Betrachtungen zum Autismus

Abstract

Autism today is a widely used term, yet what is understood by autism has changed considerably since first being introduced in scientific discourse almost 100 years ago. Autism is one example for the influence of the psychoanalytic school of Sigmund Freud on scientific psychiatry at the beginning of the 20th century. In particular psychoanalysis had an impact on Eugen Bleuler's concept of schizophrenia. The Swiss psychiatrist did not only acknowledge and follow a biological, but also a psychological approach to psychiatry and thus opened up his subject to psychoanalytic thoughts. This paper provides insights into the term's conceptual history--or, more specifically and precisely--sheds light on the expansion of the term's scope, which has gotten to be used for more and more symptoms and phenomena. When Bleuler first presented the term autism, he used it to refer to a classical schizophrenic symptom. Since, however, Bleuler was not very specific and exclusive in his definition, the term was soon used for other phenomena as well, such as to describe a schizoid symptom in the sense of today's schizoid personality disorder (schizoid autism). The concepts of autistic hebephrenia and depressive autism are further examples how the term was used and give insight into how the contents behind the term changed, got less and less specific and widened its scope. Due to its growing vagueness its suitability and usability as a psychopathological term decreased. This process further was strengthened when the word autism got more and more widely used in colloquial language for different aspects of day-to-day routine and thinking. Thus in psychiatry today, autism is exclusively used in connection with the so-called autism spectrum disorders, but has, as other formerly exclusively technical terms, different and rather unspecific meanings in everyday communication.