History of autism

Eugen Beuler coined the word "autism" in schizophrenic patients who screened themselves off and were self-absorbed.

Haus Asperger, independent of Kanner, wrote about a group of children he called autistic psychopaths. In most aspects they resembled the children of Kanners description, the difference was he did not mention echolalia as a linguistic problem that the children talked like they were grown-ups. In addition he mentioned there motor activity which was more clumsy and different from normal children.

The American child psychiatrist Leo Kanner described 11 children with the following common traits: impairments in social interaction, anguish for changes, good memory, belated echolalia, over sensitive to certain stimuli (especially sound), food problems, limitations in spontaneous activity, good intellectual potential, often coming from talented families, he called the children autistic.

The knowledge of autism moves from the Americas to sweden

Autism research accelerated and more and more researchers became convinced that the basic reasons were to be found in neurological disturbances, sometimes combined with hereditary illnesses like tuberous sclerosis, metabolic disturbances like PKU or chromosomal aberrations such as fragile X-chromosome.