At the Origins of Autism: George Frankl between Asperger and Kanner
Filippo Muratori, Valeria Bizzari
This article aims to give a brief look at the history of George Frankl, who worked with both Hans Asperger and Leo Kanner, founding fathers of the idea of autism, in the first half of the Twentieth century. