Why do so many misconceptions about autism still persist in our schools — even as we know more about autism than ever before? The answer is buried in history. In Part 1 of a multi-part series on the Empower Students Now podcast, host Amanda Werner breaks down the riveting and heartbreaking history of how autism was first identified, researched, and defined — and how decisions made almost a century ago still shape how teachers see autistic students today.

Drawing from Steve Silberman’s landmark book NeuroTribes, Amanda traces the story of two researchers who defined autism in profoundly different ways — and explains why the broader, more humane vision was suppressed for over 50 years while the narrow, deficit-focused model became the foundation of everything we were taught.

Content warning: This episode discusses eugenics, the Nazi regime’s targeting of disabled children, and other emotionally difficult topics. Please listen when you feel ready.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The story of the Rosa family in Silicon Valley — and how their journey with their autistic son Leo reflects what so many families still experience navigating the school and mental health systems today
• Steve Silberman’s investigation into the “geek syndrome” in Silicon Valley: the pattern of brilliant, driven tech workers having children diagnosed with autism
• Hans Asperger’s clinic in 1930s Vienna: a remarkably progressive, strengths-based approach to autistic children that was decades ahead of its time
• Sister Victorine Zak: the forgotten nun who developed individualized, strengths-based educational methods for autistic children nearly a century ago
• How Asperger saw autism as a broad spectrum — including both non-verbal children with high support needs and highly verbal, gifted children — and why that view was lost
• George Frankl and Annie Weiss: the Jewish clinicians who escaped the Nazis with the help of Leo Kanner at Johns Hopkins — and brought Asperger’s knowledge with them
• Leo Kanner’s 1943 paper that defined autism as rare, severe, and devastating — a narrow framework that dominated for decades and led to generations of undiagnosed and misdiagnosed children
• The “refrigerator mother” theory: how parent-blaming became embedded in autism research and the lasting damage it caused
• How Kanner suppressed Asperger’s broader framework — and why the deficit model won out over the strengths-based model in American children’s psychiatry
• Why this history still matters in your classroom today: when we see students as “too verbal” or “too social” to be autistic, that’s Kanner’s legacy at work

Book discussed:

• NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity by Steve Silberman

Stay tuned for Part 2, where Amanda will cover the history of ABA (Applied Behavior Analysis) and the harmful interventions that grew out of this narrow framework.

If you found this episode helpful, please share it with a teacher, parent, or anyone who wants to understand how we got here — so we can do better.

 

Transcript

Amanda Werner: [00:00:00] Welcome back to the Empower Students Now podcast. I am Amanda Warner, your host. I am so excited about the next few episodes coming out on this podcast because I’ve been thinking about them for a really long time, ever since I finished a book called NeuroTribes by Steve Silberman. It is a very dense book.

It has… It covers the history of autism, and the reason that I think that this is a really, really important topic is because it helps us make sense of how we got where we are today in terms of our understanding about autism and in terms of all of the misconceptions and misunderstandings about what [00:01:00] autism is.

This book attempts to explain that, and I know most people are not like me and going to pick up a book and read. It’s… I mean, it is, I don’t even know, 600 pages. It ha- It even has an index. That’s how long it is. It’s, it’s almost, I would consider it, like, an encyclopedia expla- no, it’s 480 pages. So it’s, it’s, it’s incredible.

It’s a very well-written book, but it can also be a bit overwhelming trying to tell you about it because there’s just so much to it. So that’s why I’m going to record multiple episodes talking about this book, and the goal is to help teachers like you and parents understand how we got here, why so many misconceptions exist, and, and why there’s so many, [00:02:00] um, just rampant, like, uh, just m- misunderstandings about autism, um, and why it’s so hard for families navigating the mental health system and the public school system when their child has or is autistic.

Okay. So let’s get started.

Welcome to the Empower Students Now podcast, a podcast about equity, neurodiversity, mindfulness, and student engagement. There’s a lot that needs to change in our education system. The good news is teachers have the power to make these changes now.

This is a content warning. This episode discusses very emotionally charged topics that may be difficult for some- [00:03:00] Listeners, please take care of yourself and listen when you feel ready, or you can skip this episode entirely.

