Disgusted

...With regards to Aspergers United... Here is a clue to the new name which they seem to have decided upon, now...

I think a name change was required regardless of the reports surrounding Hans Asperger. Autism is a diverse spectrum with a number of voices and as such, needed a publication name that reflected this. Since the DSM was revised, Aspergers was integrated into a wider spectrum and therefore, by keeping this name, it was reflecting one particular presentation of the condition.

Greetings from myself. I know that this is now a sort-of "forgotten" Thread and I missed the point of it before... but I was wondering about this new-ish definition for "Aspergers" and if anyone objects to it as well...?

ASD-Level1 (Aspergers)

...or, ASC-Level1 (Formerly Aspergers)

... This Term was stated upon a Thread in this forum recently, but when I stated an interest, they edited out what I quoted. My reason for Posting here is that there must be some official term which people can agree upon, please...? I myself do not mind using Autism, though, but that is to keep things simple (for NTs and officials to follow). Also, please re-read this entire Thread before commenting, anyone, so as to not just go around in circles, sort of.

In advance, I mean no offence to anyone (ASD vs. ASC, for example). And this is the link to the page which I mention:

community.autism.org.uk/.../

I was wrong. 

There is something wrong with the name Asperger Syndrome. It has nothing to do with Asperger's political beliefs, or how many disabled kids he might have had murdered.

It is now clear to me that Asperger and Kanner both plagiarised earlier Russian work by Груня Ефимовна Сухарева.

The condition needs to return to one of these two names:

1) schizoid psychopathy

2) autistic psychopathy

Personally, I like these terms even less, but they are the most historically accurate terms we have. 

A concern I have is the effect Asperger vs autism has on employers. I have been raising awareness of Asperger Syndrome amongst employers in the engineering and computing industries. Around 10 years ago managers were very behind the curve when it came to Asperger Syndrome although this had the advantage of a clean slate where one could explain the condition from first principles and how it was a difference in mindset more than a deficiency in mindset. I made references to certain people including Isaac Newton and Albert Einstein. However, when I mentioned autism the response I received was very unfavourable as it conjured up impressions of mentally retarded (for the want of a better description) people and learning difficulties that could never be employed in a highly skilled job requiring a degree in a STEM subject and would be lucky to find a job cleaning floors.

The NAS has absolutely no connection with the engineering and computing industries nor professional societies like the IET or the BCS.

Therefore the replacement of Asperger Syndrome by autism could be very detrimental to people with Asperger Syndrome when it comes to employment and could even consign them to an almost unemployable underclass regardless of what skills and qualifications they have.

Cassandro said:

You may notice a pattern here, a tradition that psychiatrists have continued to this day, by being useless fucking shitbags who abuse and harm many of the people in their care

Arran said:

My mother thinks that the NAS is actually run as a business that goes round chasing public money

It's mostly a service provider, so in a sense yes.

Arran said:

obsessed with political correctness

"Political correctness" was an ironic term back in the 1960s. I'm not sure it means much nowadays different from 'politeness'.

Arran said:

whilst providing only miserly crumbs to people where there is no public money allocated to them for services

I expect that's the nature of the contracts. The money's to be used for schools or whatever. The charitable side seems less well resourced (and possibly less well managed? I'm not sure).

Arran said:

The NAS responds to the minutest of whines and murmurs from the Jewish, Zionist, and Holocaust survivor communities like greased lightning

As should be clear from recent news those three groups are distinct from each other. Most relevant to the case of Asperger is knowing that extermination began with (edit) disabled people, before moving on to Jews and Sinti and Roma.

Arran said:

Whenever there is a conflict between Islamic interests and Jewish or Zionist interests then the policy of NAS management is that Jewish or Zionist interests win hands down.

I rather doubt there is such a policy.

Arran said:

is the NAS proposing on completely eliminating and obliterating Hans Asperger's name from its website and all of it's publications?

You'd have to ask them (someone probably will), but I doubt any rewrites would be 'complete' in eliminating AS as many people will keep an AS diagnosis for decades. I don't know where NAS currently mentions Hans Asperger as a historical figure.

Arran said:

you cannot have Asperger Syndrome – no matter what it is called – without Hans Asperger

I do not understand what you are saying here. If AS is a real thing, then it was discovered by Asperger, not invented by him. He circumscribed and classified certain parts of human diversity (according to criteria that you can either think of as arbitrary or what was useful to the Reich), but the diversity preceded him.

