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Is it that hard to see? I just don't want to be cool
Here's how my day is going: I left the house to walk to the library and came back with blisters on both heels, because my socks had spontaneously committed suicide in transit. That is even shabbier than my usual aesthetic. I am going to need new socks. Also my heels hurt.
On the other hand, Craig Laurance Gidney is enjoying my "dense opiated prose." Any favorable comparison to Tanith Lee improves my afternoon.
These links are a mix of things.
1. I have just learned from Anu Garg that tosspot words are a particular class of compound noun rather than words that are frequently hungover. I had no idea there was a name for them in English. "What does a scarecrow have in common with a pickpocket?" feels like an outtake from Lewis Carroll.
2. I suppose it is appropriate that I read this article for Tisha B'Av. I certainly consider Netanyahu and his administration a disaster for the Jewish people.
3. I don't know that there's ever a good time to read that the roots of autism as a diagnostic category are intertwined with Nazi eugenics. I keep reminding myself that thinking of myself as a profitless and unconscionable waste of other people's resources and time (on repeat these days) is the same kind of idea and I should stop it.
4. For those unaware of the recent trash fire regarding Worldcon 76, the Daily Dot has a good overview. The con chair has just responded on Facebook and Twitter.
5. I have to say that I'm not sure if Alan Turing chained his mug to the radiator because he loved tea that much; I think he might just have hated people stealing his mug.
On the other hand, Craig Laurance Gidney is enjoying my "dense opiated prose." Any favorable comparison to Tanith Lee improves my afternoon.
These links are a mix of things.
1. I have just learned from Anu Garg that tosspot words are a particular class of compound noun rather than words that are frequently hungover. I had no idea there was a name for them in English. "What does a scarecrow have in common with a pickpocket?" feels like an outtake from Lewis Carroll.
2. I suppose it is appropriate that I read this article for Tisha B'Av. I certainly consider Netanyahu and his administration a disaster for the Jewish people.
3. I don't know that there's ever a good time to read that the roots of autism as a diagnostic category are intertwined with Nazi eugenics. I keep reminding myself that thinking of myself as a profitless and unconscionable waste of other people's resources and time (on repeat these days) is the same kind of idea and I should stop it.
4. For those unaware of the recent trash fire regarding Worldcon 76, the Daily Dot has a good overview. The con chair has just responded on Facebook and Twitter.
5. I have to say that I'm not sure if Alan Turing chained his mug to the radiator because he loved tea that much; I think he might just have hated people stealing his mug.
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As an autistic commentator (Michael John Carley) said: Her research is solid. Her intentions are not.
She appears to be opposed to the existence of "autism" as a diagnosis at all (presumably so that she can believe her son doesn't really have it), and to think that arguing that it's somehow "tainted" by Asperger's evident complicity means that, I don't know, anyone who thinks autistic people exist is a Nazi?
As if plenty of other clinicians with no such complicity hadn't described the same groups of children, often independently of each other (as has been documented by Steve Silbermann, in the process of kicking the shit out of Kanner's claims to be the sole discoverer of a sharply-delineated group as opposed to one part of a spectrum). And if we didn't, you know, continue to exist.
Asperger wasn't labelling a group of children previously considered "normal"; he was labelling a group of children previously considered deviant, strange, delinquent, insane, etc.. And that wasn't so we could be exterminated; ironically, it's always been inferred that he was passionate in the defense of the positive qualities and capacity to contribute of children with (what came to be known as) "Asperger's syndrome" because (apparently despite his allegiances) he didn't want us disposed of.
ETA: Anger directed at her, not you; I hope that's clear.
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It was not necessarily, so I appreciate the ETA as well as the link. I agree with Mnookin that Sheffer would have done better to start the story with her son's feelings rather than leave them feeling like an ulterior motive, and I agree with you that the effect comes off like a smear campaign rather than the recognition of a complicated piece of history.
Toward this point—
And that wasn't so we could be exterminated; ironically, it's always been inferred that he was passionate in the defense of the positive qualities and capacity to contribute of children with (what came to be known as) "Asperger's syndrome" because (apparently despite his allegiances) he didn't want us disposed of.
After encountering the initial review of Sheffer, I went and read Herwig Czech's "Hans Asperger, National Socialism, and 'race hygiene' in Nazi-era Vienna" (Molecular Autism 2018 9:29) because it's freely available online. He is the Austrian medical historian whose work was mentioned but not reviewed by the New York Review of Books; his article came out a month before Sheffer's book. He devotes more than a few lines to considering that claim and does not find evidence in favor of it.
