What’s autism?

Author: Dr. Francesc Cuxart (ASEPAC-Barcelona-ES)

Origins of the term

Autism as a symptom

The term autism comes from the Greek word eaftismos, which means “shut in oneself”, and it was introduced in the area of psychopathology by the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, who in its work Dementia Praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias (Translation into English in 1950. The original was in German, 1913) employs the word autism to define one of the essential symptoms of schizophrenia.

Autism as a syndrome

“Since 1938, there have come to our attention a number of children whose condition differs so markedly and uniquely from anything reported so far, that each case merits –and, I hope, will eventually receive- a detailed consideration of its fascinating peculiarities”. That way started the first article of the American psychiatrist Leo Kanner (1943) in which it was exposed the initial description of the autistic syndrome. In this text there were described eleven cases (eight boys and three girls) that, independently from their individual differences, presented a “range of essential common features”, determining the essential impairment in the “inability to have contact, since the very beginning, with people and situations”. The author expands the characteristics of this basic feature with literal expressions from parents referred to their affected children: “self-sufficient; “as retreated into his/her shell”; “happier when he/she is alone”; “behaving as if there was anybody there”...

Download full document. 113 KB