The word autism derives from the Greek autt (o), which means that it acts on oneself; this, added to the suffix -ism, which means pathological process, indicates the pathological process that acts on oneself.
This term was first used in 1908 by Eugen bleuler in his monograph Dementia praecox oder Gruppe der Schizophrenien, in the description of some of his patients with schizophrenia.
Now, who was one of the first professionals who offered us a flash of enlightenment in that silence that springs from absent and distant thoughts like someone who shouts without a voice, but makes themselves heard in a way different from that known in its principles. Those first descriptions, consolidated as relevant, about what we currently call autism spectrum disorders (ASD) were given to us Leo kanner.
Leo Kanner was born in 1894, in Klekotiv, a small town in Austria, currently belonging to Ukraine. He began his studies at the University of Berlin, but had to interrupt them when called by the Austrian army.
In 1924 he came to the United States and worked as an attending physician receiving a position at the Yakton County State Hospital in South Dakota..
In 1930 he founded with Adolf Meyer and Edward Park the service of Johns Hopkins Hospital Child Psychiatry of Baltimore, of which he became one of the founders.
And five years later he wrote the first manual entitled precisely "Child Psychiatry", which was a relevant text for that time..
In the years following the publication of the aforementioned article, Kanner continued to delineate the disorder, which he assigned the name of "early childhood autism", after having accumulated experience through the personal identification of more than 100 children and having studied many others from fellow psychiatrists and pediatricians (1).
However, no one could specify and understand more precisely what the limits should be between autism and other disorders like said psychiatrist.
In order not to confuse it with other problems, which research and progress in the knowledge of the nature of autism are not very adulterated, Kanner proposed as criteria that defined early autism the following cardinal symptoms:
Of all these aspects, in 1951 Kanner emphasized as a nuclear characteristic: the obsession to maintain identity, expressed by the desire to live in a static world, where changes are not accepted.
At the same time that Kanner progressed in his studies, knowledge of the disorder was spreading throughout America and Europe. Unsurprisingly, contradictory and discordant interpretations soon emerged..
In 1952 the existence of the syndrome was confirmed in Europe after the publication of the works of van Krevelen in the Netherlands (2) and of Stern in France (3).
Kanner showed himself during his career as a person sensitive to social injustice, and especially child abuse. He felt indignation when he watched as the high-ranking ladies of the American high society hired lawyers to facilitate the custody of mentally weak school girls whom they treated worse than slaves..
This led him to denounce in a 1937 session of the American Psychiatric Association that many were unpaid, worked extensively, were poorly fed and were mistreated (4).
In 1943 he published in Nervous Chil, the classic article "Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact" in which he spoke of a disorder that some called Kanner syndrome and that today we call Autism.
In it he presented the cases of eleven boys with the innate inability to relate to other people.
This article became the basis of the modern study of Autism, since almost all the basic aspects included in the article have been widely confirmed by other researchers and it was one of the bases on which the most modern studies of autism are based.
Leo Kanner described autistic disorder as "Lack of contact with people, self-absorption and emotional loneliness. He was not the first doctor or psychiatrist to perceive the symptoms, but he was the first to differentiate them from schizophrenia..
Curious fact before the aforementioned article is the fact that almost simultaneously at the same, Hans asperger, Austrian psychiatrist and pediatrician, published in 1944 the article Die Autistischen Psychopathen, based on the observation of four children with similar characteristics: severe motor and social disturbances, although apparently good verbal skills (described as little teachers), among others, which differed significantly of those described by Kanner.
Because this work was published in the German language, contrary to Kanner's article, it remained practically unknown until 1991, when it was translated into English by the English psychiatrist Lorna Wing, who replaces the term autistic psychopathy with Asperger's syndrome.
Another fact that stands out is that in the 1950s in Europe the existence of the syndrome was confirmed after the publication of the works of van Krevelen in the Netherlands (5) and Stern in France (6).
However, the assessments made in this regard had the delimitation that Autism was like a "sui generis" disease, while in the American continent the habit of diluting the original concept was extended due to incorporating heterogeneous interpretations and conceptualizations.
Children with mental retardation associated with some rare symptom were diagnosed as autistic, but above all the point of view was extended that autism depended exclusively on emotional determinants linked to the maternal bond.
Kanner was scandalized and satirized the tendency to consider “by decree” that the fate of a baby was determined exclusively by what happens inside and around the newborn (7).
This position had led him to write, as early as 1950, the book entitled: “In defense of mothers. How to educate children despite the most jealous psychologists ".
Kanner died in Skyesville, Marylando on April 3, 1981. Today he is regarded as the autism father, the professional who laid the foundations to treat the Autism Spectrum Disorder as a disorder, not as a disability or as insanity.
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