This isn’t gonna be a book report. It’s, it’s more about just me giving you just the most important, essential components, well, in my- important in my opinion, to answer the question: Why are there so many es- misconceptions about autism? And I really do think that going back in history, going back in time to understand how autism was researched and who had a voice in, uh, defining autism.

And so let’s, yeah, let’s go ahead and dive in. So the book does have modern-day stories as well, and [00:04:00] actually, there’s a really important family that is… uh, their story is woven throughout the entire book. And they are actually a family that lives in the Bay Area. I’m not sure if they’re still living in the Bay Area, which is really cool for me, because, I mean, I’ve never met this family, but I live in the Bay Area too.

I think Steve Silberman might as well. But I am about to move, so I can’t say that for much more, uh, m- much longer, ’cause I’m moving in about two and a half weeks, which is… Yeah, you’re probably wondering, “How are you recording this right now, Amanda?” You know what? I don’t really know, but I’m doing it. So it’s good to have sort of a distraction from all the stresses of my life, and I’m not teaching right now, and so this is definitely something that I’m just really passionate about and excited to share about.

So, so yeah, this family, they are the Rosa family, and so [00:05:00] they, uh, they’re Craig and Shannon Rosa, talented people who have, I think, three kids, and one of them, two of them are girls, and one of them is a boy, Leo. And Leo, they, they, they talk about the journey this family went through with their sons, specifically their son, Leo, but I feel like there are hints that their daughters are also maybe on the spectrum, and maybe the parents themselves.

This is just a guess. The book does not say that, though, at all. But I just… I think there’s certain quirks that I… are, like, sort of little clues to me that someone might be neurodivergent or autistic, but I’m not gonna go into that. So, so yeah, this family, I really could relate a lot to what they went through, just trying to support their son, [00:06:00] and just being told all of these different, uh, things about what they needed to do and how it was sort of an emergency that they needed to start ABA, which is applied behavioral analysis, and I’ll talk about that in this series and how that even began in the first place and how they needed to get him tested and, and like to get his, like, blood work done and, like, just to change his diet and, like, that he had mercury or something in his body and, like, just really scary stuff.

And they just got sucked into, like, all of these different fads, I guess, or, uh… And, and even the anti-vaccination stuff, they sort of got, uh… They researched… I mean, they were a family that really was just, just doing their best to learn as much as [00:07:00] possible to support their son. And I can relate so much to what they went through because there’s so much, um, out there that, that purports to help autistic kids and their families, but really it just muddies the water and confuses things and sets autistic kids and their parents off.

Like, it, it ca- th- they cause meltdowns. Changing an autistic kid’s diet is incredibly hard and challenging, and it, it, it… Yeah, so that… Th- the book does begin with this family, but it also begins with Steve Silberman, uh, being… He, he’s a journalist, and he worked for Wired magazine, I think, and he was just meeting all of these people in Silicon Valley, and he, um, he…

And these people, who are very [00:08:00] talented, working at Apple and Google and, you know, just going, like, really, like, having, like, PhDs and master’s degrees and just really, really, really talented, intelligent people and, um, and, and, uh, seeing this pattern of these people, like the, the Rosas, having kids that were being diagnosed with autism and noticing these parents and these people in Silicon Valley having all of these quirks and, and really, like, he, he ha- actually calls it the geek syndrome.

Yeah, and just sort of talks about these patterns that he’s seeing in all of these- These people who are scientists and in tech and things and having kids that are being diagnosed with autism and just they’re pa- like they’re just really [00:09:00] passionate people, very driven people. And he actually, I guess he was sitting in a coffee shop talking to someone about these kind of patterns he’s noticing in this community, the Silicon Valley community.

And this person overhears Steve Silberman, the author, talking to someone he’s talking to at a cafe, and the person kind of interrupts their conversation. This is in the introduction of the book, and it’s a s- and this w- it’s a woman, and she says, she blurt, it says, I’ll just read it to you. “Suddenly, a trim, dark-haired young woman at the next table blurted out, ‘I’m a special education teacher.

