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On Hans Asperger, the Nazis, and Autism: A Conversation Across Neurologies

by Maxfield Sparrow and Steve Silberman How complicit was Hans Asperger with the murderous eugenic policies of the Third Reich in his role as the head of the Children’s Clinic at University of Vienna in the 1930s and 1940s? This painful question, which has vexed autism history for decades, has been reopened by the simultaneous publication of Edith Sheffer’s book “Asperger’s Children” and Herwig Czech’s paper in The Journal of Molecular Autism, “Hans Asperger, National Socialism, and ‘race hygiene’ in Nazi-era Vienna.” By unearthing new information from the municipal archives in Vienna that was mistakenly believed to be lost, Sheffer and Czech make the case that Asperger was more culpable than historians previously believed. They portray him as a calculating, ambitious young physician who never joined the Nazi party but was “prematurely promoted” over the heads of his Jewish colleagues as they were purged from the university in the increasingly…

Love, By Any Other Name

Sarah Macleod quarksandquirks.wordpress.com findingmygrounduu.wordpress.com aspergersathome.com “I love you,” I’d say. “I love you, too,” he’d reply, often snuggling into me speaking the sentiment with his body as much with his words. It’s been over two years since we’ve shared that exchange. Two years — perhaps three — since I’ve heard Bryce, my son with Aspergers, now 10, tell me he loves me. I’d be lying if I said it didn’t hurt. If I said that it was just words and that I don’t care about the words, my nose would grow like mad. Truth is, I know he loves me, but I ache to hear him say it again. On a recent night around the dinner table during a visit with my mother, the subject of love arose. Bryce pronounced, “I don’t love anyone.” Now, my mom is hip to the blunt mannerisms of my Aspie son, so she didn’t…