The door bell rang, heralding the arrival of another guest for Alicia's birthday party. Her mother opened the door and looked down to see Jack, the last guest to arrive. It was her daughter's ninth birthday and the invitation list had been for ten girls and one boy, Alicia's mother had been surprised at this inclusion, thinking that girls her daughter's age usually consider boys to be smelly and stupid, and not worthy of an invitation to a girl's birthday party. But Alicia had said that Jack was different. His family had recently moved to Birmingham and Jack had been in her class for only a few weeks. Although he tried to join in with the other children, he hadn't made any friends. The other boys teased him and wouldn't let him join in any of their games. Last week he had sat next to Alicia while she was eating her lunch, and she listened to him, she thought he was a kind and lonely boy who seemed bewildered by the noise and hectic activity of the playground. He looked cute, a younger Harry Potter, and he knew so much about so many things. Her heart went out to him and, despite the perplexed looks of her friends when she said he was invited to her party, she was determined he should come.
And here he was, a solitary figure clutching a birthday card and present which he immediately gave to Alicia's mother. She noticed he had written Alicia's name on the envelope, but the writing was strangely illegible for an eight-year-old , ' You must be Jack,' she said and he simply replied with a blank face, 'Yes'. She smiled at him, and was let about to suggest he went into the garden to join Alicia and her friends when he said, 'Alicia's birthday present is one of those special dolls that my mum says every girl wants, and she chose it, but what I really wanted to get her was some batteries. Do you like batteries? I do, I have a hundred and ninety-seven batteries. Batteries are really useful. What batteries do you have in your remote controllers?' Without waiting for a reply, he continued, ' I have a special battery from Russia. My dad's an engineer and he was working on an oil pipeline in Russia and he came home with six triple-A batteries for me with Russian writing on them. They are my favourite. When I go to bed I like to look at my box of batteries and sort them in alphabetical order before I go to sleep. I always hold one of my Russian batteries as I fall asleep. My mum says I should hug my teddy bear but I prefer a battery. How many batteries do you have?
Eventually she said, 'Jack, you must go into the garden to say hi to Alicia and you must go now.' Her facial expression clearly indicated there was no alternative. He gazed at her face for a few seconds, as if trying to read the expression, and then off he went. She looked out of the kitchen window and watched him run across the grass towards Alicia. As he ran through a group of four girls, she noticed one of them deliberately put out her foot to trip him up. As he fell awkwardly to the ground, the girls all laughed. But Alicia had seen what happened and went over to help him get to his feet.
This fictitious scene is typical of an encounter with a child with Asperger's syndrome. A lack of understanding, limited ability to have a reciprocal conversation and an intense interest in a particular subject are the core features of this syndrome. Perhaps the simplest way to understand Asperger's syndrome is to think of it as describing someone who perceives and thinks about the world differently to other people.
Althought clinicians have only recently described these differences, the unusual profile of abilities that we define as Asperger's syndrome has probably been an important and valuable characteristic of our species throughout evolution. It was not until the late twentieth century that we had a name to describe such individuals. We currently use the diagnostic term Asperger's syndrome, based on the remarkably perceptive descriptions of Dr Hans Asperger, a Viennese paediatrician, who, in 1944, noticed that some of the children referred to his clinic had very similar personality characteristics and behaviour. By the mid-1940s, the psychological study of childhood in Europe and America had become a recognized and growing area of science with significant advances in descriptions, theoretical models and assessment instruments, but Asperger could not find a description and explanation for the small group of similar and unusual children that he found intriguing. He suggested the term Autistische Psychopathen im Kindesalter. A modern translation of the original German psychological term 'psychopathy' into current English terminology would be personality disorder -- that is, a description of someone's personality rather than a mental illness such as schizophrenia.
Asperger was clearly entranced by children with autistic personality disorder and he wrote a remarkably perceptive description of the children's difficulties and abilities (Asperger 1944). He observed that the children's social maturity and social reasoning were delayed and some aspects of their social abilities were quite unusual at any stage of development. The children's use of language was pedantic, and some children had an unusual prosody that affected the tone, pitch, and rhythm of speech. The grammar and vocabulary may have been relatively advanced but, at the end of the conversation, one had the impression that there was something unusual about the ability to have the typical conversation that would be expected with children of that age. Asperger also observed and described conspicuous impairments in the communication and control of emotions, and a tendency to intellectualize feelings. Empathy was not as mature as one would expect, considering the children's intellectual abilities. The children also had an egocentric preoccupation with a specific topic of interest that would dominate their thoughts and time. Some of the children had difficulty maintaining attention in class and had specific learning problems. Asperger noted that they often needed more assistance with self-help and organizational skills from their mothers than one would expect. He described conspicuous clumsiness win terms of gait and coordination. He also noted that some children were extremely sensitive to particular sounds, aromas, textures and touch.
Asperger considered that the characteristics could be identified in some children as young as two or three years, although for most children, the characteristics only became conspicuous some years later. He also noticed that some of the parents, especially the fathers of such children, appeared to share some of the personality characteristics of their child. He wrote that the condition was probably due to genetic or neurological rather than psychological or environmental, factors. In his initial and subsequent publications and a recent analysis of his patient records for children he saw over three decades, it is apparent that he considered autistic personality disorder as part of a natural continuum of abilities that merges into the normal range (Asperger 1944, 1952, 1979; Hippler and Klicpera 2004). He conceptualized the disorder as a life-long and stable personality type, and did not observe the disintegration and fragmentation that occurs in schizophrenia. He also noted that some of the children had specific talents that could lead to successful employment and some could develop life-long relationships.
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Originally Posted by Strawberry
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