Autism at a Glance (7:00pm) by Liza Beardsley

2025-09-08 23:35:37 UTC

Something I didn't know before that I know now...

Learning that from 1907-1939 laws were enacted that legalized forced sterilizations and prohibited individuals that had mental or physical defects and couples of mixed-race from marrying is an awful reality. What makes this more concerning is that Hitler used the US's model of Eugenics as a foundation for ethnic cleansing.

I never knew that the US legalized sterilizations. That's a scary sentence to type...

2025-09-08 23:38:53 UTC

Other thoughts-

the concept of refrigerator mother is an interesting but horrifying (DISPROVEN) social theory, after looking into it, a refrigerator mother is a mother who is so distant towards her child that it causes her child to become autistic. Apparently, the "lack of maternal emotional warmth" contributes towards autism.

2025-09-08 23:39:49 UTC

I find it really interesting that Kanner essentially coined the term refrigerator mother. Kanner was primarily studying children of colleagues to conduct his research. Both parents of the children he was studying were typically educated (so an extremely small sample of people). We don't know if the parents were simply acting more cold because they were in public or if they really were acting how they act all the time with their child. I think, like the MMR vaccines, parents of children with autism wanted a reason for why their child had autism... and people who were expecting children wanted a way to prevent autism from impacting their child when in reality it's unpreventable.

2025-09-08 23:42:40 UTC

I find it interesting that while autism has always been present, it wasn’t until society gained greater understanding, knowledge, and awareness that diagnosis rates began to rise so significantly.

2025-09-08 23:42:47 UTC

I found it surprising to learn that Asperger may have signed an oath to Hitler to keep his job. It also made me reflect on how important it is for us, especially in today’s political climate, to stay aware of history and ensure that we continue moving toward values of inclusion, respect, and human dignity rather than repeating harmful patterns of the past.

2025-09-08 23:43:00 UTC

The concept of "refrigerator mothers" was interesting for me to learn about. This term is something I had heard about when I had first begun learning about autism. Learning the history behind how this term came to be was interesting to me as I had never known how much the time period played a role into these beliefs. Understanding that this term was used in conjunction with the time period of children with autism being deemed as "unworthy" of their lives adds a great significance to understanding how and why this certain term was coined. Of course we know that unloving parents doesn't cause a child to have autism, however, at this time everyone was looking for some reason to explain why some children were displaying these differences. Ultimately I found it intriguing to learn about the different people involved in autism research (whether scientifically backed or not) and to figure out why they believed the things that they did as this has helped shape the knowledge we have about autism today, even if it was not all completely accurate.

2025-09-08 23:43:29 UTC

I was familiar with some of this information before reading this, but I gained a deeper understanding of the time period and its impact on the understanding of ASD. For example, ASD was considered foreign in nature to society and frowned upon. I did not know the extent to which society punished this population, such as legalized forced sterilization and euthanasia.

swright7_17 — 2025-09-08 23:44:07 UTC

It seems like back then there was a lot a discussion around diagnosis and creating a term with treatment. The terms ranged from schizoid personality, autistic psychopathy, Asperger's syndrome, early infantile autism, and autism. There was so much variation with multiple different perspectives on the diagnostic criteria for each term. Additionally, I noticed the disorder of Asperger's syndrome was named after Hans Asperger prior to Kanner coining Early Infantile Autism. I often wonder why diagnoses were initially named after a "founder" when there are so many variations of a diagnosis and one person doesn't represent all.

2025-09-08 23:45:24 UTC

Something that I noticed while reading the articles and going through the slides is how deep eugenics and the search for a cure was in Autism research and experimentation at the time. Both Kanner and Asperger were horrible in their attitudes, behavior, and treatment of autistic children, and it’s interesting (and horrifying) to me how the underlying themes of eugenics and separating autistic people from society were carried over and perpetuated in the United States, through forced sterilization, institutionalizing disabled adults and children, and general social stigma and misinformation about autism and disabilities. It’s also devastating that these are all still ongoing today in the united states.

2025-09-08 23:45:29 UTC

It's pretty prominent to hear research disregard women in studies whether that be as a professional or as a patient. After reading Grunia Sukhareva's slide, I took notice thar her studies included both male and female findings for her term "Autisic Psychopathy". Even today, I believe women are still fighting for their spot in science. Biologically speaking, Women and Men differ from each other in a myriad of things.

2025-09-08 23:46:24 UTC

I was very interested to see that autism was originally considered a form of schizophrenia. With what we know now, it seems so distinct, and something I never would have considered to be in the same category. It is interesting to see the progression of research findings over time, and gives me a different perspective on how different presentations of autism may appear similar to different mental illnesses. The research had to start somewhere, because like the quote by Edith Sheffer describes, autism has always existed, it has just not been well understood and identified.

2025-09-08 23:46:44 UTC

I have been really impacted through learning of the horrible treatment of children and women during the early discovery years of autism. Children were deemed fit or unfit by a medical team whether they could successfully be integrated socially. The treatment of those deemed "unfit" was truly gruesome and unthinkable. Also, research done by any woman was discarded because of their gender. Some women were also initially blamed and convinced that they were the reason that their child was autistic. It all is just extremely sad and disheartening to learn.

2025-09-08 23:46:52 UTC

The thing that really stands out to me is how much of the focus was on what children or people could not do, instead of noticing any strengths. Between the readings and the slides, it feels like physicians had the power to decide who lived and who died, sometimes based on their own preferences, or simply because someone did not fit into society’s standards at the time. The discussions of sterilization and the use of words like “euthanasia” were also really shocking. Also Bettelheim's concentration camp influence is very interesting.

I wonder if the focus on deficits stuck around because it was easier to measure or categorize. I also wonder how our understanding of autism might look different if early research had happened in a less politically charged context, or if more research by women had been validated at the time.

From this information I infer that ideas about social value strongly influenced how autism was first described, and that influence still shows up in some of the ways we talk about autism today. I think learning about this history matters because it helps us question the language we use now and push back on any leftover bias or deficit-focused thinking.

2025-09-08 23:47:34 UTC

I wonder why autism research was so focused on boys in the beginning. I recognize that women and girls were marginalized and were expected to fill vastly different when this research began, but it seems like there is still a lack of research on women and girls.

cmuller0 — 2025-09-08 23:49:37 UTC

My group and I talked a lot about how we did not know the history about families once being blamed for causing their child to have autism. The refrigerator mother theory and the whole idea of distant and cold parents causing autism truly shocked me. I think of the families I know personally with autistic children and honestly, I just cannot even imagine such a trusted and well-known researcher saying such awful things to them. I feel like this can even be connected back to the vaccine reading. I feel like knowing this history has made me more understanding of some things maybe I was not as really before. Like for example, with the vaccines I can see more now how families would want something like this to believe in even if research continues to disprove this. Especially with this history as a factor at play.