In World War II, children with the newly-conceived “autism” were identified by Hans Asperger. They were woefully insufficient in Nazi German spirit (geist) and systematically put to death in concentration camps. The whole category of “autism” was part of the general drive to purge undesirable people. While many boys were saved by Asperger, it is told that he had a particular dislike of the girls, who he considered unredeembably geistless, and warranting lethal injection.
Asperger’s work was revived in the 1990s, and divorced of its political content. “Autism” became what we know it today: an apparent tool for understanding people with unusual thought processes and obsessions. The previously-executed autists are now studiously overdefined as people with limited “social-emotional reciprocity”, as well as a “restricted and repetitive pattern of interests/activities”. Autists are an accepted part of disability discourse, whose social incapacities are meticulously accommodated for.
When I was 15, I was told I had “Asperger’s Syndrome”. It was put into my medical notes that I did not accept it, as if it was something entirely intrinsic, not devised in the context of a fascist regime. The admonition that it might be something to be questioned was not acceptable.
I ignored it. Eventually, trying to re-engage with the idea that I was “autistic”, or that I was on the “autistic spectrum”, I attended support groups, facilitated by the University of York’s disability team. I was frequently derided in these groups for believing God exists, or not conforming to a discernible pattern of “autistic interests”.
Is autism real? What about neurotypicalism, or neurotypical disorder – why not this way around? Are people with autism allowed to reshape what it is, rather than just be told by a clinical hierarchy? I have wondered all of this ever since learning that autism was a tool for genocide. As a category, perhaps resembling the movement for complicating sexuality, it should be taken out of the control of clinicians.
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Squidditas 