HANS ASPERGER AND THE AUTISTIC SPECTRUM: Reflections on the past, present and future

For the first episode of season 3 your host travelled to North London to record a conversation with Dame Uta Frith whose translation of Hans Asperger’s now famous paper was published 35 years ago. After discussing her reasons for moving to the UK, Uta talks about Lorna Wing’s work and influence before discussing the innovative and multidisciplinary clinic in which Asperger worked in the 1930 and 40s and the structure of his paper - four detailed case descriptions of children with what best translates as ‘autistic psychopathology’. We discuss origin of the term ‘autistic’ and how the concept has evolved since the 1960s, from a narrow and severely disabling non-verbal condition to a spectrum and the difficulties inherent in a condition of varying severity. The episode concludes with three short extracts from Dame Uta’s translation. In the next episode, with novelist Alice Jolly, we will discuss Asperger’s world in more detail, including recent evidence of complicity with Nazi eugenic practices. Check out Alice’s novel ‘The Matchbox Girl’.Participants:Dame Uta Frith FRS is Emeritus Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at University College, London.Ken Barrett is an artist, writer and retired neuropsychiatrist http://www.kenbarrettstudio.co.uk/ http://cornwallcomposers.com/stephen.htmMore on Dame Uta and her research : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uta_FrithAnd on the BBC's "Life Scientific: https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b017w65rA review of Two Heads is here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2022/mar/29/two-heads-by-uta-frith-chris-frith-alex-frith-and-daniel-locke-reviewAlice Jolly's novel ‘The Matchbox Girl’: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/matchbox-girl-9781526681034More on Hans Asperger: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_AspergerRead extract from Uta's translation of Asperger's paper (with the permission of the translator) from: Chapter 2, 'Autism and Asperger Syndrome, Edied by Uta Frith, Cambridge, 1991.Alice Jolly's novel 'The Matchbox Girl': https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/matchbox-girl-9781526681034/Music: Prelude to Act 1 of the opera Brainland composed by Stephen Brown www.brainlandtheopera.co.ukSketch by KB. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.