Published on 12, July, 2020
I've never liked the whole "Asperger" label, because it lends itself to a series of horrible puns (and is unfair to children in that way).
I presume this has been discussed on here, but Dr Hans Asperger is not the kind of man we should be celebrating. This is off Wikipedia - I apologise for using that source, but it is the quickest to cut and paste
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Edith Scheffer, a modern European history scholar, wrote in 2018 that Asperger cooperated with the Nazi regime, including sending children to the Spiegelgrund clinic which participated in the euthanasia program.[26] Scheffer wrote a book further elaborating on her research called Asperger's Children: The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna (2018).[27][28]
Another scholar and historian from the Medical University of Vienna, Herwig Czech concluded in a 2017 article in the journal Molecular Autism, which was published in April 2018:
Asperger managed to accommodate himself to the Nazi regime and was rewarded for his affirmations of loyalty with career opportunities. He joined several organizations affiliated with the NSDAP (although not the Nazi party itself), publicly legitimized race hygiene policies including forced sterilizations and, on several occasions, actively cooperated with the child ‘euthanasia' program.[29]
Dean Falk, American anthropologist from Florida State University, questioned Herwig Czech's allegations against Hans Asperger in two papers in Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders.[30][31] Czech's reply was published in the same journal.[32]
In May 2019, Ketil Slagstad, a Norwegian doctor and historical scholar, added his interpretation of both Scheffer's and Czech's work, in his article "Asperger, the [National Socialists] and the children - the history of the birth of a diagnosis",[33] in which he describes the nuances of the situation. He offers an alternative explanation of Asperger's involvement, citing the challenges of war, desire to protect his career and protect the children for which he cared, Slagstad concludes:
The story of Hans Asperger, Nazism, murdered children, post-war oblivion, the birth of the diagnosis in the 1980s, the gradual expansion of the diagnostic criteria and the huge recent interest in autism spectrum disorders exemplify the historical and volatile nature of diagnoses: they are historic constructs that reflect the times and societies where they exert their effect.
Critically, though, Slagstad noted "Historical research has now shown that he [Asperger] was...a well-adapted cog in the machine of a deadly regime. He deliberately referred disabled children to the clinic Am Spiegelgrund, where he knew that they were at risk of being killed. The eponym Asperger’s syndrome ought to be used with awareness of its historical origin."[34]
Should really talk about 'Kanner syndrome' and 'Asperger syndrome' then I guess...?
Reading 'Neurotribes' I can to the conclusion that he was doing the best he could at the time - no-one talks about the people Schindler didn't put on his list, or the profits he made supplying the ***...
When I stood in the bleak field that is Auschwitz, looking at the endless rows of chimneys that are all that remains of the huts the prisoners lived in, hearing the description of how the place operated I was struck with the thought:
"What would I have done to survive? As a prisoner, what would I do to get an 'easy' work assignment? What would I do to get an extra slice of bread?"
But, what if I'd been a young German?
"What would I do if I was assigned there as a guard? What would I do to protect myself? To protect my family? Would I have had the courage to help out in some small way - to save even one life?"
I hope I NEVER have to find out... I may not like the answer.
I'm increasingly of the view that autism isn't 'a spectrum' - it's a 'skip' and yeah, most skips have some bricks in, offcuts of wood, empty paint cans and frequently a mattress that didn't even belong to the person who hired the skip... but sometimes they have old bicycles in, or prams, or soil... what's in any one skip is different to every other and might not be what was in it yesterday or what will be in it tomorrow.
There's no easy set of descriptors for autism, but then, there's easy (accurate) descriptors for people... we're ALL unique and complex.