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We will have more on those stories are at the top of the hour, but | :00:00. | :00:07. | |
let's catch up with Mickey Higham Nick Higham --. | :00:08. | :00:13. | |
Steve Silberman won the Samuel Johnson Prize for the best | :00:14. | :00:18. | |
nonfiction book of the year. Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism | :00:19. | :00:20. | |
and How to Think Smarter About People Who Think Differently is a | :00:21. | :00:25. | |
book about autism. From its first diagnosis in the 1930s, the prize | :00:26. | :00:33. | |
givers called it ground-breaking and he toured a force of research. -- | :00:34. | :00:38. | |
and a tour de force. Steve Silberman, one of your | :00:39. | :00:57. | |
starting points for this book was an idea that got about in the 90s that | :00:58. | :01:02. | |
there was an epidemic of autism. That was erroneous, wasn't it, what | :01:03. | :01:08. | |
there was was a change in the diagnosis, a perceived increase of | :01:09. | :01:11. | |
the number of people with the disease, but nothing had changed, is | :01:12. | :01:16. | |
that right? That is true. Several things happened that contributed to | :01:17. | :01:22. | |
an epidemic. One was that the diagnosis was radically broadened to | :01:23. | :01:28. | |
include many more people. That was intentional. It was a psychiatrist | :01:29. | :01:32. | |
in London who herself was the mother of a profoundly disabled autistic | :01:33. | :01:37. | |
daughter called Susie. She knew what it was like to raise such a child | :01:38. | :01:41. | |
without support, resources, and access to special education. She did | :01:42. | :01:47. | |
a survey in Camberwell where she started looking for autistic | :01:48. | :01:50. | |
children to figure out what the proper level of Government provision | :01:51. | :01:55. | |
for them would be. She saw many more children than the prevailing, very | :01:56. | :02:00. | |
narrow and monolithic model of autism one accounted for. She | :02:01. | :02:04. | |
basically worked behind the scenes to radically get the criteria for | :02:05. | :02:11. | |
diagnosis. It persuaded governments on both sides of the atom and -- of | :02:12. | :02:21. | |
the Atlantic to help people with the condition and their families. And | :02:22. | :02:24. | |
overturned what has often been, since the first diagnosis in the | :02:25. | :02:30. | |
1930s, a rather bleak clinical approach. They tried to cure people. | :02:31. | :02:35. | |
It isn't something you can cure. And the treatments work often quite | :02:36. | :02:41. | |
horrifying, frankly. That's true. It came in part because there was a | :02:42. | :02:46. | |
prevailing theory that parents were responsible for causing autism in | :02:47. | :02:49. | |
their children. So the recommended treatment was to remove them to | :02:50. | :02:55. | |
institutions, to take them out of the toxic environment of the home. | :02:56. | :03:00. | |
So they were not luxury autism awards for them to go to, they were | :03:01. | :03:05. | |
sent to state hospitals, and psychology waltz for adults. Two | :03:06. | :03:11. | |
generations of autistic children disappeared behind the walls. -- | :03:12. | :03:17. | |
psychology hospital wards. It was this idea of the mother who failed | :03:18. | :03:21. | |
to love her child. Why did psychologists come up with that | :03:22. | :03:26. | |
idea? Psychoanalysis was on the rise in the 1940s when the man who | :03:27. | :03:32. | |
claimed to have found autism came up with that theory. He initially | :03:33. | :03:36. | |
proposed autism as something which was inborn. But he ended up being | :03:37. | :03:40. | |
persuaded by his colleagues that if he claimed it was inborn then there | :03:41. | :03:45. | |
was no hope and there was no role for child psychiatrists like Lee | :03:46. | :03:49. | |
O'Connor. They persuaded him to say it was because of bad parenting. | :03:50. | :03:54. | |
That created an important role for the child psychiatrist which was to | :03:55. | :03:57. | |
actually have more power than the parents and say that these children | :03:58. | :04:01. | |
should be removed from the home and sent to an institution. He was | :04:02. | :04:06. | |
working on developing his first diagnosis in the 1930s. At the same | :04:07. | :04:11. | |
time there was another man doing similar work with a similarly | :04:12. | :04:18. | |
