How do you view Mr. Kanner and Mr. Asperger as people?

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I have read in some other threads that they used to see Kanner as a bad guy and Asperger as a good guy but then they have discovered that Asperger was collaborating with Nazis so he is a bad guy too.

In any case, I am not familiar with their biographies (other than very brief google search I just did) so I can't really say why you thought Kanner was a bad guy? If by bad you mean he was saying his patience don't have hope, that sounds more pessimistic than bad. But like I said I don't know his biography so maybe you guys can help me out.

Anyway, one thing I read was that Kanner was Jewish. So the one thing Asperger did that Kanner would *not* be guilty of would be collaboration with Nazis. Now, Kanner didn't have a chance to be on either side of the Nazi issue since he was in America. But *IF* he were to live in Austria, it would be quite ironic if he were to try to save his patience from Nazis while Asperger were to turn them in, despite the fact that Kanner is supposedly "worse".

Or perhaps Asperger "was" a good guy, so he was really pissed off at Kanner for being so bad, and thats why he decided to collaborate with Hitler as a way to get back at the Jew, Kanner, he was pissed off at, LOL.

They shared a tunnel vision that AS was limited to children, and focused on male children, which led to years of the negative effects of this misinformation. Remnants of this negative impact on the AS community still continue.

Kanner seems to have deliberately ignored a 1938 paper later on, which had earlier been written by an American woman though he knew of it and confirmed to her that he knew of it. His silence on Hans Asperger's work and claims of ignorance are not wholly convincing to me. Asperger possibly knew that Sukhareva in Russia had preceded him with a description of AS - my guess is that he did. However we can never know for sure until or if proof turns up.

So I am inclined to view Kanner and Asperger both as untrustworthy in their accounts of their discoveries, and servants of self interest. And worse, though other threads have and still are addressing that. Kanner seems to me to have had very fixed and rigid views that resisted other scientific challenges to them for an inordinately long time.

How are good and bad bieng measured? Nice to people? Good intentions? Results?

While Asperger was collaberating with the Nazi's, Kanner escaped then helped 200 others escape. Kanner's work resulted in decades of most autistics not getting identified for decades and still to some degree today.

It is hard for me to judge without knowing either one of them personally. We all have good and bad in us. We are also all shaped by what is happening around us. If people are no longer alive, we can only make our views of them from what we read or hear. Can we be sure that what we read is 100% accurate? I would prefer to know someone personally before deciding whether or not I think the person was a good or bad person. I can appreciate people's accomplishments without making judgements on their personal characters.

Another interesting thought: Kanner wrote his work in 1943, and Asperger wrote it in 1944, they both used the word "autism" in it, which makes it pretty likely Asperger stole it from Kanner. Now, the reason Asperger didn't give Kanner any credit might have simply been due to the fact that under Nazis the "Jewish science" wasn't really a science, so maybe *IF* Asperger were to decide to give Kanner a credit, Nazis would have taken Asperger to the concentration camp (that might also be why Asperger didn't try to hide that he was stealing it by avoiding the word autism: under Nazi regime he weren't doing anything wrong). Or better yet, if Asperger himself was buying into Nazi ideology, he would be like "no, I won't give credit to that Jew Kanner; and no wonder that Jew Kanner is so mean to his patients, thats how Jews are".

It could be that Kanner wanted to take all the credit for himself.

You mean Asperger wanted to? I mean Asperger is the one who wrote it a year later.

But its true, however, that Kanner could have stolen it from Sukhareva (who wrote about it a couple of decades earlier).

I meant Kanner. Kanner had two refugees from Asperger's clinic but never mentioned Asperger until decades later and then in a dismissive manner. Whatever Kanner's reasons were it had catastrophic consequences. His view of Autism as a rare childhood disorder meant that many Autistics got misdiagnosed, never diagnosed or diagnosed only recently much later in life. His view of the cause of Autism being "refrigerator mothers" caused a horrible stigma for both Autistics and their parents.

That means that they both stolen from each other: Kanner didn't mention he had two of Asperger's patients, and Asperger didn't mention something that Kanner wrote a year prior to him. Maybe Asperger didn't mention Kanner's work because he was mad at Kanner for not mentioning his patients? Or maybe they just both like to steal and neither of them wants to complain about the other one since "people who live in glass houses don't throw stones".



Incidentally, isn't it ironic he had those views, given that he liked getting credit and all that? I mean, the more common his disorder the more credit he would get, no? Or was he afraid Asperger would get the credit? If only he knew that middle functioning autism ended up being named after him rather than after Asperger, perhaps his "views" would have been different.



I can see how this would cause stigma against the parents, but I don't see why it would stigmatize the patients. I mean, if we compare it to the current stigma that autistics presumably don't have feelings, then refrigirator mother seems to be better: at least it acknowledges they have feelings that went unfulfilled.

Now, don't get me wrong: I never said refrigirator mother theory is true: its not. But its one thing to ask "is it true" and its entirely different thing to ask "how much does this truth/untruth hurt someone". Well the idea that autistics have no feelings would hurt them a lot more than the idea that they have refrigirator mothers.

