Historical Update – What Happened to Kanner’s Subject #1
When it comes to understanding history, it usually pays to dig deep for the facts and then make your own interpretation. This is particularly true when the subject is complex and since most authors naturally have their own bias.
Kanner's subject #1, 72 years later
So I would not read books like Neurotribes, by Silberman, or In a Different Key (Donvan/ Zucker), just reading comments by Silberman is enough to show his level of knowledge. The now awarding winning Silberman says that since, after all these years, science has not found a cure for schizophrenia, it should not bother for autism. That would mean that since no cure has been found for HIV, we should not try and find a cure for the Ebola virus either. Great progress has been made with both viruses.
Donvan/Zucker did achieve something useful; they tracked down Kanner’s Subject # 1.
This is interesting because you can read, first hand, Kanner’s case report from 1943 and then see how things turned out 73 years later.
The point missed by most is that the people Kanner diagnosed with his type of “autism” do not fit the description most people (including me) now use for Kanner’s Autism, or Classic Autism. You just have to read his case reports. He includes people who were much higher functioning.
As for Asperger, some people are now pointlessly debating how much of a Nazi he was. Since he lived in Vienna in 1943, he was unlikely to have been an avid anti-Nazi.
What word do we use to describe all those nice doctors and parents who in 1943 sent three and four year old American children with autism, or Down syndrome, to live out a very short life in an institution, then called a “Home for the feeble minded”?
As they say, those in glass houses should not throw stones.
Fitter Families for Future Firesides
Case #1 - Donald Grey Triplett
First seen by Kanner in 1938, at the age of five, and the first subject in his paper of 1943, Donald Triplett is still alive and well, aged 82, and living in Mississippi.
At the age of one he could accurately hum and sing songs. By the age of two he knew the names of a great number of houses in his home town. He knew the Presidents of the United States by their pictures. Aged four, he was institutionalized.
As you can read in the link below, things turned out rather well for Donald. His saving grace was that even though his parents put him into an institution at the age of four, they had second thoughts and a year later took him back home. 77 years later he is still there, driving his Cadillac to the golf course and back every day.
Had he stayed in “care” things most likely would not have been so rosy.
This does not mean that everybody with Classic autism can/will grow up to be an avid golfer, just that one person did. Good for him.
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