Kanner's Theory Of Autism Paper

Autism is a disease that the world is still attempting to understand and properly diagnose. According to WebMD autism had been identified as far back as the early 1900’s. Autism has once been thought to have been a mental disease, or as a result of bad parenting. This disease has been categorized as having one or two of symptoms or a large variety of them. The word autism was first coined by a psychiatrist named Paul Eugene Bleuler in 1908. Dr. Bleuler attempted to link autism as a sign of schizophrenia. The word autism originated from the Greek word autos which basically means isolated self. It was during the 1930’s another psychiatrist named Leo Kanner MD known as the father of child psychology used a term “Kanners syndrome” to describe child autism. Kanners syndrome explained child psychology as the inability to relate others. During his studies at the John Hopkins clinic in Baltimore, Maryland he was able to differentiate schizophrenia from autism. These studies eventually lead to his book “Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact.”This book eventually led to other researchers conducting further investigations to understand autism spectrum disease further.

Researchers have dedicated an extensive amount of time and energy into discovering a concrete answer for autism. Children are generally in the two years old to two and a half before a parent will notice a possible symptom. It was during this stage before the disease was truly identified that people with autism were considered mentally retarded or “slow.” Also prior to the 1930-40s studies of Dr. Kanner it was thought that bad parenting could have been a factor in