Asperger syndrome (AS) was formerly a separate diagnosis under autism spectrum disorder. Under the DSM-5 and ICD-11, patients formerly diagnosable with Asperger syndrome are diagnosable with Autism Spectrum Disorder. The term is considered offensive by some autistic individuals. It was named after Hans Asperger (1906–80), who was an Austrian psychiatrist and pediatrician. An English psychiatrist, Lorna Wing, popularized the term "Asperger's syndrome" in a 1981 publication; the first book in English on Asperger syndrome was written by Uta Frith in 1991 and the condition was subsequently recognized in formal diagnostic manuals later in the 1990s.
Details of Hans Asperger's actions as a psychiatrist in Nazi era Austria, made public in 2018, incited debate of the syndrome's name and public lobbying for a renaming of the syndrome.
Discovery of autistic psychopathy
Hans Asperger
Hans Asperger was director of the University of Vienna Children's Clinic. As a result, he spent most of his professional life in Vienna. Throughout Asperger's career, he was also a pediatrician, medical theorist, and medical professor. His works were published largely in German. He is most well known for his work with mental disorders, especially those in children. As a child, Asperger appeared to have exhibited some features of the very condition named after him, such as social remoteness and talent in language.
Asperger's research
Asperger's 1940 work, Autistic psychopathy in childhood, found that four of the 200 children studied had difficulty with integrating themselves socially. Although their intelligence levels appeared normal, the children lacked nonverbal communication skills, failed to demonstrate empathy with their peers, and were physically clumsy. Their verbal communication was either disjointed or overly formal, and their all-absorbing interest in a single topic dominated their conversations. Asperger named the condition "autistic psychopathy", and described it as primarily marked by social isolation. Asperger described those patients as like "little professors" who talked about their interests at great length, and believed the individuals he described would be capable of exceptional achievement and original thought later in life. Asperger's paper defended the value of high-functioning autistic individuals, writing "We are convinced, then, that autistic people have their place in the organism of the social community. They fulfill their role well, perhaps better than anyone else could, and we are talking of people who as children had the greatest difficulties and caused untold worries to their care-givers." However, he also wrote concerning his other cases, "Unfortunately, in the majority of cases the positive aspects of autism do not outweigh the negative ones...In many cases the social problems are so profound that they overshadow everything else ... the problems are compensated by a high level of original thought and experience."
A Soviet child psychiatrist, Grunya Sukhareva, described a similar syndrome that was published in Russian in 1926, and in German in 1932.
Fritz V.
Fritz V. is a pseudonym that Hans Asperger used to refer to his first patient. This makes him the first person in history to be identified as having Asperger's Syndrome. Fritz displayed many behavioral problems in childhood and acted out at school but he had a strong interest in mathematics and astronomy, particularly the theories of Isaac Newton. Fritz grew up to become a professor of astronomy and solved an error in Newton's work he originally noticed as a child. Much of what Asperger learned about the condition in its early days derives from his meetings with Fritz, whom he kept track of throughout his life.