Aspergers Children, Edith Sheffer
Aspergers Children, Edith Sheffer
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Asperger's Children
The Origins of Autism in Nazi Vienna

Author: Edith Sheffer

Narrator: Christa Lewis

Unabridged: 9 hr 33 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 07/03/2018


Synopsis

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.

About Edith Sheffer

Edith Sheffer is a historian and senior fellow at the Institute of European Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of the prize-winning Burned Bridge: How East and West Germans Made the Iron Curtain.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Lark on September 02, 2019

This is the story of how a fuzzy psychiatric diagnosis was given to unfortunate children by doctors who knew they were condemning these children to horrible deaths. It's the story of how these children's honest, heartbreaking, willingly given, naive answers to questions posed by their doctors could......more

Goodreads review by Kuszma on March 04, 2023

Gemüt. A fogalom magyarra csak körülményesen fordítható le: egyfajta lelkület, amivel az egyén a közösséghez képes kapcsolódni. A nácik számára kulcsjelentőséggel bírt, hisz számukra az ember értékét elsősorban az határozta meg, mennyire volt képes résmentesen illeszkedni a nép, a Volk homogénnek el......more

Goodreads review by Jaime on April 23, 2018

This book was extremely hard to get through, but well worth it. The brutality of the Nazi regime has been well-documented, but this was especially hard to read. I found it interesting, especially in light of the current administration and the creeping rise of fascism. It was disconcerting to see how......more

Goodreads review by MaRysia on February 08, 2022

Teb reportaż to zbiór faktów - a takie lubię najbardziej. Szczególnie jeśli temat jest tak ważny. Tutaj autor przeprowadza nas przez całą karierę Aspergera, ale również rysuje to jak wygladała cała psychiatria i pedagogika w Austrii początku XX wieku (od wspierania rozwoju młodych ludzi do ich eutan......more