Do you realize what’s going on? There is an epidemic of autism in Silicon Valley. Something terrible is happening to our children.’ Her words were chilling. Could that be true?” Um, or [00:10:00] could they be true? Could her words be true? Um, and so he says, “I started reading every news story about autism I could find and downloading journal articles by the score.

It soon became clear that the mysterious rise in diagnoses was not restricted to Silicon Valley. The same thing was happening all over the world.” So, um,

so this, you know, th- that’s what this book kind of sets out to do, like what’s going on here? And Silberman does so much research, um, to learn about the history of autism. And so he, he starts, you know, with the Rosa family. He starts in Rosa, uh, in modern times and talks about their experiences, uh, with their son Leo and, and just the struggles that he was having with misbehavior, um, in school and at home.

[00:11:00] Um, and then, you know, all the different thing, th- different things that the, the parents tried. And I’ll talk more about them later, but then he sort of goes back in time to, to Vienna. And Hans Asperger, who had a clinic, and he was, I think he, he was a pediatrician at first, but he was also running this clinic, this psychology clinic where autistic children were being studied.

And the word autism was coined before, uh, Hans Asperger started this clinic. It was coined by a guy named Eugene Bleuler, and I don’t know if Eugene Bleuler is ta- I’m not saying his last name correctly, is even talked about in this book. He probably is. There’s so many people talked about in this book.

But the term autism was first introduced by this guy when he was describing [00:12:00] schizophrenia in 1911. So it, so autistic children were often diagnosed with childhood schizophrenia. But it, it is interesting just looking at the word autism, um, because, um, auto means self, and tism is like conditions of, condition of self.

So what they were noticing was that these autistic children, well, this Eugene Bleuler, uh, he was thinking they were schizophrenic, but that they were very, like, kind of, n- they were very self, like, centered, self-absorbed, not really, um, interested in others, I guess, um, is kind of where the term came from, which I sort of hate because I know that, that there’s one right there at the very beginning when the term is coined, there’s a misunderstanding about autistic people that’s [00:13:00] being perpetuated just in the name autism.

Because we know that people with autism, people who are autistic, are not self-centered and are interested in socializing, you know? They’re just overwhelmed by the world because of their sensitivities. Okay. So let’s go back to Hans Asperger. So he, he was living in Vienna, Austria, and he had this clinic, and the clinic was really, really unique.

They were doing very innovative things, and the more that I read about him and this nun that worked for him, Sister Victorine Zak, the more that I was just really taken by their approaches and, and feeling like, wow, this is how I approach children, too, where you j- you’re genuinely interested in their perspective, and you treat them [00:14:00] with kindness and openness and curiosity.

And that’s what they were doing. They were really trying their best to, to support them- And to show them care. So it was very different than a lot of other, you know, institutions at the time in the way that they were treating people with disabilities or mental illnesses. So, um, the really important key point here is that he really believed in seeing the whole person, and he saw autism as a broad spectrum that included children who were non-verbal and, and needed a l- had a lot of support needs, and children who were highly verbal and gifted.

So both those groups were included in his broad idea of what [00:15:00] autism was, and he used the term autistic psychopathy, which is not like what we say, but, like, it just means like a self s- focused personality. And he used a strength-based approach, which I advocate as well, where he helps kids, um, or he helped kids just strengthen what they were good at, right?

Like, so whatever they were interested in, he would try and bring that out in them. He said actually that, there’s a quote here, that he … that for people to be … for autistic kids to be successful, or for t- for anyone to be successful in science or art, they had to have a dash of autism. That was essential, which I think is really fun for him to have, you know, just realized that so early.

I mean, this is like [00:16:00] the 1930s, and we all know what was going on or what was about to happen, which was the Nazi occupation. So that added a whole other layer of complexity to what was going on here. And I think there’s a lot of people that later on in history believed that Asperger was a Nazi, but Silberman presents evidence that Asperger actually tried to protect a lot of his patients and spoke up, even in front of Hitler himself, against eugenics programs, which were programs to kill autistic kids.

And actually, they, Nazis … This is so sad, and I think I probably need to add a trigger warning to the beginning of this episode now that I’m telling you this. But he, like, Nazis- experimented with their strategies for [00:17:00] mass genocide on dis-disabled kids, autistic kids first, before they went on to start exterminating Jews, um, which is just mind-blowing to me and makes me so sad, um, to think about all the people who were killed.