And, if Asperger was aware of Sukhareva's work, it would have been politically expedient not to admit that his work was based on that of a "non-Aryan" from a country that his nation was at war with, even if he might otherwise have acknowledged it. Sukhareva herself was subject to very harsh criticism in the Soviet Union later in her career for her science and methods not conforming to the prevailing "Pavlovian" dogma (more info here.)

Thanks for that interesting historical link. The arrogance of behaviourists was not confined to Russia - I saw plenty of it even in the 1980s at a university psychology department. Once they knew you were in a non-behavioural field, eg psychophysics, or cognitive psychology or any of the many sub-specialities, they would look down their noses and spout on about their real psychology, how they were real scientists.. (I wish I was making this up, but it's true). Behaviourism began to become a cult after the publication of their leader's book in the USA, (Beyond Freedom and Dignity, by cult leader B F Skinner) and the academic members of the cult behaved with the tunnel vision and ferocity of true adherents. Some still do.

There was no internet, Asperger did not speak English and the two clinicians were living in countries fighting a world war against each other so it is possible Asperger had no idea what his ex-underlings who fled or Kanner were up to.


Kanner bragged about not diagnosing 9 out of 10 children referred to him. It might make him look better to discover a "rare" condition than one that is obvious.


The idea that autistics have no feelings and do not care about other humans was thought to be a reaction to their cold, uncaring, neglectful parents. So the no empathy stigma is a direct result of the refrigerator mother theory.

NeuroTribes gives a detailed account of Kanner's influence: from his less than honest dealings with the work of others in the field (G. Frankl, H. Asperger, L. Desperet), his giving credence to the "refrigerator parent" hypothesis (which led, by way of opposition to the "autism parent" phenomenon). His attempts to control the field of autism research delayed the acceptance of the spectrum theory and recognition of "mild" autism by decades, pit parents against their children (when many of them may well have simply been BAP, if not on the spectrum themselves!).

Asperger's malfeasance has more recently come to light, but is categorically much, much worse. Condemning children not just to abuse, but death, their bodies to be dissected - there simply is no comparison.

Neither of them were "good" people, but without them, it is highly likely that many of us would have had much worse lives, as autism research would have been set back by a generation or so.

I know little to nothing about G. Sukhareva, who described autism in Russia a generation earlier, or G. Frankl & A. Weiss who worked alongside Asperger before fleeing to America (and Kanner's clinic), or L. Desperet who was describing similar children in America in the decade leading up to Kanner's publication.

Thats an interesting point. Given that internet only came about in late 90-s, how did people deal with giving proper credit for multiple other discoveries in, say, physics, math, and so forth, prior to that?



So what would make you more famous: to discover Rett's or common cold? On the one hand Rett's is more rare so you must be "smarter" for discovering it. But on the other hand common cold happens all the time, so people would be giving you credit on a daily basis rather than just once in a while if you discover cold.

Or lets take math example: what would make you more famous, to discover calculus or basic algebra? Calculus is harder, yet basic algebra is what would be giving you more credit since, even while people do calculus, they would have to give you credit as they use basic algebra along the way.



I am not sure I agree here. I mean, if someone believes autism is all neurlogical and has nothing to do with parenting, they can say that autistics have no feelings because the part of the brain responsible for feelings didn't develop properly.

Now, if someone believes that autistics don't have feelings because of refrigirator mother, they can say "well lets give them some warmth now to bring those feelings back" on the other hand if someone believes that autistics don't have feelings because they are neurologically aren't capable of having them, they would say "its useless to treat them warmly they won't recipropcate anyway". So thats why it feels like, if it comes to things like ostracism, the neurological view of autism would lead to more ostracism.

I have a first hand experience of this. No, I didn't have "refrigirator mother": on the contrary, my mother spoiled me, and thats why when I had to face the real world, at the age of 21, it was a shock, and I reacted badly at the way I was treated by the real world. Now, when I say to a potential girlfriend "look, I didn't do those things before I was 21, I only started doing them after I was 21 in reaction to ostracism, so if only I were to enter into a relationship, be introduced to my partner's friends, etc. then ostracism won't be an issue and I would stop doing those things" nobody takes me seriously, because they are convinced that asperger is neurological, so if I bring anything other than that, its just my lacking insight. But if they were to believe in "refrigirator mother" theory then who knows maybe they "would" have taken my explanation seriously: even though it doesn't blame the mother, it still blames some "people" treating me certain way, so at least with "refrigirator mother" people would have been open to a concept.

What does "autism parent phenomenon" refers to?

I mean, I do have some problems with my own parents who are over-protective and make some assumptions about me. So I am curious whether the issues I have with my parents fall under that category.



Why would it put parents against the children? WOuldn't it do the opposite, put children against their parents, since it would tell the children their parents are to blame? And in case of parents it would only guilt them into becoming BETTER parents? Or am I missing something?

Were they just refugees from Germany at-large, or also from Asperger in particular? As in, Asperger was going to send them off to concentration camps, and Kanner saved them from him? Or was Asperger, himself, wanting to save them from Nazis but couldn't, so Kanner sort of helped him out?

Also, the fact that Kanner had two of Asperger's patients disproves the assertion that Asperger's patients were "all" high functioning and Kanner's were "all" low functioning. So how about those two patients that we just talked about: were they high functioning or low functioning?