Sunday, April 1, 2018

April Finally

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/31/opinion/sunday/nazi-history-asperger.html This is a link to the NYT article about the German researcher who the disorder Asperger Syndrome is named for. Hans Asperger has contributed to the diagnoses and ideas around people who have :limited social skills and narrow interests", similar to autism, but also was seen as a resister to the Third Reich and its ideas. The writer of the article practiced psychiatry at the University of Vienna in the Nazi era and introduced the diagnosis of "autistic psychopathology" for some of the disturbed children he treated. Some of his categorizations of their behaviors would result in their being euthanized. Children who were classified as "drains on the state", were killed in special wards and Asperger worked closely with the top figures in Vienna's euthanasia program. In 1994, Asperger disorder was added to the American manual of mental disorders to be reclassied in 2013 as autism spectrum disorder.