He is very clear about what Asperger can and cannot be accused of:
"Neither the Spiegelgrund files nor the case records from Asperger's own ward contain evidence that he ever reported one of his patients to the Public Health Office for the purpose of sterilization . . . Unlike with Herta and Elisabeth Schreiber [two cases where the family circumstances and nature of disability make it difficult to interpret Asperger as in any way not knowing that his recommendation for 'permanent placement' at Spiegelgrund would lead to death], in the 14 cases in question, there is no indication that Asperger expected the children he recommended for transferal to Spiegelgrund (explicitly or by suggestion) to be killed there."
But he really does not believe that just because Asperger didn't rush to tip his child patients into the T-4 program means he was engaged in active protection of them:
"The language he employed to diagnose his patients was often remarkably harsh (even in comparison with assessments written by the staff at Vienna's notorious Spiegelgrund 'euthanasia' institution), belying the notion that he tried to protect the children under his care by embellishing their diagnoses . . . This argument is problematic for several reasons. First, the idea that Asperger tried to protect autistic children from Nazi race hygiene cannot be easily reconciled with the fact that he dedicated a section of his 1944 paper to the hereditary basis of the condition, insisting that 'any explanation based on exogenous factors is absurd'. While this position anticipated later advances in autism research, the question arises whether under the circumstances it was prudent to put such an emphasis on heredity. Had protecting his autistic patients been his primary goal, he could have taken a more flexible position, one less likely to draw the attention of race hygienists to his patients. Second, his prognoses for the 'autistic psychopaths' were far from universally optimistic . . . the argument that Asperger focused on the better-functioning cases in order to protect all of his patients (presumably, by deflecting attention from the less well-functioning) is questionable given that Asperger by no means withheld from his readers the severe impairments of some of the boys. Third, there is a fundamental flaw in the assumption that highlighting the potential of some of his patients would benefit all of them. The children at the lower end of the spectrum did not benefit from the potential ascribed to those on the higher end, even if they shared the overall diagnosis of 'autistic psychopathy.' Their fate did not depend on the diagnostic label but on the individual assessment of their skills or disabilities. If anything, the utilitarian argument of 'social worth' employed by Asperger (and by many of his colleagues) increased the danger to those children who could not fulfill these expectations. Focusing on the higher functioning children did nothing to lift the boat for all of them; those on the lower end still risked being left to drown."
And he does not—in sharp contrast to Shaffer—feel that this information should make any difference to the continued use of the diagnosis or the term:
"An overall appraisal of Asperger's place in the history of youth psychiatry and Heilpädagogik and as a pioneer of autism research will have to go beyond the focus of this paper, which despite the importance of the Nazi period for understanding Asperger's life and work cannot replace a long due biography. Regarding Asperger's contributions to autism research, there is no evidence to consider them tainted by his problematic role during National Socialism. They are, nevertheless, inseparable from the historical context in which they were first formulated, and which I hope to have shed some new light on. The fate of 'Asperger's syndrome' will probably be determined by considerations other than the problematic historical circumstances of its first description—these should not, in any case, lead to its purge from the medical lexicon. Rather, it should be seen as an opportunity to foster awareness of the concept's troubled origins."
It looks as though Czech was much more interested in determining what Asperger's relationship to the Nazi apparatus actually was, Sheffer in eliding Lorna Wing from the narrative and foregrounding the Nazi horrors. These are different goals, and so I am sorry that Sheffer appears to be receiving so much more attention than Czech.
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The fate of 'Asperger's syndrome' will probably be determined by considerations other than the problematic historical circumstances of its first description—these should not, in any case, lead to its purge from the medical lexicon.
Yes, I would strongly suspect that this will contribute to "Asperger syndrome" falling out of use as a term, but it had been removed from the DSM as a distinct label anyway -- everything got rolled up into "autistic spectrum disorder".
I do have complicated and painful feelings (as is inevitable when one finds out someone had respect for was a fucking Nazi); I've read his original paper and it's really good, and Uta Frith's translation of it was in the book I picked up which led to my self-diagnosing and then going on to get a formal diagnosis, without which I might not be alive at this point.
Godammit.
eliding Lorna Wing from the narrative
Which is highly objectionable, because her contribution was monumental. And she has a particularly interesting role as a researcher who was also a parent, and who played a pivotal role in founding what became the National Autistic Society in the UK.
