Doubts about the book "In a Different Key"?

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Like Steve Silberman's book NeuroTribes, ABC Television news veterans John Donvan and Caren Zucker are scheduled to publish their investivative history of autism titled In a Different Key on Jan. 19, 2016 ( http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books ... 307985675/ ). Donvan and Zucker are the parents of an autistic son.

Their publisher's description of the book includes the odd statement that "[t]here are dark turns too: we learn about experimenters feeding LSD to children with autism, or shocking them with electricity to change their behavior; and the authors reveal compelling evidence that Hans Asperger, discoverer of the syndrome named after him, participated in the Nazi program that consigned disabled children to death."

It is the statement about Asperger that concerns me. While Silberman found no evidence that Asperger cooperated with the German Reich in his book, he did find evidence that Asperger had successfully avoided the Nazi party and its eugenic expectations. Other autism writers including Simon Baron-Cohen and Andrew Raymond have published much of the same information about Asperger. The Viennese paediatrician appears in all cases to have done his best to protect his young patients. So, what is the "compelling evidence" that Donvan and Zucker claim to have in their book? Such marketing smacks of cheap and tawdry hype. Is it?

I would hate to think that they (or their publisher) are baiting readers with vagaries alone. What evidence do they have that Silberman et al. didn't mention?

My doubts are such that I plan to read their book's index citations for Asperger before buying their book. Should their "compelling evidence" fall short of fact, I will return the book to its shelf and move on.

So, what do you plan to do about In a Different Key?

Maybe the author is looking to sell his work--through sensationalism?

Sort of like somebody writing that Lincoln was gay because he wrote affectionately to guys.

(not that being gay is wrong....the above is an example of somebody not really putting a lot of thought into what he/she says).

I hope that the hype was manufactured by a zealous marketing staffer who knew little about Asperger, nothing more. It would be shameful if such hype was willfully published by two veteran reporters without evidence.

Based on thier excellent article about the first person diagnosed with autism I plan on buying the book. I much as I thought Silberman's book was by far the most important development in the autism world in 2015, Silberman is not the last word by far. If these authors discovered good evidence that I have been played about Asperger, so be it.

I found this damning review on Thinking Person's Guide to Autism. The book comes across as anti-neurodiversity and pro-ABA. So I personally can't be bothered with it, unless it somehow becomes a bestseller and reverses the tide of good vibes we've seen from Neurotribes.

In think the release of this book so shortly after Neurotribes will mean that outside of the Autism Community the book will play second fiddle to Neurotribes.

I just read the review at Thinking Person's Guide to Autism. If what the reviewer states about the book's opinion of O. Ivar Lovaas (who Steve Silberman came close to nicknaming as "Dr. Slappy") and others, pro and con, in the matter of autism is accurate, I won't be buying the book. I guess I will be reading its end-note citations for quite a while at the cafe of my local Barnes & Noble Bookseller store.

I hate to admit it, but this is what I feared.

If you read the comments section John Robison and reviewer had a back and forth conversation. Robison did see the book as more parent centric then Neurotribes but did not see the ableism that the reviewer did. You know from the two eugenics threads I started I am quite capable of fearing things but unless I read what is actually written and how it is sourced I won't pre judge.

Was the Father of Asperger Syndrome an Accomplice to Murder? By John Elder Robinson

The main accusation is that Asperger sent 35 of his 210 disabled children to thier deaths. The other accusation is that he wrote brutal ableist descriptions about his patients. The source for the book is Herwig Czech a researcher of medical history. Robison read the papers Czech uncovered and is convinced enough that he is glad Aspergers has been subsumed. He pleads for people to seperate Asperger the scientist from Asperger the man.

As much as people should seperate somebodys work from thier character that is not how the world works especially in 2016. The question here is the credibility and possible agenda of Czech and the authors of this book. Convincing proof that Asperger was complicit in eugenics will be a psychological blow to many and the accusations in the book are going to embolden the many who think The Autism spectrum is way too wide.

I use a quote by Asperger in my signature, use his picture in my avatar and use Aspie-Autistic1957 as my username for comment sections. I have started two threads on eugenics recently and no way want to associate myself with somebody complicit in eugenics. On the other hand I have fought bitterly against the idea the spectrum is too wide and the negative stereotyping of those of us who identified with or describe themselves as Aspie and Aspergers. The last thing I want to be is a victim of a shrewd marketing campaign and become a tool of people who never believed in the spectrum and killed the Aspergers diagnoses because they believed all or most of us who are labeled mild,high functioning and Aspergers are not really autistic but polically correct people of flawed chatactor. On the other hand if people with a harmful agenda have actually found convincing proof, for me Aspergers has got to go.

