{"id":127816,"date":"2024-07-30T15:24:01","date_gmt":"2024-07-30T19:24:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=127816"},"modified":"2024-08-07T11:41:49","modified_gmt":"2024-08-07T15:41:49","slug":"autism-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/autism-research\/","title":{"rendered":"How Asperger’s Autism Research Created “Aspie Supremacy”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

What were the problems with Hans Asperger’s autism research? How did it mislead future autism researchers?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In his book NeuroTribes, <\/em>Steve Silberman writes that the history of autism research began with the work of Austrian physician Hans Asperger in the 1930s and 1940s. Asperger was an influential figure and thus, his flawed research had long-lasting consequences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Continue reading for a look at the flaws in Asperger’s research.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

Asperger\u2019s Thesis: Consequences for Future Autism Research<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n

In 1944, explains Steve Silberman in NeuroTribes<\/em>, Hans Asperger published his thesis on autism. His goal was, in part, to demonstrate that autistic people could make valuable contributions to society in the hope that this would help spare them from the Nazis\u2019 slaughter of those they considered \u201cworthless.\u201d Because of this, he chose to focus his paper on just four specific cases out of the hundreds of autistic children he\u2019d studied<\/strong>. The children in these four cases had no severe impairments and displayed exceptional abilities in math and science. He tried to make the case that people with such abilities could be useful to the Nazis as code breakers.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Silberman, this well-intentioned choice had long-lasting, damaging consequences for the field of autism research: Whereas Asperger knew that autism wasn\u2019t rare and that it was a broad spectrum, his published work made it seem like autism<\/strong> was strictly defined and not at all severe<\/strong>. This led other researchers to believe that the condition Asperger studied was a separate condition from autism. (It also later led to the development of the diagnosis of Asperger\u2019s syndrome, now colloquially understood to be a subtype of autism, though it no longer appears in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM).\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Asperger\u2019s Narrow Focus: The Roots of \u201cAspie Supremacy\u201d?<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Asperger\u2019s argument was that autistic people didn\u2019t deserve to die because those with exceptional abilities could be \u201cuseful\u201d\u2014but some argue that this stance is problematic in its own right<\/a>. This argument used the same logic as the Nazis\u2019 eugenism: that a person\u2019s \u201cusefulness\u201d to society determined their right to live. The unspoken corollary of that argument is that autistic people who didn\u2019t appear to be \u201cuseful\u201d (for example, those with severe impairments) did<\/em> deserve to die. Such writers also link Asperger\u2019s distinction to what\u2019s now known as \u201cAspie supremacy,\u201d or the perception that autistic people who appear \u201chigh-functioning\u201d are superior to those who appear \u201clow-functioning.\u201d\u00a0

Since \u201cAsperger\u2019s\u201d has been removed from the DSM, some also argue that people who continue to use that term to distance themselves from the rest of the autistic community may be reinforcing the Aspie supremacist framework<\/a>. However, many autistic people still identify strongly with the terms \u201cAsperger\u2019s syndrome\u201d<\/a> or \u201cAspie.\u201d Some suggest that the specificity of the term can help more clearly convey an individual\u2019s particular subtype of autism. And still others contend that we shouldn\u2019t try to convey a person\u2019s entire autistic profile with a single term and should instead use the term \u201cautism\u201d followed by a brief description of their individual experience of autism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What were the problems with Hans Asperger’s autism research? How did it mislead future autism researchers? In his book NeuroTribes, Steve Silberman writes that the history of autism research began with the work of Austrian physician Hans Asperger in the 1930s and 1940s. Asperger was an influential figure and thus, his flawed research had long-lasting consequences. Continue reading for a look at the flaws in Asperger’s research.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":127890,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,160],"tags":[1560],"class_list":["post-127816","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-science","tag-neurotribes","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Asperger's Autism Research Created "Aspie Supremacy" - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Hans Asperger's autism research was flawed and caused unintended consequences. 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