The Life of Leo Kanner

Leo Kanner was born on June 13th, 1894 in Austria-Hungary, now present-day Ukraine. Kanner had worked at John Hopkins and did medical work for almost 50 years. He is best known for being the founder of autism. Leo Kanner grew up in a traditionally Jewish household. As mentioned, Kanner worked for Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at John Hopkins Hospital. He worked in both Germany and South Dakota. However, it wasn’t until 1943 when Kanner published his first successful paper on autism called. “Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact.” “He first coined their condition as “early infantile autism” witch today we call classic autism. Leo Kanner was concerned about society’s look down on kids with non neurotypical brains. He believed that the label for these children shouldn’t be derogatory or offensive, leading to the diagnosis of Autism. Prior to this, autistic children were either seen as mentally retarted or schizophrenic. Leo Kanner was the first to notice that some autistic children were very intelligent in certain areas, leading to the acknowledgement that autism was different then mental retardation in that people with autism had specific traits separate from intellectual ability. For instance, bad social skills, obsessive thought patterns, and stimming Behaviors. Kanner retired, later on, in 1959.