What is "aut" (or "auto") in autism?

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Can anyone answer that? I know "aut(o)" is "self". Makes it sound like we are selfish people. Not really quite true, I think.

More like autonomous.

Well, technically it means withdrawn into self. Not necessarily selfish, more like in your own world.

I've wondered that too. No idea, but drawn into own world sounds about right.

Well we dont interact with people. It was named after the schizophrenia classifications back from the dsm2 to dsm3. People had poor understanding of autism back when they named it. My doc says that severe autism, people are no different then objects. Now days we have the understanding that autistic people want to interact but have deficits in to varying degrees. There's still a huge lack of education and understanding of how the general public perceive autistic people even today. Only autistic specialists, us autistics, people who are close to us know whats truly going on.

"autos" is self

The above have it right, "autism" basicually means "selfism"

When I was very young I used to think of other people as being pieces of rubber, and I was the only real person. Even now, I appear to be selfish and rude sometimes because I am inside my own little world. I will push to get through a door first and then feel bad about it afterwards because I realise I should have waited my turn. Even though not much was known about autism when it was named, it still kind of fits. And not being able to interact with other people very well, people with autism would be by themselves a lot and seem to be happy with their own company.

I hope you (and the entire world) know that your doc is WRONG on that.

Wait, those that mean "autistic" means "selfish"?

No, it doesn't mean "selfish".

Back when we didn't know autism was a distinct phenomenon from schizophrenia, "autism" was a symptom of schizophrenia. It meant "Disconnected from other people; withdrawn." This is a symptom which also occurs in schizophrenia, where thought disorder, disorganization, and movement and perception difficulties can make it very difficult for the person with schizophrenia to communicate clearly with the outside world, especially with other people.

"Autism" was imported into "childhood autism" once we realized that autism did not involve psychosis and was a separate phenomenon from schizophrenia. The sense that NTs get from autistic people, especially profoundly autistic people or very young autistic children, is that the person is not quite connecting with them--due to the lack of eye contact, odd or absent speech, and difficulty expressing oneself. You also have to remember the very earliest autism theories--they thought it was a neurosis (a mental illness) in which a neglected child deliberately severed contact with the outside world. Even today, one of the traits of classic autism is a seeming lack of interest in the world, or else a focus on small details rather than the larger world.

Thus, "Autism": Someone who is separated from others and the rest of the world, and focused on himself.

It's not a perfect description. It doesn't take into account how very intimately many autistic people are connected to their surroundings, and how intensely they may experience their sensory surroundings. It doesn't take into account that autistic children are as attached to their parents as any other child is. And it doesn't take into account that some of that "aloneness" that NTs see in autistics may simply be due to the lack of NT-style nonverbal cues, rather than a true lack of desire to interact.

Still--it's not so bad, as far as a name goes; and anyway, it's quickly growing to mean, more than anything, the spectrum of PDDs as we know them today.