Introduction

The history of autism does not begin in 1943 with Leo Kanner, nor in 1911 with Eugen Bleuler, nor even when the word “autism” first appears in the psychiatric literature.

People displaying some of the characteristics that we now associate with autism obviously existed long before a medical category was created to describe them. What societies, physicians, families, schools and, later, autistic people themselves saw in these characteristics, however, changed enormously.

The history of autism is therefore simultaneously the history:

• of a word whose meaning has been profoundly transformed;
• of successive psychiatric and developmental categories;
• of several theories of causation;
• of institutions and educational or therapeutic practices;
• of parent movements and claims for rights;
• of the emergence of organised autistic voices;
• and of a gradual shift in the question: from “what is wrong with this child?” to “what is autism, which difficulties are actually intrinsic, and how does the environment intervene?”

This history is particularly prone to confusion, because the same term has been used to designate different objects at different times. Bleuler’s “Autismus” belongs to his theory of schizophrenia. Kanner’s “infantile autism” is another clinical construction. The current diagnostic category of “autism spectrum disorder” is something else again.

To avoid mixing history, criticism and proposals specific to Autismology, this publication is divided into three autonomous but connected parts.

The title “History of Autism” is used here for convenience. It does not claim to provide an exhaustive history of all research, institutions, practices and autistic experiences in every country. Rather, it provides structuring historical landmarks for understanding how the object called “autism” was progressively constructed and transformed.

A — Documented history

Part A follows the historical evolution of descriptions, categories, institutions and actors. Its first purpose is to establish the facts and changes in context.

B — Critical examination

Part B analyses recurring reasoning mechanisms in this history: confusion between observation and interpretation, overly rapid moves to causation, theoretical circularity, interpretive authority, normalisation, and the displacement of the problem onto the individual.

It can be discussed without adopting concepts specific to Autistan.

C — Analysis according to Autismology

Part C explicitly changes the frame of reference. It examines what this history may reveal when we distinguish reality from social conventions, adaptation from assimilation, autism from associated disorders, autistic nature from socio-generated harms, and when we introduce the concepts of the Natural Referential and attitudinal accessibility.

These notions are presented as hypotheses and working frameworks specific to Autistan/Autismology, not as the external scientific consensus.