ASPERGER’S VERSUS AUTISM.
If an embittered former Changi POW went to the doctor (I’m talking one who, if they complained that the cost of petrol was too high and you suggested they trade their Holden or Ford in on a Toyota Camry, would explode and say, “No, Holden or Ford for me!” and wouldn’t ride in their son’s Toyota Landcruiser or daughter’s Mazda 626) and were told they had Hashimoto’s Thyroiditis, they might have asked their doctor if there was an alternate term for it. Their doctor may have said “Autoimmune Hypothyroidism.”
Of late, I have seen numerous people objecting to the term Asperger’s and when you think about it, it’s easy to understand why.
I remember seeing a birth notice for someone whose surname was Eichmann and I said I wouldn’t be proud to have that as a surname. But as my father said, “It’s a German name, they might not even be related to Adolf Eichmann.”
To someone who was rabidly anti-Japanese, having a condition named after a Japanese physician who was first to describe it might provoke a reaction similar to Basil Fawlty continuously telling his waiter not to mention the war. But it is worthy of note that Dr Hakaru Hashimoto had nothing to do with the Kwantung Army or the imperialism that Japan engaged in between 1895 (the first Sino-Japanese War that saw Korea occupied and Taiwan annexed) and 1945. In fact, he died in 1934.
Hans Asperger was a totally different kettle of fish. Yes, in March 1938, the Anschluss took place (after Hitler invaded the Sudetenland, an area of the former Czechoslovakia that was largely occupied by Germans, and Neville Chamberlain and Hitler agreed that he could have the Sudetenland but not all of Czechoslovakia, only to have Hitler smash it six months later. He then turned his sights on Austria and Arthur Seyss-Inquart had been leader only two days when he decided to allow Nazi Germany in, so they took over without a shot being fired) and Arthur Seyss-Inquart became a Nazi, but Hans Asperger wasn’t an anti-Nazi figure.
Okay, Niklas Frank has written that his father, Hans Frank, the former Nazi lawyer and Governor of Nazi-Occupied Poland, was anti-Semitic but he was more of a political opportunist than a committed Nazi. He was removed from his posts after he annoyed Hitler with a broadcast he made, in January, 1945, but after being arrested by the Allies, in May, 1945, was tried, convicted, sentenced to death and executed, in October, 1946. Hans Asperger was not an opportunist, but he was no Oskar Schindler or Robert Bosch, and he certainly wasn’t a Helmuth von Moltke of the Kreisau Circle.
Hans Asperger’s work was largely ignored or suppressed and was translated after his death, in 1980, by Professor Lorna Wing, an English paediatrician.
My stance is, Hans Asperger was not a heroic man, nor was he someone who deserved the hangman’s noose as richly as Josef Mengele, but had the outside world accepted some of his findings earlier, but used them for good, many of us diagnosed late autistics may have had easier lives. Yes, his findings helped broaden the definition of autism, and they help demonstrate that the “autism epidemic” is a construct of the hateful media, rather than a reality.
What is unfortunate, and I write this from the perspective of someone who is both autistic and has a mother with primary progressive multiple sclerosis, is, just like a person with relapsing-remitting MS that does not progress to secondary progressive after 10–15 years, either through luck or Tysabri infusions is NOT superior to a person with primary progressive MS, a person diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome is not superior to an autistic person. And there is no such thing as full-blown autism, either.
Functioning labels for autism are unhelpful and for this reason, if we think of autism like relapsing-remitting MS, we can see the point demonstrated. A person with relapsing remitting MS may, say following a cold or flu, find that they have a relapse where they are a bit unsteady, but once they’re in remission they don’t quite recover what they had, but they are stable until their next relapse. An autistic person in the right environment, can be calm, relaxed and able to function, yet if overwhelmed, may shutdown or meltdown and be unable to function. Autism functioning is elastic rather than static.
The term Asperger’s may, to some, be simply a name, like Hashimoto’s. Hindsight is always 20:20 vision, however, and had scientists and researchers been able to say, “Yes, Hans Asperger made some valuable observations, even if he was a Nazi sympathiser, but no, a condition should not be named in his honour, rather it should be incorporated into autism, and had people learnt more about autism, and viewed it differently, the lives of many late-diagnosed autistics, such as mine, could have been a lot easier.