Both ‘autistic’ and ‘Asperger’ have their problems – 06/26/2023 – Suzana Herculano-Houzel

A New York Times report published by Sheet this Monday (26) comments on the fact that several conditions in medicine bear the name of their discoverers. These terms, like Asperger’s syndrome, certainly fail to be descriptive—but they often generate criticism for perpetuating the name of who, in hindsight, weren’t very nice people. One source of these criticisms is historian and mother of an autistic child Edith Sheffer of the University of California at Berkeley. Her arguments are in her book “Asperger’s Children”, and also in my favorite guide, Neurotribes, by journalist Steve Silberman.

The expression “Asperger’s syndrome” explicitly perpetuates, yes, the name of its discoverer, an Austrian psychiatrist who, before Hitler managed to take over Europe and delegate to himself the right to determine who stays on Earth and who is dispatched from life, account that certain “problem children” did not have any problems, but qualities – the problem was in the adults around them who expected all children to be the same. But Sheffer and others question Hans Asperger’s intentions in “collaborating” with the Nazi government—like Oscar Schindler, Hasperger argued for the “usefulness” of his “little teachers” to the growing empire, and, like him, his children maintained their lives “collaborating” with the government.

In contrast, the term “autistic” does not propagate the name of the idiotic psychiatrist who gave its name to the concept that “cool mothers” were to blame for their children’s oddities, an idiot who annoys me so much that I have to consult his name every time because my brain refuses to honor the individual with my neurons. Leo Kanner, that.

History and historians are quick to pass judgment, as are most humans—interestingly, neurotypicals not on the spectrum, whether this Asperger’s or autistic, quick to apply their values ​​before ascertaining the facts and attending to them and them alone.

“Autistic” is a descriptive name whose opposite is “alista”, from the Greek “allo”, “the other”. With the caveat that intellectual disability is NOT part of autism, although it can co-exist, “autistic” is a very useful term. But it perpetuates the legacy of the bastard whose name my brain has forgotten again.

Aspie, or Asperger, meanwhile, honors a guy who had the realization that kids at various points on that spectrum are NOT sick, retarded, their mother’s fault, nor do they have a disorder that needs fixing. They just need to be really seen, recognized, respected, and treated with their particularities in mind, mental left-handers in a right-handed world.

I like to call myself Aspie. I like that a guy named Hans Asperger once wanted to improve the lives of children like the one I was, and not “cure” them of their weirdness, kidnap them in sanatoriums, or invent a way for them to no longer exist (what a world without grace would be). Yes, he “collaborated” with the Nazis. But he could have run away when he could (and he could) and abandoned his clinic and children.

I also like to call myself autistic, although this is still strangely received because I don’t shake myself all the time (my mother took care of this part, getting me to stop the habit of bouncing my knees when sitting down; today I just play choruses of music on loop on my my head, it’s very discreet) I don’t even avoid people’s eyes (perhaps I look too much into my interlocutor’s eyes). But it’s part of my job as a science communicator to call people’s attention to exactly what is not what their quick judgment expected, even as it perpetuates the name associated with the vile and misogynistic ideas of the aforementioned cretin who accused mothers and locked up their mentally left-handed children.

That’s how it is to live in a complex world, full of moving parts that fit into more than one narrative. I vote for respecting this type of diversity as well, and letting each left-handed person choose in peace how they identify and what they want to be called, without being judged for it. It’s enough for you neurotypicals to dictate the rules of this everyday democracy of mental life in which you are the majority, but not elected by anyone…

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