disabled children in Vienna. Yes, he worked in the University of Vienna | :04:19. | :04:21. | |
in the 1930s. He discovered what we now call the autism spectrum. He | :04:22. | :04:29. | |
understood that autism was a lifelong condition that would | :04:30. | :04:31. | |
require support from parents and teachers and the community. He had a | :04:32. | :04:38. | |
very impressing view of autism. He also understood it was something | :04:39. | :04:42. | |
genetic, not something caused by the parents. He had a chief | :04:43. | :04:48. | |
diagnostician who was Jewish. In 1938 the Nazis marched into Austria | :04:49. | :04:53. | |
annexed Austria from the German Fatherland. Like many Jews, he had | :04:54. | :04:59. | |
to leave or die. He was rescued by Leo Connor. That was something that | :05:00. | :05:03. | |
wasn't known until my book was published. It was always thought it | :05:04. | :05:07. | |
was a coincidence, but in fact Leo Connor helped rescue many Jewish | :05:08. | :05:17. | |
clinicians. He hired him, and he evaluated his first autistic | :05:18. | :05:22. | |
patients. When he published his findings initially in Germany, he | :05:23. | :05:28. | |
went to great pains to select Case histories as examples, what we would | :05:29. | :05:32. | |
perhaps term high functioning autism. And there was a reason for | :05:33. | :05:38. | |
that. At the time the Nazis were targeting, for euthanasia, any | :05:39. | :05:45. | |
disabled children. The Nazis launched a secret euthanasia | :05:46. | :05:49. | |
programme against disabled children and adults as a practice run for the | :05:50. | :05:54. | |
Holocaust against the Jews. One of the things they were trying to | :05:55. | :05:56. | |
eradicate was hereditary forms of disability. The children in the | :05:57. | :06:02. | |
clinic became a target. He had to do what he could. He presented the most | :06:03. | :06:07. | |
able of the children as possibly even a boom to the Reich by saying | :06:08. | :06:14. | |
they could be good codebreakers. One of the things you tried to do in | :06:15. | :06:18. | |
this book, one of the ways it changes our perspective, is to | :06:19. | :06:21. | |
emphasise the fact that many autistic people are indeed highly | :06:22. | :06:25. | |
gifted, highly intelligent, you find a lot of them in silicon valley, but | :06:26. | :06:32. | |
the fact remains that autism can be devastating, particularly for | :06:33. | :06:36. | |
families with autistic children. It is often a grim condition to have to | :06:37. | :06:42. | |
live with. I do guilty -- are you guilty of glossing this like him? | :06:43. | :06:48. | |
No. One of the main characters in the book is a child who is barely | :06:49. | :06:55. | |
verbal. They are very profoundly disabled people in the book. | :06:56. | :06:57. | |
Sometimes readers forget about them because they are not quoted, really. | :06:58. | :07:04. | |
They seem to skip over them. My book represents the broad range of the | :07:05. | :07:08. | |
spectrum, which, as you say, goes from very gifted programmers who | :07:09. | :07:12. | |
might have a job in silicon valley, to profoundly disabled people who | :07:13. | :07:16. | |
require assisted living for every day of their lives. What is the | :07:17. | :07:24. | |
future for people with autism, for society and the medical | :07:25. | :07:26. | |
profession's approach towards autism? This is demanding a place at | :07:27. | :07:34. | |
the table when policy is set that affects their lives, such as service | :07:35. | :07:39. | |
provision. They are also contributing the narratives of their | :07:40. | :07:43. | |
own existence to understand autism. By hearing what autistic people go | :07:44. | :07:46. | |
through in daily life we understand the condition of a lot better. You | :07:47. | :07:51. | |
won the Samuel Johnson Prize last night. Pleasing for you. Does it | :07:52. | :07:56. | |
have wider significance? What is nice is that I was the first popular | :07:57. | :07:59. | |
science writer to win the prize in the history of the award. I am glad | :08:00. | :08:04. | |
to open up that field. To make the point that science and literature | :08:05. | :08:07. | |
work very well together. That is what I try to do in this book. Thank | :08:08. | :08:14. | |
you very much, Steve Silberman. | :08:15. | :08:16. |