I don't understand this attachment to Asperger. He was a psychiatrist. He was a useless fucking shitbag who abused and harmed people in his care. Leo Kanner was also a psychiatrist and a useless fucking shitbag who abused and harmed people in his care. You may notice a pattern here, a tradition that psychiatrists have continued to this day, by being useless fucking shitbags who abuse and harm many of the people in their care (edit: in so far as they are not constrained by law),

Arran said:

The fact that Herwig Czech (who is an historian, not a psychiatrist) has attacked Uta Frith whilst clearly knowing that she did not have the entire career history of Hans Asperger back in 1990

I'm pretty sure Czech acknowledged people did not know his discoveries in 1990, so I think we agree there. Do you have a reference for the attack on Frith?

This name change is absolutely pathetic.

My mother thinks that the NAS is actually run as a business that goes round chasing public money, and is obsessed with political correctness, whilst providing only miserly crumbs to people where there is no public money allocated to them for services. The NAS responds to the minutest of whines and murmurs from the Jewish, Zionist, and Holocaust survivor communities like greased lightning whilst steadfastly refusing to even give an ounce of consideration to whoever is on the opposite side but instead lambasting them as anti-Semitic or even racist!

There was a case of a Muslim parent who was accused of anti-Semitism on very flimsy grounds. She said that the response from the NAS was so disproportionate that she had no choice but to leave. Whenever there is a conflict between Islamic interests and Jewish or Zionist interests then the policy of NAS management is that Jewish or Zionist interests win hands down. In her opinion the NAS management has a very poor knowledge of Islam and the complex geopolitical situation in the Middle East, and views Muslims simply in terms of race and skin colour (despite white Muslims existing) in exactly the same way as they view non-Muslim black people.

Changing the name of Asperger United raises a bigger question - is the NAS proposing on completely eliminating and obliterating Hans Asperger's name from its website and all of it's publications? In a similar way that you cannot have Christianity without Jesus, you cannot have Asperger Syndrome – no matter what it is called – without Hans Asperger.

The fact that Herwig Czech (who is an historian, not a psychiatrist) has attacked Uta Frith whilst clearly knowing that she did not have the entire career history of Hans Asperger back in 1990 makes one wonder exactly who will (be expected to) carry the standard for Asperger syndrome in the near future – if anybody.

"Was Autism a Nazi Invention?". Yep, that's a real headline.

I spoke to my second cousin today in NYC over Google Hangouts, her nephew is Autistic and I was talking about this subject. Her sister-in-law was there and heard what we were talking about. She was pretty incensed and got her to send me this link.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/18/books/review/aspergers-children-edith-sheffer.html

The Author debates that Asperger's research should be thrown out. People in this thread have expressed that they explicitly feared just this.

"Sheffer has larger goals than highlighting Asperger’s complicity in wartime atrocities; she also wants to upend notions of autism as a legitimate diagnostic category by locating its source in Nazi notions of mental health and sickness."

Her opinion seems to have a pretty disturbing agenda. The NY Times put a surprising spotlight on her bias.

"Sheffer is a careful and nuanced researcher, which made her clumsy effort to “destabilize” our notions of autism feel all the more out of place. Then, on the very last page of the book, at the bottom of her acknowledgments, she tells readers that her now-teenage son, to whom the book is dedicated, was diagnosed with autism when he was an infant. “Autism is not real,” she quotes him saying. “It is not a disability or a diagnosis, it is a stereotype for certain individuals.... It made me feel humiliated, and I wanted to put an end to the label of autism.” I was glad to hear his voice: Too often people diagnosed with autism are excluded from discussions about the condition. But I wish Sheffer had trusted her readers enough to let us know about her personal connection to this story at the outset of her book instead of inserting it as a concluding aside, where it became an unsettling coda to her ardent effort to undermine our notions of autism and its origins."

So it seems Sheffer wants Autism to not be real because of her and her son's feelings. What about the people who accept their diagnosis? What happened to "Too often people diagnosed with Autism are excluded from discussions about the condition"? I think that Sheffer is more concerned with her feelings to be honest and is using the Nazi connotations to completely try and redefine Autism because of her own egotistical, selfish needs. The comments section seems pretty damning too.

When this all surfaced a few months ago I said that research could be put into question. A few disagreed. Seems like authors that are given mainstream attention want to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

This is getting ridiculous.

Emma said:

"I can deal with my condition being named after a guy who has been disgraced, if it doesn't have any adverse effects on the Autistic community." Completely agree with this.

Thank you. It's all about now. I had a conversation with my mother, my aunt, and two of my cousins today. I also spoke to my second cousin in New York about it too, she sent me a link that I will post in another part of this thread just for practicality. All of them were more concerned with the practical implications also. My cousin in the US was also worried with the stigma this debate seems to be opening.

