What is the difference between high-functioning autism and Asperger syndrome?
The Autism Helpline is asked this question very frequently. Sometimes it can seem as though the two diagnoses are given almost interchangeably. The controversy over the differences between these two diagnoses goes back a long way. In this article I will attempt to examine some of the literature available and the reasoning behind the existence of the two separate terms. The term autism has an unusual history. It was originally coined by a psychiatrist, Eugen Bleuler in 1911 to describe what he perceived as one of the key symptoms of schizophrenia, that of social withdrawal. Autism, literally meaning selfism, seemed to him to describe the active detachment which affected many of his patients. In the 1940s when Leo Kanner in America and Hans Asperger in Austria were both beginning to identify the existence of autism they separately stumbled on this term which they felt described what they were witnessing in the children they were treating. In Kanners case he started from the premise that