You are correct in your written comment at John Elder Robison's commentary in PsychologyToday.com that our consideration of the matter "comes down to the credibility and possible agenda of this researcher Herwig Czech and the possible agenda of the authors of 'In a Different Key.'" But, let us also consider Asperger, the man, in his time. Vienna in the German Reich was a jewel in Hitler's crown. Needless to say, the workings of the city, including the functioning of Asperger and his clinic would be under control beyond that of, say, Strasbourg.

Knowing this, the obviously capable Asperger would likely have understood how to play along to get along with his Nazi overseers. Unfortunately, he might have determined that he could (should) comply with the eugenic expectation to offer up the less "dazzling" of the autistic children in his care for euthanasia (murder) so that he and the protected majority of his patients would survive. "Choices" like this were made daily under the German Reich. It wouldn't be unique for Asperger to have found his own way to split the baby and, by doing so, satisfy himself and others as best as he could. By stating all this, I realize that I am apologizing for terrible actions; so, I remind myself that the larger number of Asperger's patients survived when it is likely that they all would have been murdered under any other clinician at the time.

When it comes to In a Different Key's Donvan and Zucker, however, I am less likely to ignore what might be their easy use of Asperger as a villain. I see Asperger as good but complicated, while they see him simply as the sum of all his worst choices. At least, that appears to be their opinion. When we put all the good that we know Asperger did on one side of the scale, and put all the bad on the other side, I am left with the unmistakable conclusion that he was either one of the world's most clever villains or one of the world's most clever heroes. For me, the evidence suggests strongly that he was a hero simply because villains don't usually care about protecting anyone but themselves.

But, beyond the Asperger question in In a Different Key, I am concerned about Donvan's and Zucker's reported cheerleading for Dr. O. Ivar "Slappy" Lovaas's "results" ( http://neurodiversity.com/library_screams_1965.html ). Here, we have a much more obvious morality of choices.

So, by reviewing Donvan's and Zucker's reported descriptions of Asperger and Lovaas, we see Asperger castigated while Lovaas is vaunted. Need we consider more evidence?

It was late at night so I did night want to get into the times Asperger was operating in. It is very plausible Asperger made a lesser of two evils choice that saved 175 disabled children. If that is the case it was a decision to be respected. But is that enough to overlook what he allegedly did and have his picture in my Avatar and call myself an Aspie? A lot will depend if the authors really are pushing an Autism Speaks circa 2009 type agenda. What will Silbermen say to this book which says he described Asperger in at best misleading terms?

In the meantime I fear no matter what choice I make I am possibly an enabler. Keep status quo and I am overlooking the "Where there is smoke there is fire" rule an enabling an enabler of eugenics. Disassociate myself from Asperger and I am enabling a disinformation campaign designed to move us backwards 20 years in how we define autism.

I don't know everything about Hans Asperger, but, I know enough to convince me that he did what he could to save most of his children. It reminds me of Ben Kingsley's character in Schindler's List, Itzhak Stern, who told Schindler, "It's Hebrew, it's from the Talmud. It says, 'Whoever saves one life, saves the world entire.'" Despite whatever else he was, Asperger clearly saved lives. Villains don't usually do that. We should continue to revere Asperger for the lives he improved and saved despite those parts of his history that we come to "understand."

Hans Asperger never condemned anyone to death.there were rumours of an underground hospital maybe called speagelgrund.this place was for " deemed uneducatable children".

all doctors had to send "so called" hopeless cases to speagelgrund and rumours are that this hospital liquidated so called hopeless children.there is no evidence that Asperger or most other good doctors knew this underground asylum was a death house.
its an example of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing.the hospital is only as far as i know at this point a rumour,a theory but it probably did exist. but its not likely that the average doctor who sent the most disabled children there knew at that time that they were sending a child to its death

I don't think it's right to say Spiegelgrund is an unsubstantiated rumor. The place is well known. There are memorials there. There are records, including notebooks and photographs, of what happened there.
http://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/children/a ... dwien.html
http://www.doew.at/english/the-war-against-the-inferior

I was struck by Robison's note about his own fact-checking:

Dr. Jekelius died in prison for his crimes. His colleague Dr. Illing was executed in 1946.

I am impressed by Robison's nuanced comments:

your facts are right.i tried to find that robison article to double fact check but i could not find it.i remember dr jekelius from the article.

im still not sure if Asperger knew what Jekelius was doing at spiegelgrund but it sounds like i suspected that spiegelgrund was real.i could not find the article to fact check so my post was tentitive.thank you for clarification

I'm sorry to have been the bearer of bad news. This stuff is really upsetting, but it's possible that Dr. Asperger may have just been a typically human mix of good and bad. He did some great things in trying to protect some people, but he let some others go into the horrors that were the general reality of the time.