PREVIOUS EVENTS

LEEDS CENTRE FOR MEDICAL HUMANITIES & CENTRE FOR HISTORY AND PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE IN ASSOCIATION WITH THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE

How was autism shaped from its beginning, as a rare infantile disorder first recognized in the 1940s, to its present much-publicized state in which it is almost regarded as common? How did it come into being and develop as a new way in which to be a person, a way in which to think of oneself, of people one cares about? There are many ways to explain the increasingly common diagnosis with invoking an epidemic as in the media. The lecture will discuss how autism was shaped over the course of a few decades, with an emphasis not on numbers or on social services, but rather on how a new kind of person can come into being in what is (for me) living memory.