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Was it Kanner or Louis Despert who first described Autism

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ASPartOfMe
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20 Feb 2015, 7:20 pm

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25652602


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kraftiekortie
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20 Feb 2015, 7:34 pm

I would say Kanner was the first person to describe autism in its "modern" sense--as autism.

I think Despert described autistic symptoms in "childhood schizophrenia." I still saw the term "childhood schizophrenia" during the 1970s. The case studies I saw on "childhood schizophrenia" did not describe autistic children of the Kanner type.

Eugen Bleuler, circa 1910, described "autism" as a state of mind found in schizophrenia.