Nel mese di ottobre 2014 il numero della rivista della società di psicologia inglese fu dedicato interamente all'autismo con il titolo 'Mito e realtà'. E' interessante leggere alcuni commenti nel numero seguente sotto il titolo ' La fine dell'autismo?'
https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/volume-27/edition-11/end-autism#
In particolare;
"....Several authors mentioned the probable existence of autisms (plural), but still referred to ‘the condition’, ‘having autism’ or to ‘sub-types of autism’ (all singular). The terminology we use by default reinforces an implicit assumption that autistic characteristics must have something in common at the biological as well as the behavioural level. It’s this assumption that in my view is largely responsible for autism remaining an enigma...."
E
"..This trend – the more children diagnosed, the fewer and less specific the diagnostic criteria – rang alarm bells about criterion validity; Kanner himself complained about a ‘pseudo-diagnostic wastebasket’ (Feinstein, 2010).
The term ‘autism’ had shifted from being a behavioural descriptor to being widely construed as indicating a single medical condition, albeit one framed exclusively in behavioural terms. Researchers have tended to focus on commonalities and behaviours and to overlook differences and somatic symptoms. Because the sensory abnormalities, hypermobility, food intolerances and digestive problems often reported as concurrent with autistic behaviours are not common to everybody diagnosed with autism, they’ve been marginalised as ‘comorbidities’ even though they could be indicators of the causes of autistic behaviour. Gillberg and Coleman (1992), for example, noted the association between autistic behaviours and chromosomal abnormalities, metabolic disorders, viral and bacterial diseases, structural malformations, sensory impairments and 20 other medical syndromes. The implication is that autistic behaviours are analogous to, say, respiratory problems; all patients have some symptoms in common but not all respiratory problems have the same causes.
.... Perhaps it’s time to start thinking about the end of ‘autism’.

Sue Gerrard
Shropshire

References
Eisenberg, L. & Kanner, L. (1958). Early infantile autism 1943–1955. In C.F. Reed, I.E. Alexander & S.S. Tomkins (Eds.) Psychopathology: A source book. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Feinstein, A. (2010). A history of autism. Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell.
Gillberg, C. & Coleman, M. (1992). The biology of the autistic syndromes (2nd edn). London: Mac Keith Press.
Kanner, L. (1943). Autistic disturbances of affective contact. Nervous Child, 2, 217–250.
Wing, L. & Gould, J. (1979). Severe impairments of social interaction and associated abnormalities in children: Epidemiology and classification. Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia, 9, 11–29."