http://tinyurl.com/4hkoc ~ Autistic Disturbances of Affective
Contact by Leo Kanner (Nerv. Child 2:217-50, 1943).... the
complete article by Leo Kanner, much less often read today than
Hans Asperger's article written only a year later, actually reads
much easier than Asperger's more convoluted, complex
description of children he worked with at the same time.
We felt it would be useful for persons interested in Kanner's
observations to read his original article, which appears fresh if
not a bit old fashioned today, over six decades since its first
appearance in print.
One striking difference between Kanner's paper and that of Hans
Asperger is that Kanner saw the majority of his cases in the
context of expressed family of origin concerns. These were
children brought in by their parents or referred to him by private
practitioners who mostly had seen the children in private
consultation as opposed to institutional, clinic settings. His
paper provides family history and information about the current
status of parents and relatives in each of his children, something
noticeably absent in Asperger's report of children roughly the
same age. Asperger's patients were disconnected from their
families by virtual of their resident institutionalized status in his
clinic, some for considerable periods of time by the time he first
saw them. He also saw them in a safe, sheltered environment
in Vienna where their abberant behavior, had they remained in
the open community, would have prompted Nazi removal from
their families and likely extermination in death camps. Since
Asperger's children weren't interactively involved with their
families in the same way Kanner's children were, Asperger's
observations, while keen and far-reaching, lack the family of
origin and family history content and flavor of Kanner's cases.
It's our "amateur opinion" that many of the children in these
cases, and certainly some if not most of their relatives described
by Kanner would today more likely be diagnosed with Autistic
Spectrum Disorder.
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http://aspires-relationships.com/articles_autistic_disturbances_
of_affective_contact.htm