliest I can think of, he wrote 'Understand: Fifty memowriter poems' which was published in 1985. When was Nobody Nowhere published?

Early nineties, I think.

Still a good book though, in my opinion.

L&P

BD :D

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