Kind of just what the title says. What are the ways that autism/Asperger’s (and other autism spectrum disorders) have been received, accepted, dealt with, etc. throughout history (and across different cultures)?
I know this is tricky, considering it hasn’t always “existed”, from a diagnosable standpoint, but I’ve always heard passing reference to certain historical figures (like Isaac Newton) most likely having Asperger’s.
Just curious if anyone has any experience with studies or information on this topic.
Thanks!
I have [an earlier answer](How were people with autism treated in the past?) that might interest you!
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My answer is limited to Europe/America.
Autism is a discovery or recognition of the 20th century. Although the word itself was coined around 1910 (from Greek autos, self) to describe a subset of schizophrenia, the work to diagnose what we know as autism today was carried out in the 1930s-early 40s by child psychiatrists Hans Asperger in Vienna and then Leo Kanner in the U.S. Asperger sketched out something very much akin to what we currently call "the spectrum"--autism manifesting in varieties of severity, from children trapped entirely in their own words of echolalia, disengagement, repetitive motion up to "little professors" who went on to become actual professors. Kanner focused more on the severe end of the spectrum, and is most well known today for his Freudian interpretation that "frigid mothers" emotionally neglecting their children caused the withdrawal and repetitive behaviors.
So that means that prior to the mid-1940s, we aren't going to have sources that explicitly identify someone as autistic. We have to be very careful to distinguish between "reading the source" and "reading modern ideas into the source." Nevertheless, historians have made some fairly persuasive arguments that specific cases are described in a way very much resembling what we would diagnose today as autism.
It is where we find these instances, as well as looking at the context of Asperger's and Kanner's research, that we find clues to how people with symptoms resembling autism were seen and treated.
Uta Frith argues that the earliest firmly identifiable case is Hugh Blair, born in Scotland around 1708. We know about him because he ended up in court: his brother argued that Blair lacked the mental capacity to contract a marriage (i.e. the marriage was invalid and thus he, the brother, should get Blair's inheritance). In the legal and social terminology of the time, Blair was an idiot: mentally disabled from birth ("lunatic" was the legal status for someone who developed mental illness later in life).
The evidence presented to have Hugh Blair declared a legal idiot resembles autism of some degree of severity: echolalia, virulent need for a sense of order, repeating questions as well as answers, "tactlessness," difficulty making eye contact, stereotypy (odd repetitive movements). Nevertheless, he was able to engage in society well enough to get married.
So Blair was seen as an idiot--mentally ill or disabled. Of course, his brother had an ulterior motive in portraying Blair that way. Still, other early accounts of probable autism reflect a similar pattern. In Civil War-era America, groundbreaking Hero For Disabled Children Samuel Howe (the first major proponent in America of educating disabled children at all, and the husband of badass abolitionist-feminist-poet Julia Ward Howe) conducted a study of idiocy (mental disability) among Massachusetts children. In his records are children exhibiting symptoms that we would call autism. Howe, in fact, was bothered by having to identify some of them as idiots--their behavior was wildly aberrant and they could not engage linguistically with other people, but they could--for example--recall and write out complicated musical scales and notation.
So once again, autism at a certain point of severity became lumped in with general "mental disability from childhood." Autism as mental illness is even visible in Asperger's own work: the diagnosis he arrived at was actually "autistic psychopathy" (Autistischen Psychopathen, autistic psychopaths, was his first term; by his later publications he followed what became convention with Kanner to use Autismus).
So there are still three questions. If people with autism were seen as "idiots"/mentally disabled, how were they treated; why don't we see autism earlier than 1747; and what about mild autism/what the DSM-V no longer calls Asperger's Syndrome. All of these tie into the larger history of disability and mental illness.
Scholars used to talk about a sweeping progression in western history: from the Middle Ages where mental disabilities were seen as demonic possession, to the recognition of mental disability as a natural problem basically in the 15th century but without any hope of a solution, to the 19th century efforts (with some 18th century precursors) to identify and treat problems. At the early end, this is not entirely accurate. Roman law already had the beginnings of the concept of not guilty by reason of insanity, for example, that was picked up by medieval law codes. Actual case records seem to suggest this was used for people exhibiting cognitive impairment, which means they weren't seen as possessed.
In the Middle Ages, people with disabilities that prevented them from surviving independently (or with a spouse) were the responsibility of their families. This was true of mental as well as physical disabilities. We can't really reconstruct how these people would have been treated by their families, though (cared for versus abused); the best we get is from saints' miracle stories that show families and friends going to great difficulty to carry their disabled loved ones to shrines for hopeful healing, and some snippets that describe relatives helping a physically impaired person get out of bed, move around, etc.
Family responsibility is going to remain the primary way people with mental disabilities, of which autism would have been seen as one at the time, were cared for by society if they could not live independently. Still, there were some developments. Although there are earlier hospitals run mostly by monasteries that could have cared for indigent people with mental disabilities, some of the first real efforts to institutionalize (but not treat as in work towards a cure) people with mental impairment on a more systematic basis are from the 15th century.
Second, in Renaissance-era England, "idiots" and "lunatics" (according to the law code) were technically wards of the king, who could assign them to someone to care for. This was pragmatic: it allowed the king control over their property. Needless to say, families liked to fight this provision if it ever came up, to keep the property and money in their lineage's hands. So in this setting, people with mental disabilities could be pawns in a money game. There is no way to know how any one of them felt about that.
I'm not as good on the 19th century prehistory of psychiatry and I know there are some people on AH who are, so I'd rather leave that part of the story for them.
Now, one of the things that should be apparent by now is that I've been discussing the more severe end of the spectrum, while OP framed their question more in terms of the milder end. For a prehistory of autism, this is how it kind of has to be. Mental disability before the 18th/19th century wasn't the province of doctors, of medical specialists, to be diagnosed and treated. As we saw in England, it was a question for the courts; as I described for the Middle Ages in general, it was a question for families who watched a relative NOT be able to handle regular society. In other words, mental disability was a social identification: basically up to the community. Where the balance tipped would have depended entirely on the person's specific context and relations. We saw earlier, for example, that Hugh Blair was able to get married and make it all the way to age 39 before his brother, with clear ulterior motives, moved to have him declared an idiot/incompetent.
And one final point that I'll make as a medievalist, regarding OP's contention that mild autism is a particularly disability in modern society: medieval Europe turned on personal relationships and reputation in a way that it's almost hard to fathom today. One's fama (reputation/gossip about/past deeds/stereotype categories) could be legally admissable evidence in court. I don't think we can make a blanket statement that social skills were less important then, than they are now.
Some sources: