In 1943, American child psychiatrist Leo Kanner studied a group of 11 children whom had difficulties with social interactions and dealing changes within their routines. Kanner also noted that many of the children were often intelligent and some had exceptional memory. As a result,h e thought autism to be rooted in “emotional disturbance” and which does not affect cognition.
With Kanner’s observation in mind, the DSM-II, published in 1952, described autism as a form of early childhood schizophrenia marked by a detachment from reality. Many psychiatrists during the 1950s and into the 1960s thought autism was a result of unemotional mothers, or “refrigerator mothers”.
Since then, our understanding of autism has rapidly evolved and we now know the concept of autism being rooted in unfeeling mothers to be untrue. Immense research in the 1960s and the 1970s refuted this claim, pointing to evidence that suggested genetics and brain development to be at the root of autism.
Throughout the 1990s, psychiatrists adopted the idea that autism was a continuous spectrum of conditions, ranging from mild to severe. The Human Genome Project, completed in 2003, reinforced this idea as no specific list of “autism genes” were found. Studies found hundreds of genes, but none exclusively tied back to autism. Today, psychiatrists and other health professionals continue to view autism as a continuous spectrum of conditions.
