Significance of the epigraph for Kanner's paper

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By which, of course, I mean Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact.

It's a quote from "Glimpses into Child Life" by Rose Zeligs:

What does this say about the nature of autism and Kanner's paper?

It strikes me as a comment about perspective, and about the subjectivity of emotion.

Kanner wrote from his perspective as a professional, but the perspective of the individual has inherent limitations.....any NT's interpretation of the emotional/experiential aspects of autistic behavior is not necessarily accurate, regardless of the qualifications of the individual doing the interpreting.

But why start his paper with a quote about emotion at all?

Oh! I think I misunderstood your original question....I think I've got it now (I'm sorry if I don't!).

I imagine he started his paper with a quote about emotion because he viewed autism as an "emotional disturbance" rather than a neuro-cognitive difference. This is my thought because:

1. I think "affective contact," in the lingo of psychology/psychiatry, means "emotional contact";

2. Throughout the paper, he seems to describe the symptoms of autism in terms of emotional response (in terms of "anxiety" and "dread") and does not seem to consider that any of the children he studied had cognitive differences that might account for some/all of their behavior:



I think in Leo Kanner's time, psychologists and psychiatrists didn't really have an understanding of cognitive/information-processing differences.....you were either intelligent or you weren't. (Whereas today, I think most psychologists/psychiatrists recognize that intelligence is complicated and can be expressed in an infinite number of ways). If Kanner could see the intelligence these children possessed but had no understanding of the different ways that people process information, it seems likely that the only explanation he'd find for their unusual behavior was an emotional problem.

For his time, I thought that Kanner's interpretation of autism was decent. I mean that he described autistic children as being emotionally self-sufficient and happy doing their own activities and hating intrusions from the outside world, all of which really did describe the internal experience of this autistic child. I imagine that it describes the internal experience of others who were not suffering or locked-in, even though NTs project onto them the NT ways of thinking and decide that they are.