Leo Kanner, Good guy or Bad guy ?

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What do you think of Leo ?

Was he a good or bad man ?

His book has just been reviewed, to see the review follow the link provided.

http://www.timeshighereducation.co.uk/s ... 407712&c=2

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Health is a state of physical, mental and social wellbeing and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity I am not a jigsaw, I am a free man !

Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.

Well, did he have a goatee or not?

How about a monocle?

I don't know, he certainly looks like a good guy to me:

He looks like Bob in Accounting.

I don't think it's fair to classify anyone as one or the other. People are never just 'good' or 'bad' (with obvious exceptions: mostly everyone will agree that Hitler was a bad person. Many people will agree that Mother Theresa was a good person.) People can do good or bad things ie: Person X hit his/her sister (bad) but Person X also gave fifty dollars to charity (good) so it's really hard to say.

I think the guy wasn't too bad because during the Second World War when he was doing some of his studies on Autism, the Nazi party in Germany had begun something called Action T4 -this was where children with disabilities were gassed to death in some of the first gas chambers/showers. At first it was just children but then adult patients were also killed too. A doctor would look at the patients records -never meet the individual -and if they deemed the person sick enough they were slated for death.

At the time Autism was often lumped in with schizophrenia and so many of us were misdiagnosed and put into asylums -and thus killed during Action T4.

Kanner wrote to the Nazi party demanding that this sickening act be stopped. Asperger wrote to the Nazis as well demanding the end of Action T4.

Not read his writing (really need to) but I believe he made clear that autism wasn't retardation, that autistic people were not of lower mental faculty. Given that mistake could have been easily been made, he get my vote of Good for getting Autism research off to a good start.