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Asperger's Children

The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna

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About this listen

In 1930s and 1940s Vienna, child psychiatrist Hans Asperger sought to define autism as a diagnostic category, aiming to treat those children, usually boys, he deemed capable of participating fully in society.

Depicted as a compassionate and devoted researcher, Asperger was in fact deeply influenced by Nazi psychiatry. Although he did offer individualized care to children he deemed promising, he also prescribed harsh institutionalization and even transfer to Spiegelgrund, one of the Reich's deadliest killing centers, for children with greater disabilities, who, he held, could not integrate into the community.

With sensitivity and passion, Edith Sheffer's scrupulous research reveals the heartbreaking voices and experiences of many of these children, while also illuminating a Nazi regime obsessed with sorting the population into categories, cataloging people by race, heredity, politics, religion, sexuality, criminality, and biological defects - labels that became the basis of either rehabilitation or persecution and extermination.

©2018 Edith Sheffer (P)2018 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books 20th Century Europe History & Commentary Medicine & Health Care Industry Mental Health Military Modern Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Health War Medicine Colonial Period Holocaust
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An excellent, if discomforting, story of Asperger and his diagnosis. The discussion of the role of gemut and nazi philosophy is particularly interesting. All the more so as we live in an age when medical advice and state instruction are again becoming very intertwined.

Not at all cosy

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The most traumatising thing I’ve ever listened to / read, but very important. Approach with caution / lots of breaks. Every sentence is more upsetting than the one that came before and slightly less so than the one after. It’s genuinely horrific, but again, a book that I as an autistic historian of neurology found deeply necessary.

On another note, I was pleased by the narrator’s perfect pronunciation of German words as I get very annoyed when foreign languages are butchered just because they are interspersed with text that’s primarily in English.

Skilfully written and researched, horrific subject matter

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Certainly worth listening to but be aware that the content is disturbing. This is a book that will stay with me for a long time.

Harrowing History

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excellent account and it is clear that the author did an immense amount of research to support the notion that Hans asperger was more complicit in the Nazi regime that it first seemed. would strongly recommend.

beautifully written and excellent account

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I have heard loads of different opinions of Hans Asperger in the autistic community, some think he was a saint who saved some autistic children from death and others think he was a murderer who chose which children lived and died.

This book puts Asperger's work into a historical context from pre-war Vienna to Nazi occupied Vienna to post-war Vienna. I contains loads of details, not just about autistic children but also other disabled and wayward children.

The book was shocking and chilling with insights into Nazi era psychiatry where children's worth was measured by their ability to be part of society, children could either be sent for remediation or sent to death.

I learmed a lot from reading this book.

History

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