Asperger's children : the origins of autism in Nazi Vienna / Edith Sheffer.
Material type:
TextPublisher: New York : W.W. Norton & Company, [2018]Copyright date: ©2018Edition: First editionDescription: 317 pages : illustrations ; 25 cmContent type: - text
- unmediated
- volume
- 9780393609646
- 0393609642
| Item type | Home library | Collection | Call number | Materials specified | Status | Date due | Barcode | Item holds | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Adult Book
|
Dr. James Carlson Library | NonFiction | 618.9285 S542 | Available | 33111008892826 |
Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:
Hans Asperger, the pioneer of autism and Asperger syndrome in Nazi Vienna, has been celebrated for his compassionate defense of children with disabilities. But in this groundbreaking book, prize-winning historian Edith Sheffer exposes that Asperger was not only involved in the racial policies of Hitler's Third Reich, he was complicit in the murder of children.
As the Nazi regime slaughtered millions across Europe during World War Two, it sorted people according to race, religion, behavior, and physical condition for either treatment or elimination. Nazi psychiatrists targeted children with different kinds of minds--especially those thought to lack social skills--claiming the Reich had no place for them. Asperger and his colleagues endeavored to mold certain "autistic" children into productive citizens, while transferring others they deemed untreatable to Spiegelgrund, one of the Reich's deadliest child-killing centers.
In the first comprehensive history of the links between autism and Nazism, Sheffer uncovers how a diagnosis common today emerged from the atrocities of the Third Reich. With vivid storytelling and wide-ranging research, Asperger's Children will move readers to rethink how societies assess, label, and treat those diagnosed with disabilities.
Text in English.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Chapter 1. Enter the experts -- Chapter 2. The clinic's diagnosis -- Chapter 3. Nazi psychiatry & social spirit -- Chapter 4. Indexing lives -- Chapter 5. Fatal theories -- Chapter 6. Asperger & the killing system -- Chapter 7. Girls & boys -- Chapter 8. The daily life of death -- Chapter 9. In service to the volk -- Chapter 10. Reckoning.
Presents an exploration of the sobering history behind Asperger's Syndrome that reveals child psychiatrist Hans Asperger's influence by Nazi psychiatry and his use of one of the Reich's deadliest killing centers to experiment on disabled children.