From “Deficit” to “Difference”: Recognising Early Signs of Autism Through a Modern Lens
In 1943, child psychiatrist Leo Kanner published a paper describing 11 children who shared a “powerful desire for aloneness” and an “anxious obsessive desire for the maintenance of sameness” (Kanner, 1943). For decades, this condition, now known as Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), was viewed strictly through a medical lens as a set of deficits to […]