However due largely to a perception of autism as being only a problem to be dealt with, and not a condition to be understood in a holistic, humanistic, or positivist way, both schools prove to have negative repercussions, with the nature school emerging with eugenicist overtones, and the nurture school being ultimately spearheaded by a man named Bruno Bettelheim, whose arguments that autism was caused by toxic parenting, especially toxic mothering, could generously be described as sloppy reasoning, and less generously be described as histrionic misogyny. Two schools of thought emerge on autism emerge, tied to the age old debate on nature vs nurture. It’s a story that proves to be quite frequently troubling. Suggesting that historical figures had high functioning autism might strike some people as a bit of a tired cliché, but Silberman presents an exceedingly compelling case, and uses it as a starting point to discuss the complicated history of autism research, using the initial biographical story of an autistic person to set the tone for the rest of the book, in which he balances objective facts about the progression of autism research, with an empathetic look at how different periods of research influenced, (and was influenced by) the political and social climates they took place in, and how that influence affected the actual people with autism in those times and places.

After a brief introduction detailing how Silberman became involved with journalistic accounts of autistic people and the scientific studies pertaining to them, the book opens with a biographical account of Henry Cavendish, a late 1700’s English scientist (or natural philosopher as he would be referred to in his time period.) Silberman’s account of Cavendish suggesting he had high functioning autism, and presenting him as someone who was quite a success story, at least if judged on his own standards, especially considering that he was born almost two centuries before anyone had even begun thinking about the diagnosis that would have applied to him.

NeuroTribes by Steve Silberman is, to put it in the simplest terms, the definitive history of scientific and popular knowledge of Autism in the western world.

Neuro tribes book