#but you really don't get personal advocates and autistic people themselves talking about autism till the late 80s and 90s

[mightydragoon]

*cracks knuckles like this hasn’t been my dissertation* 

I really reccomend Bonnie Evans: The Metamorphosis of Autism in Britain and Steve Silverman’s Neurotribes book (specifically the later chapters).

Also shhhh don’t tell anyone I got Evans entire book here.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK436841/

Prepare to hear me ramble for a tiny bit. I wish I can go on but no one wants to see that. I should write my own post on this one day.  

The modern understanding of what we still recognise as autism (as in i.e as a spectrum) is probably at most around forty years old.

Warning period typical language to describe autistic people below.

The way Leo Kanner diangosed autism originally in the 1940s was also incredibly narrow and specific as well. So one would only get the most “extreme” cases leaving others to be ignored or diagnosed with something else. And even then they were probably diagnosed under “subnormal”, “pyschotic”, etc anyway.  That’s not even accounting half the shit they did with ECT and LSD to try and treat autistic kids. I digress.  It wasn’t until the 1960s & 1970s he started to retract his theories once the rest of his patinets grew up. Because not all turned out like Donald Trippett.

The joys of mental institutions and subnormal hospitals.  You can guess what happens next. It wasn’t pleasant.

Let’s look at Britian real quick because suprisngly a good amount of work there helped advance our understanding of autism.

They were only moving past the whole “childhood schziophrenia” thing in the 60s and in Britian it took the works of the then National Society for Autistic Children (National Autistic Society now) founded in 1962 by groups of parents with autistic kids who were essentially fed up with the lack of support from the government.   Also because autistic kids during this period were often deemed “subnormal” and “uneducable” (The mental health Act 1959 had still excluded autistics until 1970)  and the parents from those groups fought for the right for their kids to have an education and understand more about autism itself. And plus you know they didn’t want their kids in institutions. Even building specialist schools (*see Sybil Elgar) and later in the 1970s residential homes like Somerset Court.

*See Michael Edge story here: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2011/nov/13/autism-first-child-growing-up

 The fact the word “autism” itself was used compared to childhood sczhiophrenia, mental retardation or pyschotic was also more specifc and neutral term and was a more attractive word that didn’t have the baggage the other words had.

Also fun fact. Would you also believe it was a fucking Tory (Willaim Compton Carr) who first brought up autism in the 1960 in Parliament?  

https://api.parliament.uk/historic-hansard/commons/1960/may/18/mentally-handicapped-children

Plus passing laws in the 1970s which targeted disabled people in general but was a step foward in granting provisions and resources for autistic people. Panaroma even did a bit on highlighting autism to the public and the troubles these specialist schools had with lack of resources and fears about the future for many autistic kids who would probably end up in instituions rendering their work with them obselete. 

 Panorama - 1974 - Autism Provision  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nRSs_WDmsV0&t=1620s

This along with tireless work from pyscholgists like Mildred Creak , Michael Rutter, Victor Lotter, Beate Hermelin, Neil O’Conner, Uta Frith, Lorna and John Wing.  And so much more who were often involved with autistic schools and the like.

*Note Uta Frith is also still alive.

There was also up and during the 1960s still a belief of “refrigerator mothers” too, that it was mothers cold parenting that caused their child to be distant. Like holy shit the stuff Kanner and Bruno Bettleheim said. Bettleheim fucking compared autism to being like a prisoner in a concentration camp. For additionaly points Bettlehim was also a Holocaust Survivor. Take that as you will.

Enter Lorna Wing who was a mother of an autistic child and along with her husband John who knew German and translated Hans Asperger’s work. Lorna basically helped formed the modern understanding of autism with the idea of an autistic spectrum during the late 1970 and 80s.

THE FUCKING 80S!

Concidentally a certain film involving a Rain Man was also made in 1988. There is also a scene where the nurse doesn’t know what autism is. Rain Man has its own problems but it did present autism to the best of their ability of the standard of its time. Raymond Babbit himself whose character inspirated came from savant Kim Peek  and Bill Sackter (a close friend of Barry Morrow) didn’t originate from autism. That was an additional thing worked into the film.

 But what is also important is how signficant that fucking film was in sheading light on something not many people had heard of until then for better or now. but it also unfortunatly set the standard and image of what Autism was in Hollywood even decades after its release.

LOOKING AT YOU SIA’S MUSIC!

Either way that paired with the conept of a spectrum and growing concepts of neurodiversity and people like Temple Grandin (also still very much alive) who are finally being able to tell their stories personally, you start to get increased numbers of people getting diagnosed especially during the 1990s.

And that’s not even getting into the whole Andrew Wakefield (sadly also still alive) shenaginery. Hbomberguy already said enough that speaks volumes on the man.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BIcAZxFfrc