Before I begin, I want to take a minute to say that I am not the Autism Police. I don’t think my knowledge of autism is all-encompassing. I don’t think my experience with autism is universal. I don’t consider my opinion The Ultimate Truth Before Which All Must Bow Down. I can tell you how I prefer to discuss autism, but not how anyone SHOULD or MUST discuss autism.

As I have said before, and doubtless will say again, autism is complicated. I can only tell you about my experience. And I have nothing to compare my experience to. This is the way my brain works, and the way that it has always worked. I can make guesses at how the neurotypical brain works based on how neurotypical people behave and the things that they say. But I see how poorly neurotypical people understand me, which doesn’t fill me with confidence regarding my ability to understand them.

For that matter, I don’t always know how my own brain works. I was about 40 before I realized that I had a certain degree of face blindness. And now that I do know I have it, I don’t know when it is happening. I don’t know when the stranger that I’m looking at is actually someone I’ve known for years. I don’t think it happens very often. But how would I know?

When your life is saturated in that level of uncertainty, it’s tough to pound your fist on the table and proclaim yourself infallible.

Personally, I don’t like the term “Asperger Syndrome.” But if you do, and you want to call yourself an Aspie, so be it. I also don’t like the term “high functioning,” and I have mixed feelings about the term “diagnosis.” But we’ll come back to that another day.

I am never going to tell someone in the autistic community that they are doing autism wrong. You autism how you autism, and I’ll autism how I autism. If we can’t accept each other, then how do we expect the broader population to accept us? The world is already full of neurotypical people who don’t like us, let’s not help them out by taking shots at each other.

I suspect that parts of this post may come across as rude. That isn’t my intention. But another lesson that I learned later in life is that I do a poor job of assessing my tone when talking or writing. I’ve had conversations that I thought were objective and professional, only to be told later that I was rude or angry or confrontational or hostile.

There have been times when I simply stated what I believed to be true only to be told that I was arrogant or condescending or patronizing. I have learned that when someone says “Give me your honest opinion,” the absolute last thing that person wants is my 100% honest opinion. But here’s my 100% honest opinion on Asperger, the man and the syndrome.

An Oversimplified History of Autism

It’s hard to point to the first written mention of an autistic person. Evaluating someone based on a written description is far from reliable. Especially if that description was written at a time when demonic possession or imbalance of the bodily humors were still valid diagnoses.

The first clinical discussion of autism probably occurred in 1810. A French psychiatrist named Jean Esquirol used the term “monomania” to describe people who appeared otherwise mentally healthy but were prone to becoming obsessed with a single idea. Esquirol’s description of monomania sounds very much like what we now call “monotropism,” a common component of autism.

The term “autism” was created by Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler in 1911. Bleuler coined the term “schizophrenia” in 1908. He used the term “autism” to describe a schizophrenic person who was withdrawn into their thoughts to the extent that they would ignore or struggle against anyone or anything that might distract them. Bleuler believed that in this state, a person who lacked the ability to understand the real world would block out reality and substitute their own limited, more comprehensible reality.

Some will argue that German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin provided the first real description of what we consider autism in 1914. Kraepelin believed that psychiatric conditions had biological or genetic causes. He described a specific condition in which people:

• were absent-minded
• usually had average or better intellect, but also had fluctuations in their intellectual capacity
• tended not to adjust themselves to others’ experiences

Which might fit some autistic people. But a description that vauge fits many other groups as well. Kraepelin’s belief that psychiatric conditions had genetic causes led him to support eugenics, “racial hygiene,” and antisemitism. He died in 1926, and didn’t see his ideas take root in the Nazi party.

A photograph of Grunya Sukhareva, circa 1928. From the archive of the Scientific and Practical Center for Mental Health of Children and Adolescents. Believed to be in the public domain

I believe that the person who should be credited with first describing autism is Grunya Sukhareva, a child psychiatrist in Kiev. In 1925, she published a description of a condition in boys characterized by:

• maintaining a distance from their peers and environment
• never fully integrating into society
• an apparent lack of emotion due to inadequate facial expressions and movements
• difficulty adapting to change
• obsessive behavior
• superfluous or repetitive movements

I vote for Grunya Sukhareva because her description is very close to the accepted definition of autism in the US (based on the DSM-V). In addition, she published a paper in 1926 describing a similar condition in girls. The broader medical community would not consider the fact that autism could exist girls for another 60 years. These ground-breaking papers were followed by several other papers over the next decades, including a 3-volume collection of her papers and lectures which was published in 1939. Over the course of her life, she wrote nearly 200 articles and textbooks about autism.

What about Asperger?

By the time Hans Asperger arrives on the scene in the 1940’s, there is already a well-developed body of literature describing what we now call autism. Hans Asperger’s first contribution to the field was a paper from 1944 in which he defined “autistic psychopathy.” Out of a broader population of 200 children, the study focused on 4 boys who displayed

• a lack of empathy
• little ability to form friendships
• one-sided conversations
• intense absorption in a special interest
• clumsy movements

Two of these four boys went on to have successful careers: one as a professor, another as a writer. Because of this, Asperger’s name was attached to a subset of “high functioning” autistic people. Asperger’s works were written exclusively in German, and remained fairly obscure until a selection were translated into English in 1991, eleven years after Hans Asperger’s death.

