Asperger's Children cover art

Asperger's Children

The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna

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Asperger's Children

By: Edith Sheffer
Narrated by: Christa Lewis
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About this listen

In 1930s and 1940s Vienna, child psychiatrist Hans Asperger sought to define autism as a diagnostic category, aiming to treat those children, usually boys, he deemed capable of participating fully in society.

Depicted as a compassionate and devoted researcher, Asperger was in fact deeply influenced by Nazi psychiatry. Although he did offer individualized care to children he deemed promising, he also prescribed harsh institutionalization and even transfer to Spiegelgrund, one of the Reich's deadliest killing centers, for children with greater disabilities, who, he held, could not integrate into the community.

With sensitivity and passion, Edith Sheffer's scrupulous research reveals the heartbreaking voices and experiences of many of these children, while also illuminating a Nazi regime obsessed with sorting the population into categories, cataloging people by race, heredity, politics, religion, sexuality, criminality, and biological defects - labels that became the basis of either rehabilitation or persecution and extermination.

©2018 Edith Sheffer (P)2018 HighBridge, a division of Recorded Books 20th Century Europe History & Commentary Medicine & Health Care Industry Mental Health Military Modern Psychology Psychology & Mental Health Health War Medicine Colonial Period Holocaust

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All stars
Most relevant
An excellent, if discomforting, story of Asperger and his diagnosis. The discussion of the role of gemut and nazi philosophy is particularly interesting. All the more so as we live in an age when medical advice and state instruction are again becoming very intertwined.

Not at all cosy

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The most traumatising thing I’ve ever listened to / read, but very important. Approach with caution / lots of breaks. Every sentence is more upsetting than the one that came before and slightly less so than the one after. It’s genuinely horrific, but again, a book that I as an autistic historian of neurology found deeply necessary.

On another note, I was pleased by the narrator’s perfect pronunciation of German words as I get very annoyed when foreign languages are butchered just because they are interspersed with text that’s primarily in English.

Skilfully written and researched, horrific subject matter

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Certainly worth listening to but be aware that the content is disturbing. This is a book that will stay with me for a long time.

Harrowing History

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I’m sure this will shock you to great lengths however being aware of the history of asd as a ND person I find information important and when listening to this it was just going over information I already knew however if you want to shock yourself to the core you should look at images of the testing they did on children with shock therapies as behavioural therapies and how that is still done today.

Unless you know information previously..

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Very informative book outlining the background of Autism. Very haunting but well written. It took a while to get used to the reader but once I'd adapted it seemed appropriate.

Chilling

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