by David Morstad

Physician Hans Asperger was among the first to identify the condition now referred to as autism. His singularly important contributions to the field are rightfully acknowledged. For a time, his name became synonymous with a particular set of characteristics known as Asperger’s Syndrome – a term still used by many.

But it may be time for us to take a closer and better-informed look.

Asperger, the Classification

Asperger Syndrome is no longer a recognized classification of Autism. That change happened more than ten years ago. Prior to that time, Asperger’s Syndrome was one of a handful of different classifications of autism. Those categories were found to be anything from non-specific to just plain confusing and so the American Psychiatric Association updated their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5-TR) in 2013. Following that change, Asperger’s Syndrome was no more. Autism Spectrum Disorder is now an over-arching term used to encompass a broad range of characteristics that help define the way in which an individual experiences their own “spectrum” of autism.

These facts alone should be enough for us to remove the term from our popular conversations. But there is a much more compelling reason for us to rethink the Asperger name – particularly as people of faith.

Asperger, the Man

Hans Asperger was an Austrian physician born in 1906. While his contributions to the recognition of autism are indeed noteworthy, Asperger’s early personal life and professional associations are, at best, problematic.  

In 1931, at the age of 25 and despite his not yet attaining the educational credentials equivalent to being a pediatric specialist, Asperger was appointed the head of the Heilpädagogik (therapeutic pedagogy) at the Vienna University Children’s Clinic. Long before the Nazi takeover, the clinic was considered to be a beacon of anti-Jewish policy. By 1934, Asperger had already joined the nationalist and anti-Semitic Verein Deutscher Ärzte in Österreich (Association of German Doctors in Austria).

There is broad consensus among medical historians that Asperger’s very rapid rise to head of the pediatric ward, despite virtually no published work and an abundance of more qualified candidates, was facilitated by the clinic’s anti-Jewish policy. In fact, most Jewish doctors had been expelled from the clinic by then and several fled to the US.  Once in his position, Asperger recruited several noted physicians with disturbingly close ties to anti-Semitic organizations and members of the Nazi party. Among them was Erwin Jekelius, who later became responsible for the deaths of thousands of psychiatric patients and mentally disabled children in the early years of the Holocaust known as Aktion T4.  

While Germany was not alone in embracing the philosophy and practice of eugenics—it had been practiced in the US years before—the practice became widely used in the late 1930s. There is no record that Asperger actively participated in forced sterilization programs aimed at people with disabilities, and he claimed to be ambivalent toward the program. However, in a 1939 publication, he wrote,

“Just as the physician often has to make painful incisions during the treatment of individuals, we must also make incisions in the national body [to] make sure that those patients who would pass on their diseases to distant generations are prevented from passing on their diseased hereditary material.”

How do we respond?

Coming to grips with an uncomfortable past is not unknown to people of faith. Examples abound. Indigenous people were cruelly treated by European evangelists in early America. Many 19^th Century Christians used the Bible to justify slavery. We cannot allow ourselves to be naïve about history or remain uninfluenced by it. Rather, we face the painful truths with informed thinking, we speak those truths to those around us, and we make the decision to do better.  

Asperger syndrome is the story of a flawed classification and a flawed man. This may be a good time for us to find an appropriate distance from both.