Emma said:

We can't help the victims of then (by erasing the names of perpetrators or by any other means. They are dead and gone). We can help autistic people now (by continuing to raise awareness and attempting to make accessing support as easy as possible).

I've expressed this too but people don't seem as receptive to my opinion. I guess I rub some people up the wrong way. Oh well.

The NAS and Autistic research communtity can devote time and resources to this debate but......

There are children right now going through ABA. Which is something that in my opinion is like something from one of Mengele's fever dreams.

In less developed countries Autism awareness is so low that it is believed Autistic children are cursed, possessed and sometimes chained up.

People with Autism have been actively encouraged in countries such as Belgium to partake in euthanasia, rather than giving them support that might give them a less suicidal mindframe.

These are just a few examples. I think you and I are reading from the same page. Momentum needs to be kept and redefining everything constantly regardless of whether it is Asperger's past or on the whim of the AMA just confuses the layman, even an alarming amount of so called professionals.

Thank you for your well-considered replies. 

For the sake of argument, let's assume for the moment that a name change is the right thing to do, on account of the horrors of World War Two. 

Given such a position, I want to know precisely what ought to be done about this:

https://www.amazon.com/Keen-As-Mustard-Experiments-Australia/dp/0702229415

(And we weren't the only ones, if you fancy a little googling). 

Presumably we have to erase from history any hint of the organisations who conducted such tests...

Thanks Ellie XD
I'm not feeling that young today- managed to pull my shoulder out this morning simply by stretching- ow! Time does fly!

You’re a very remarkable woman, for a youngling! :)

"I can deal with my condition being named after a guy who has been disgraced, if it doesn't have any adverse effects on the Autistic community." Completely agree with this.

As has been said by others before me, I care what Asperger did.
But I am most concerned about how anything like a terminology change affects neurodiverse people in the here and now.

On balance, I believe the outcome would be negative; there is already so much bureaucracy involved in getting support, and we have already had to fight so hard to get NTs to recognise what the kind of autism that is easily generalised (for those who don't have the inclination to do deep research, which is most of them- I have mentioned in other places the electricity-like tendency of humans to choose paths of low resistance) as "Asperger's syndrome" means for us and how it influences our behaviour and thought processes. We are still fighting, but we have that aforementioned momentum and awareness is increasing.

Altering terminology would throw a massive proverbial spanner in the works in both cases.
I for one place more value on what happens to people now; what we can change, than trying in vain to right the unrightable wrongs of the past in abstract fashion.

We can't help the victims of then (by erasing the names of perpetrators or by any other means. They are dead and gone). We can help autistic people now (by continuing to raise awareness and attempting to make accessing support as easy as possible).

That takes priority.

. said:

@Jonesy you’re the linesman 

A wise decision there Ellie... I was always useless at football at school and the last to be picked for any sports team... I'm about as co-ordinated as the pattern on my avatar! But am a sticker for rules!

Lollolololoololl! I'd probably watch The Spectrum it sounds like a good show!

They are so out of touch they don't realise the kids use Autismo as an insult.

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=autismo

They can't have been trolled? Maybe they could.

Nowhere Mat said:

Many of my ancestral relatives died in the Nazi death camp, so you might say I'm a bit sensitive to anything related to Nazi science and how they got and treated their human guinea pigs.

I'm from a Sephardic background so my family were North African. The plight of North African jews is mostly ignored by history. Italy had camps there mainly. I had family who were in Giado and then packed off to Belsen-Bergen. Giado was a camp in Libya. A few escaped but lots were left. The irony is that my grandfather helped liberate both camps but they never liberated or saved any of my family. He got to see what had happened to his wife's family first hand.

I too abhorr Nazi's but policing language due to our sensitivities and ethnic background echos the totalitarian nature of their ideology. There were far more groups than just the Jews that were targeted and could have input into this matter. LGBT people, Black people, Roma people, people of a Communist ideology (however they haven't been too soft on some groups themselves, including Jews, ideologues tend not to be too concerned with empathy.) and many others. Our identity and sensitivities are something that shouldn't count as emotional currency in a debate that involves so many other groups.

Which brings me onto my final point. The Third Reich and Mussolini were very, very, very anti-neurodiverse. Which is the main group that this concerns. Not Jews. We have to look at this through a practical lens, without bias toward an outcome that plays into the realm of our ethnic identity and ancestors experiences. The practical implications of this furore that Czech has, in my opinion, exploited by using the visceral qualities that appeal to our natural emotional reactions and bias, could be disasterous. I've already seen several fingers pointed at valuable researchers in the Autistic communtity. This concerns me massively. There is little to no experience in the mental health system of how to even approach AS. There are also implications in getting benefits, housing, access to resources, workplace adjustments and many other things. Changing the terminology may have an effect on the already sparse awareness in these areas.

