And in the Beginning

Autism is often described as a spectrum, in it's simplest form think of a line from 1 – 10. Imagine 1 -5 is classic autism or Kanners Autism. As well as Autism the individual will have learning difficulties which may also be on a sliding scale. Now 6 – 9 would be classed as high functioningAutism and 10 would be an individual with Asperger Syndrome. So to be clear Asperger Syndrome is on the Autistic spectrum it is not a separate disorder. If the scale continued then an 11 would be a child with PDD or pervesive developmental disorder not otherwise specified. This is an individual with traits of Autism but not enough to warrant a full diagnosis. Interestingly to work with these individuals you would still use the tools that are used with an Autistic individual. Recently though individuals such as Carly Fleischmann http://carlysvoice.com/home/aboutcarly/ or Tito Mukhopadhay https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nfiap3a7Tuo although non verbal have both started writing about living with Autism so although they initialy were diaagnosed with severve Autism and Severe Learning difficulties this puts the learning disability side into question. In the UK you get a diagnosis of a learning disability if you have an IQ under 70.

Leo Kanner https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leo_Kanner wrote a paper in the 1940's called Early Infantile Autism also at that time a man called Hans Asperger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Asperger wrote a paper on Asperger Syndrome. Both were from Austria although Kanner moved to America and published his paper in English where as Asperger published in German. World War 2 was happening at this time so anything that was published in German was filed away. So it was only when Lorna Wing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lorna_Wing and Judy Gould http://www.autism.org.uk/our-services/diagnosing-complex-needs/about-the-lorna-wing-centre/our-staff/dr-judith-gould.aspx discovered Asperger's paper that it was realised that Autism and Asperger Syndrome had very similar traits, and so the Autistic Spectrum was born.

The problem with looking at it like a scale of 1-10 is that people that rate low we see as needing lots of support and those scoring high needing no support, which isn't strictly the case. Those scoring high are also described as having mild autism and this a very big mistake. No one with a diagnosis has mild autism, every individual is battling with their own difficulties, even if you can't see them. I believe that this is the hardest thing for professionals to grasp.That's why rather than look at the spectrum as a scale it is better to look at it as a pallet of colours.