Simon Baron Cohen on heterogeneity and neurodiversity

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Leo Kanner didn't coin the term "autism." The latter term "was coined in 1911 by the German psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler to describe a symptom of the most severe cases of schizophrenia, a concept he had also created," according to How autism became autism by Bonnie Evans, Hist Human Sci. 2013;26(3):3–31.


Perhaps things are different in the French-speaking world, but, here in the English-speaking world at least, "autistic" has always been the adjective form of "autism" -- whatever the word "autism" happened to mean at any given time, which has varied radically over the past century.


What “lower than average IQ” diagnostic? As far as I am aware, “lower than average IQ” was never a diagnostic criterion for autism. Even Kanner, in his famous paper, described some of the boys he studied as being highly intelligent.


Researching the prior art should clarify that the word "autism" has nearly always been coupled with (NOT distinct in meaning from) the word "autistic," BUT has had MANY different meanings over the past century. There is no particular reason to pick any particular one of those past meanings as the one true meaning of the word "autistic." These days, nearly everyone uses the words "autism" and "autistic" to refer to what the DSM 5 calls "Autism Spectrum Disorder." Like it or not, it is what it is.


I just now tried to find a source confirming your claim here that Lorna Wing tried to include NPD as part of the autism spectrum. I couldn't find anything that would indicate this. Can you? In any case, as far as I can tell, hardly anyone in the psychotherapeutic establishment considers NPD to be part of the autism spectrum.

Not Lorna Wing, but see https://www.researchgate.net/publicatio ... _New_Model

As far as you know, is this or any similar proposal being taken at all seriously by the psychotherapeutic establishment?

Typing "autistic" and "narcissistic" into entrez pubmed gives only 2 results . Neither of which are the one I posted .

I found this re the person mentioned - khalid mansour
Locum Consultant Psychiatrist at Alston Consultation Ltd
Southend on Sea, United Kingdom

https://uk.linkedin.com/in/khalid-mansour-25749415

Mona Pereth, I've challenged you to substantiate your claims by quoting Bleuler's use of "autism" (he did use autistic, as you describe) but you have not done so. Until then, no one should take you seriously. I have already made you aware of the Chandler & Macleod Temperament and Aptitude test, which I took in 1981 (as have millions of others
in the workforce) which proclaimed me strongly autistic; it makes no mention whatsoever of autism!

An increasing problem is that someone seems to have coded a robot that is currently tracking down all uses of the word autistic on the net, and tacking onto it autism/ (even in my old e-mails, and I can tell of a surety that I never did so) to make it appear that they have always been interchangeable, but old hands should recall that it wasn't always so!

Busted dude! It didn't take long for you to f**k up and reveal you are using two accounts. Please stick to one account and use that and I will ban the other . Which account do you want to keep gwynfryn or Oraq ?

How does autism differ from autistic? Some info please.

A person could, theoretically, have a preponderance of "autistic" symptoms without being diagnosed with "autism." That person would be considered, subjectively, to be "autistic," but not "officially," objectively considered to have "autism" because the person didn't go through the diagnostic regimen.

Also: "Autism" is the disorder, a noun.

"Autistic" is a description, an adjective.

Gwynfryn is saying they're completely different , not just a case of adjective vs noun. I'd like to know what factors make them clinically different .

Eugen Bleuler used "autistic" as a description of the self-absorption of people with "dementia praecox" (now called schizophrenia). It just so happened that Bleuler was a mentor to Sigmund Freud.

The term "autistic," as promulgated by Bleuler, has little to do with the concept of "autism" as developed by those like Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger.

Bleuler's autism described adult schizophrenics who lived in there own world.Kanner's earliest papers used the term infantile autism,meaning that they had been autistic since birth and likely in the womb.
but Kanner believed his patients had the same disorder just from birth as Bleuler's patients.Bleuler described adults who slowly withdrew from the world as they got older.
so Kanner at first thought they were describing the same disorder.Asperger also used the term autistic psychopathy in childhood thinking he was writing about a childhood version of Bleulers disorder,it took years for autism to be viewed as something different

Hence, "childhood schizophrenia" (perhaps Asperger's notion of it?), which was still a popular all-encompassing term even in the 1960s, extending perhaps into the 1970s.

Bleuler was talking about the withdrawal and the self-absorption found in schizophrenia. He wasn't speaking, like you said, of a disorder from birth. Which would be Kanner's autism.

Back to the OP, I find the article very well balanced - by putting autistic traits into categories of "difference", "disability", "disorder" and "disease", each category can be adressed accordingly - differences accepted, disabilities provided with accommodations, disorders and diseases treated and cured. This would be probably the best course for every autistic individual.

thats basicly what I said,Bleuler was talking about adults who over time had withdrawn from the world overtime.And both Kanner and Asperger viewed autism as early childhood schizophrenia at the time,hence Kanner using the term infantile autism and Asperger using the term autistic phychopathy in childhood.autism as a different syndrome was unknown at that time

Oraq: Very funny I’m sure! There was a time I might have been annoyed that you’ve probably blown away any credibility I may have had here, when I’ve been pointing out the ongoing attempt to rewrite what autism originally meant for getting on two decades, but it’s become irrelevant, as times have changed. One particularly big plus is that thriller writers seem to have latched onto autistics as quirky but likable forces for good, and quite right too; there’s nothing malignant about the autistic personality type. The downside it the way the media now tends to apply the label to any convicted killers who appear creepy, which is hugely inaccurate.

There’s the very widely read Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (the first?) and I’m currently reading King and [oops, I can’t remember the second name] which has one such character, another hacking genius (why hacking? Not one of my talents, for sure) who, apart from some occasional misunderstandings, seems a thoroughly decent guy, and who, according to the cover blurb, was the subject of another book in the series (probably Simple Genius) which I’ll be looking to acquire. It should be interesting reading. OK, these portrayals are not always accurate; autistics aren’t much given to body adornment of any kind, not even watches and socks, when not needed, but again, as her boxer mentor (who appears to have a better grasp of the situation than any autism expert I’ve ever encountered) points out, being autistic explains "some" of what she is.

Given the numbers, I think this trend will have far greater impact on public opinion than endless repeats of mendacious blustering on cites like this. Nice of you to reminder her (and us all) that she never responded to my challenge. A bit of a challenge, after all, as, though the web can be edited, robots can’t erase books or microfiches, so the truth is never going to be further away than the nearest reference library, for those who can be bothered to look…

How often do we have t go through this? I've explained it at length, and offered you the Humm & Wadsworth Scale (1935) and Rosanoff's "Theory of Personality..." (1921) which you can Google for independently, if you don't want to trust the reams I've already posted here…