Um, so I also wanna talk about, uh, Sister Victorine Zak because she was someone who was talked about in the book. She worked at Asperger’s Clinic, and she developed individualized strengths-based educational methods for autistic children, and this is just really progressive and innovative that, and this stuff happened a century ago, which is just amazing.

And I think this woman’s name has been lost to history, which is really sad, so I wanna bring up her name because she was a really important person in [00:18:00] this clinic and for Asperger and, and for this approach, this humanizing approach to taking care of these kids and to understanding these kids. Uh, there were, uh, there was also, there were many people who worked at this clinic.

Uh, two of them were George Frankl and Annie Weiss. And Frankl worked closely with Asperger and was very familiar with their approach, and, you know, when the Nazis started coming in and taking over, he, uh, and Annie Weiss, they escaped the Nazis and, um, were able to escape with the help of a guy named Lear, Leo Kanner.

And he worked at Johns Hopkins, and he actually, he’s kind of the father of child psychiatry. He is. Like, that’s what he’s known for, like, Leo [00:19:00] Kanner. And he published a lot of, um, papers and, um, he actually, there’s a paper in, he, that he published in 1943 where he identifies 11 children and he call, he says they had early infantile autism.

And he describes autism super narrowly, not the way that Asperger described autism. He described it as a very rare, severe childhood condition. And he noted that the parents of his patients were highly educated and accomplished. But over time, this morphed into, uh, this really terrible, toxic idea that parents of these children were [00:20:00] emotionally cold, and that that was the, why their kids became autistic.

And there was a word, I don’t think that Kanner coined this term, I think it was another person, and I think, uh, do I have that in my notes? Yes, Bruno Be- Bettyhi- Bet- Bet- Bet- Bettelheim, um, he coined the term refrigerator mothers. This is just really sad because k- parents of, that have autistic kids, like, that’s hard enough.

But then f- for these people in the 1940s to start blaming the parents for why their kid is the way they are, it just adds, like, so much more pain, you know, on top of the experience of having, you know, to deal with challenges that come with autism. This is what was so wild to me. Kanner received all the credit [00:21:00] for discovering autism in the United States at John Hopkins, while Asperger’s broader, more humane framework was buried in history.

Partly, I think, because, well, Asperger published in German, so there was a language barrier, but also because I think a lot of people thought Asperger was a Nazi. Um, and just the war going on and the chaos around all of that, and also that Kanner … By the way, Kanner’s last name is with a K, so it’s K-A-N-N-E-R, if you wanna look him up.

He didn’t, he didn’t … This is according to Silberman, the author of NeuroTribes. He didn’t wanna share the spotlight, even though he was working with two of the people that worked with Asperger, um, in Vienna. He worked with the Frankls. Well, and I think Annie ended up marrying George or some- something, George Frankl and Annie Weiss.

So he worked with [00:22:00] them, and yet he never really referred to Asperger in any of his papers or any of his work. So ba- so Kanner’s narrow definition of autism being rare and autism being devastating rather than common and varied and, and h- and these kids having these really, really amazing gifts the way that, that, um, Asperger described them, so Kanner won out in history And so children who didn’t fit the narrow mold were undiagnosed or misdiagnosed for decades.

And so this humanizing individualized educational approach that the nun Sister Victorine took was lost in favor of a deficit model. And I think this has had ripple effects even to today. And so this history, it set the [00:23:00] stage for parent blaming and for harmful interventions that I will cover in the next episode of this series.

So we’ve inherited a system built on Kanner’s narrow framework. When we see students as too verbal or too social to be autistic, that’s Kanner’s impact on us today. When we focus on deficits and problems rather than strengths, that’s the legacy of what was lost when Hans Asperger’s broader view was suppressed and forgotten.

Understanding this history is the step toward doing better in our classrooms today. Thank you for listening. Thank you for taking the time to learn about this important topic. And I hope you learned a lot. I’ll come back next time with our next episode in this series about more of the history of autism and how it has impacted us [00:24:00] today.

Talk to you next time. Bye.