Putting it All On The Laundry Line
Welcome back to the Audacious Aspie! This week we will finish our look at the troubling article on our dear...uh, frenemy, doctor? Mr. Asperger. When we left off last week, we found out about his “progressive” belief concerning the children on the spectrum and more documents painting him as a Nazi stooge. So what will we discover on this last look at the NPR article? Will, if recent history is anything to go by, you might want to watch an up-beat, happy movie or something after all this.
Best stay in your happy place for this post. In fact, you should have been in your happy place two posts ago. Actually, maybe just stay in your happy place from here on. You’ll be...happier.
So, after the shock that Hans Asperger’s history is not widely known within the Autistic/Asperger community, the interviewee is asked the question: Why is it important to change the name? Ever heard of Eponymous diagnoses? No, it’s not another medical diagnoses discovered by our lovely Doctor. It’s a type of honour, granted to those who discover a condition for the first time and “to commend their work as human beings” (NPR: Doctor behind Asperger’s Syndrome Subject To Name Change). Which, the interviewee believes, Dr. Asperger does not deserve.
Reason number 2: it is not an official diagnosis within the American Psychiatric Association, being reclassified in 2013 as Autism spectrum disorder in the United States. Aspergers, as far as the States as concerned, does not exist, but still exists within the W.H.O. No, not the British rock band, The Who, but the World Health Organization. However, even then it’s being seen as “indistinct from other criteria for Autism” (Paragraph 8).
What a ride eh? To think that the very man, of whom our very condition is named after, had some pretty severe ties to the Nazi regime. A strong argument to change the name of the condition, perhaps? But if we do, what shall we call it? Should we name it after another person? Should we give it a scientific name? What will this do concerning the world's view of us, or of ourselves? Perhaps, we will find out.
We’ll see what's on the other side of the turn. With any luck, it won't be to to horrible. At worst, Trump will just say “see? There are good Autistics, and bad Autistics. That's how you say it right?”
Anyways, this has been this weeks post. Next week, I will put out another opinion piece on this topic (because it’s never too late to cash in on this breaking-news information and boost my readership). Until next time, this continues to be, the Audacious Aspie.
Sources used:
https://www.npr.org/2018/05/12/610716324/doctor-behind-asperger-s-syndrome-subject-to-name-change