Autism in flux: a history of the concept from Leo Kanner to DSM-5

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that a new relation between past and present – a supposed historical continuity in the meaning of autism – is created by the histories written by the discipline itself. In histories of autism written by ‘practitioner-historians’, a sense of scientific progress and an essentialist understanding of autism legitimize and reinforce current understandings and research directions in the field of autism. Conceptual discontinuities and earlier complexities and disputes concerning classifying and delineating autism are usually left out of the positivist narrative of autism. In an alternative history of the concept of autism, I demonstrate that there have been major shifts in the type of symptoms, signs and impairments that were – and are – thought to be essential and specific for autism.