Symptoms of Autism in the Views of Kanner and Asperger

In human history, a great number of significant discoveries in medical science began with case studies. These include John Martin Harlow’s description of Phineas Gage in his letter to the editor of the Boston Medical and Surgical Journal, Alois Alzheimer’s report on his patient Auguste Deter, and the initial six children reported by Landau and Kleffner in 1957. Similarly, modern research on autism is founded on cases reported by two physicians: Leo Kanner at Johns Hopkins and Hans Asperger at the University of Vienna. The word autism is derived from the Greek word autós (self) and was originally used by Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler to describe patients with schizophrenia (Frith 1991). Subsequently, the term was used by two physicians (Leo Kanner in the United States, and Hans Asperger in Austria) to describe children who they believed to suffer from a unique syndrome. In 1943, Leo Kanner published the paper Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact describing eleven cases. A year later Hans Asperger published his paper entitled The Autistic Psychopathy in Childhood in which he described similar cases. 93 Autism in the Views of KAnner And Asperger Exactly what symptoms exhibited by these children made the two physicians choose the same word to describe the pathology? Driven by this question, my paper will provide a description of autism by examining the original cases described by Kanner and Asperger. I will begin with an introduction to their works. I will then describe the core deficits of autism using cases described by the two physicians and end with a discussion of the impacts of their investigations on current research on autism.