If we use our identity as currency to demand more gravitas in the debate to gain our desired outcome, does that not hark to the same ideals that the Nazi's upheld. They were obsessed with race and built a value system around it. I'm not keen on Communism either because of things that happened to my father's family.

The main thing here is not who is offended, it's who and what it effects. I can deal with my condition being named after a guy who has been disgraced, if it doesn't have any adverse effects on the Autistic community.

As I'm in defence I will play center-back.

) ( said:

Controversy has also risen from the use of results of biological warfare testing done by the Imperial Japanese Army's Unit 731.^[54] The results from Unit 731 were kept classified by the United States until the majority of doctors involved were given pardons.

I remember mentioning Unit 731 in a post before on an old thread about this. Their experiments on pressure and temperature extremes were worse than the Dachau experiments. They used decompression chambers to pioneer modern diving methods at any cost to the subjects. I'll just quote myself because you jogged my memory and there are more pressing things in my old post. Thanks LW!

Loathe to quote myself but I can't be bothered to type it all out again!

"The whole affair is troublesome to say the least. As someone with Jewish heritage I'd have had 2 reasons to worry. Looking at the whole picture though what would have happened if Asperger didn't do the research. I feel for the children that were euthanised. One problem I do have with this piece is that because of Czech's paper Asperger's work might be buried due to the moral dilemmas this may raise in academia.

I'm really not surprised by it though. The Nazi's performed hysterectomys and *** reductions routinely for cruelty and research. They use the techniques today that were born out of those horrors. They basically went wild with research because of the excuses the ideology gave them. I don't see any stigma being implied to people who have these procedures or any mention of the Nazi's that did them. Why should Asperger's be any different? The answer for me is controversy.

The Japanese were terrible too. Unit 731 was a Japanese unit that did medical experimentaton and biological weapons experimentation on large numbers of people in WW2. Their "inventions" killed half a million. The medical techniques they discovered are used today and the biological weapons were of great interest to the allies. The Americans granted many Unit 731 members immunity. Many went on to practice medicine and some carried on the research in allied nations. This bothers me greatly. Asperger gets highlighted (and rightfully so) but people who did experiments on live subjects (I won't detail them here because they are very, very, extreme) and created devastating biological weapons (which were continued to be developed) are never mentioned. The Soviets went after them as criminals but the Americans rolled out the red carpet for them. They also did this for Nazi's they deemed useful.

There have been eugenics issues for Autistic people far more recently. In nations that never get criticized or mentioned. Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark had programs up until the late 70's. The mentally ill, people with PDD's such as Autism, and lots of other "burden's to society". It's never mentioned. These countries should be dragged over the coals. We knew the Nazi's were pieces of *** but why should they get away with it.

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/225135

Sweden started in 1906 and didn't stop until 1975.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsory_sterilisation_in_Sweden?wprov=sfla1

Even more recently Belgium have been allowing people with Autism to "euthanise" themselves. Also people with depression, schizophrenia, and other mental illnesses. They should be helping people deal with their problems. Maybe they are considered "a burden to society". That's a phrase from facist ideology.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/europes-morality-crisis-euthanizing-the-mentally-ill/2016/10/19/c75faaca-961c-11e6-bc79-af1cd3d2984b_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.b31509b04502

There are injustices going on right now that are just as bad as Nazi Germany. You won't find them being reported on. We need to stay vigilant." - Some *** who posts here

There are more pressing issues than a name change.

I totally agree. Most people have only began to understand Asperger's. I have been asked by "medical professionals" such questions as "How long have you had Aspergers?", "What symptoms does Aspergers cause?", "Do you ever think that you will get better?" and one "psychiatrist" even told me that there is a cure! He said that after telling me he didn't know much about the condition. I've also recieved a letter recently saying "Cloudy suffers from a number of mental illnesses including Atypical Autism (which I don't have and he has my diagnosis)". My mental health trust is terrible but that's another story which I will tell when the whole thing has played out. I'm just using this as an example to demonstrate how the public awareness has only gained momentum in recent years.

We all have to try to get things like workplace adjustments, mental health care, benefits, and stuff of the like. The staff and the systems that process and/or provide services for us are only just starting to get up to speed. My mental health trust hasn't even got an option for AS on it's system. They are intergrating an option as we speak. A name change is impractical and would only serve to appease a small minority, who contain people who aren't even on the spectrum.

At the moment the name is really all about practicality as well as maintaining the momentum in awareness.