Autism Spectrum - The Flaws?

Postby davidbanner99@ » Wed Aug 18, 2021 9:31 pm

I'll be discussing this on my blog. A brief search seemed to confirm the ideology of autism as a spectrum simply hasn't been challenged. By anyone.
There are quite a few weaknesses here, the most obvious being Lorna Wing's claim of autism as a spectrum and subsequent blind acceptance of the idea by psychologists. That is, no analysis.
It's no secret I'm not that much of a fan of Wing. In the global ranks of psychiatry, she was quite average. Hans Asperger spent 10 years in Austria during his research and was highly experienced in his field. Wing actually came to research Asperger out of dire necessity. She had an autistic daughter and had found no significant research to rely upon in the UK or USA. Asperger's papers hadn't been translated to English. Therefore, Wing carefully read Asperger and Leo Kanner, sometimes disagreeing. When finally meeting Dr Asperger in London, he was quick to disagree with the suggestion Autistic Psychopathy functioned on a spectrum. And, my take on it was he was right because, during 20 odd years, psychologists were plain confused. Asperger Syndrome was scrapped from the DSM due to problems using a diagnosis. My take on that is, very often, psychologists were dismissing severity of symptoms on the basis of continuum or spectrum.
I have some very early texts by Dr Suhareva, the Ukranian Jewish psychologist and geneticist who first identified Asperger's and Kanner's autism in children. That was in 1925, which makes her effectively a major pioneer in psychology. Looking carefully at that paper, we see the spectrum idea comes close to Kretschmer's variety of psychopathic personalities. This most definitely postulated the concept of opposite traits in psychopathic types. As far back as the 1920s, Suhareva and a small group of elite psychiatrists criticized Krechtsmer's theory. It was viewed as too vague and indefinite. My good guess is Wing latched upon Kretschmer's essays (quoted on her reading list) and morphed it into her spectrum approach. American psychologists simply swallowed the concept and seemed to lack objectivity. Had Wing read Suhareva and Schneider (not on her list), she might have noticed the Ukranian geneticist stepped into history by addressing flaws in the spectrum approach to neurological disorders.
As to me, my objection rests on the very basic awareness that Asperger Disorder is recognised by a range of interacting core symptoms that remain relatively constant. These I find were identified by Soviet clinicians who had read Asperger in the early 1970s.
Dare I follow on that the whole construction of ASD as a solution to former difficulties simply harks back to ideas that even Kretschmer himself had to modify?
davidbanner99@
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