The construction of the field of autism: history and actuality of a diagnosis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5007/2175-795X.2025.e99903Keywords:
Autism, Public policies, ChildhoodAbstract
Autism is a field of study that, from its origins, has suffered and produced rapid recompositions. Its history has not been produced linearly and is made up of a constant movement of scientific waves that incorporate different work and therapeutic approaches. This diagnostic category's ability to cross borders and transit between fields of knowledge favors its circulation. In addition, the increase in the prevalence rates of the diagnosis, mobilization of parental associations and autistic people themselves have transformed the issue into a public health concern. How did so many children come to be labeled as autistic in such a short period of time? Autism diagnosis has become a political issue. We revisit the history of autism to move the canonical narrative from its naturalization. In opposition to the a-historicism of the concept, we aimed to demonstrate that the autistic diagnostic category was not a discovery: Kanner's and Asperger's narratives have a before and after. A before, which places Kanner's gesture of naming the condition "infantile autism" in the register of construction; and an after, which raises the autism diagnosis to the status of an epidemic and a paradigm of developmental disorders, making it an abnormality curve regarding where children's development is placed. In reviewing this historical journey, we have chosen elements that underlie the transformation of autism from a diagnosis constructed in child psychiatry as relatively rare in a public health concern.
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