George Frankl: an undervalued voice in the history of autism

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Abstract
This paper aims to propose that the psychiatrist George Frankl had more than a marginal role in the early history of autism.
Frankl’s conception of autism as characterized by a lack of affective language has influenced both Asperger and Kanner.
First, this proposal is historically supported; second it is corroborated by Frankl’s unpublished manuscript on Autism. We
found that Frankl’s perspective about autism was, and still can be, considered innovative for multiple reasons. Specifically,
Frankl proposed that autism could cover a spectrum of conditions; that it is a state of mind that is not necessarily abnormal;
and that it is a neurobiological condition, which primarily needs to be understood by others. Finally, Frankl’s concepts of
affective contact and affective language are reconsidered with reference to contemporary neuropsychology from which
autism emerges not as a higher-order cognitive deficit, but as a result of an impairment of primordial ability to process low
level sensory, motor and perceptual information gained through experiencing other persons

Conclusion
In his published and unpublished papers, Frankl had devel-
oped original ideas on weakness of affective language as
a key to understanding autism. These ideas, which have
remained hidden for a long time, have actually been devel-
oped through studies on the importance of gestures in neu-
rology , in phylogenesis , in ontogenesis and
finally through the definition of the neural bases of ‘vitality
forms’ proposed by Stern . In our opinion, this was what
struck Kanner and probably also Asperger. In the history
of autism, the role of Frankl cannot be relegated to that of
a messenger dove through which Kanner knew Asperger’s
work. In other words, Frankl was not the intermediary to
inform Kanner of Asperger’s work in Vienna, as often sug-
gested. He was rather the person whose imaginative reflec-
tions on children he had observed in Vienna, and in Balti-
more, allowed both Asperger and Kanner to develop their
own ideas about atypical children. Indeed, perhaps precisely
because the source of the ideas that were forming in their
mind was common, both used the term autism although in a
different senses. No coincidence then.