The term “Asperger Syndrome” first appears in the literature in 1976. In the US, the official definitions for psychiatric conditions are recorded in the Diagnosis and Statistical Manual (DSM). The international counterpart to the DSM is the International Classification of Diseases (ICD). Asperger Syndrome was added to the ICD in 1992, and to the DSM in 1994.

The term was in the right place at the right time. Until the 1980’s, the clinical definition of autism was dominated by the views of Leo Kanner. Kanner described “early infantile autism” in 1943. Four key features of early infantile autism were:

• it was exclusively a disease of children
• it was extremely rare
• it was a severe psychological condition related to schizophrenia
• there was no hope that a child with autism could lead a normal life

As our understanding of autism began to change in the late 70’s and early 80’s, there was a need for a new term that applied to autistic adults who were living full and meaningful lives. Adults who often saw benefits and advantages from their autism such as better problem solving skills, better memory, or a larger vocabulary than the general population. Asperger’s study of “high functioning” autistic children who became successful adults made his name the logical choice.

For many years, the term “Asperger Syndrome” was an accepted diagnosis. Some people wore the term “Aspie” as a badge of honor. It allowed people to talk about who they were while distancing themselves from the massive stigma based on the public’s idea of what “autism” meant. It allowed them to focus on the strengths provided by their neurodivergence.

During the time when the phrase “Asperger Syndrome” was at its peak, I didn’t know that I was autistic. My idea of autism was based on Hollywood stereotypes and pop culture nonsense. I wasn’t anything like that, so I couldn’t possibly be autistic. But I did wonder more than once if I had Asperger Syndrome.

The term fell out of common use as more of Asperger’s work, including his personal papers, were translated into English. Some serious questions began to arise about Asperger’s ties to the Nazi party. In time, the term “Asperger Syndrome” was removed from both the DSM and the ICD.

So. Was Hans Asperger a Nazi?

There is no evidence that Asperger ever formally joined the Nazi party. However, he was a member of several groups that shared the same philosophy. He signed some of his personal letters with “Heil Hitler.” When the German secret police was purging “undesirable” doctors from Austria, Asperger received a glowing recommendation for his devotion to the cause. He was serving in the German army in 1944 when his paper on autism was published.

But the real world is a complicated place, and there are many who believe that Asperger is misunderstood. Maybe it was all an act to protect himself and his family from the German government?

Asperger served as a doctor in the German army from 1943 until 1945, during the period when his paper on autistic psychopathy was published. But maybe he didn’t have a choice? Maybe he was conscripted? Saying “no” to the Nazi party had a tendency to shorten a person’s life expectancy.

Asperger assessed people with what we now call autism. Those who were useful (“high functioning”) were sterilized and given dangerous jobs in munitions factories or other locations. Those who were not useful (“low functioning”) were sent to “special schools” for re-education. If you were paying attention in history class, you have a pretty good idea of what happened at these special schools. We’ll never know the real number, but the current estimates are that the Nazi party killed about 250,000 people due to psychiatric issues and sterilized 400,000 more.

Maybe, as some suggest, Asperger took that job so that he could divert autistic people away from “special schools.” There are letters that he wrote arguing that one specific person or another should not be sterilized. But there are also letters that he wrote which describe certain children as an “unbearable burden” or recommend sending them to one of the infamous “special schools” by name. And the medical community was well aware of what happened at those schools.

We will probably never know with 100% certainty if Asperger was a Nazi or what he truly believed. He and his supporters had 30 years to refurbish his image and his past before he became well known in the 1970’s. Many people hailed him as a visionary and a founder of our current understanding of neurodivergence. If he was just pretending to be a true believer to protect his family, then it was one hell of an act. But maybe that’s all it was.

People will argue, of course. There are very passionate voices on both sides. But here is my opinion.

Asperger’s contributions to what we know about autism were minor. The syndrome that bears his name is based on observations of a grand total of 4 boys. He didn’t describe anything that had not already been described. There isn’t a lot of objective evidence to support reasons to celebrate Hans Asperger.

There is considerable evidence that Asperger looked like a duck, walked like a duck, and quacked like a duck. I believe he was a duck. And if the best defense you can give someone is “Well, technically he was never officially a Nazi,” then maybe it’s time to stop defending that person.

I don’t like the term “Asperger Syndrome” or the term “Aspie.” Autism has enough of a stigma attached to it without adding a whiff of Nazi eugenics to the discussion. Again, if you want to call yourself an Aspie, so be it. And a lot of useful books and other resources were written when the term Asperger Syndrome was an accepted diagnosis. We shouldn’t throw out useful information because a name we don’t like was attached to it.

But moving forward, let’s find a better way to talk about ourselves. And let’s stop fighting this battle among ourselves. There are so many other issues that effect us all from employment rates to suicide rates to modern ideas that smell a lot like eugenics 2.0. Let’s stop beating each other down over labels and start making progress.