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You're welcome! I fell down a brief rabbit hole of academia since our last exchange. Czech's discoveries were actually public if not widespread knowledge as far back as 2010. (His own family connection to this material was his loving, supportive, one-time Nazi grandfather. It gives me another reason to trust that he understands that people, however difficult it may be to reckon with, are not all one thing.) Silberman in 2016 referred to them as "allegations" and cast doubt on Czech's veracity; he seemed extremely concerned that they were an attempt to discredit autism research in general. I hope he is reassured by the actual published article and I am now very curious to see his reactions to Sheffer.
I do have complicated and painful feelings (as is inevitable when one finds out someone had respect for was a fucking Nazi); I've read his original paper and it's really good, and Uta Frith's translation of it was in the book I picked up which led to my self-diagnosing and then going on to get a formal diagnosis, without which I might not be alive at this point.
That was the context in which I first saw the NYRB link: it was circulating among bits of my friendlist who were autistic and having complicated feelings.
I am glad you are alive. I am glad you took research born out of a killing time and used it to stay alive. I see people argue about whether it is possible to redeem knowledge acquired under circumstances of atrocity or whether even its beneficial uses are tainted intrinsically; some of it is obviously case by case, but in general I think it's like photographs of atrocity. Redemption is not the point. The point is, once the knowledge exists, what do you do with it? The question is less acute with Asperger because he did not actually describe autism as a means toward extermination, but it's still fucking Nazis. And you did the right thing.
(While we're on the subject of Nazi discoveries, however, please enjoy this beautiful takedown of the idea that we owe so many technological advances to the Nazis uniquely and especially the idea that they were a serious threat in an atomic arms race.)
because her contribution was monumental. And she has a particularly interesting role as a researcher who was also a parent, and who played a pivotal role in founding what became the National Autistic Society in the UK.
A very different approach from Sheffer's, then.
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And he's also not the only source of that knowledge; he helped provide ammunition for Wing and co. in developing the idea of the autistic spectrum as something that extended far beyond the very very specific "Kanner-type" autism, but that's work that was happening anyway. So arguably, modern conceptions of autism could well have evolved without his contribution.
(Which is another reason to be angry that Scheffer seems to be trying to argue that his Nazi allegiances somehow taint the whole concept of autism.)
But one painful element is -- I read his paper, and felt seen. He looked at us and actually saw us, at a point when people were generally not seeing us. And it is painful to know that co-existed with collaborating with the T-4 program.
(Not implausible or unknown, because, as you say, we know humans are not all one thing. But saddening. And I need to read the Czech article, at some point when my brain's in better shape.)
Further ironies: when I read up on family history, I found out that there was someone with a screamingly obvious case of undiagnosed Asperger's a few generations back (on the side of the family where at least half the men would tick sub-clinical "autistic traits" anyway). Like many people with undiagnosed AS, he got depression as well, and was in a psychiatric clinic when the Nazis invaded Holland. They shipped out all the Jewish patients en masse to be gassed.
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Apologies for any hurt/startlement caused.
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Thank you. It may not be necessary. I was not hurt in the moment so much as I couldn't tell if the anger at Sheffer contained anger at me for propagating the information/believing her interpretation, which is why I appreciated the clarification.
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So my impulse was more NO SCHEFFER IS WRONG AND WHILE THIS IS UPSETTING INFORMATION IT'S NOT AS UPSETTING AS SHE WANTS TO MAKE IT.
(And then I realized oh shit it might sound like I was angry at you.)
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Good night and I hope sleep finds you at an appropriate point for your time zone.
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Thank you! Sleep well likewise.
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That was extremely thoughtful and hadn't occurred to me! Thank you.
(I do have a non-standard brain and that phrasing is acceptable to me. I come by it on both sides of my family and I have come to realize that I got very lucky in that my parents gave me neutral language to talk about it as far back as I can literally remember. People have joked at me for years that being raised by a mad scientist and a child psychologist clearly explains a few things about my current state, but I think actually it was extremely healthy.)
I was upset by the news about Asperger, but not in the sense that the concepts he pioneered now feel irrevocably tainted, more in the "dammit" sense. He was a German scientist who worked and kept his job through World War II. It was an unpleasant but not total shock. I think I am more upset by Sheffer's declared desire to abolish the label of autism by tarring it with the Nazi brush. That isn't how information should be used. Thanks to the construction of the civilizations in which we live and from which we inherit, damn near everything we know comes to us through some compromised mechanism or has been put to some compromising use; that fact may be real, upsetting, and consequential, but it should not be treated as a "gotcha!"
I will be interested to see the wider reactions in the autistic community. It sounds already as though Sheffer's conclusions are not being blanket-welcomed. I hope it is not too hard on her son.
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Where "she" = Scheffer, not you. Hopefully obviously.
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No worries. That, I did understand.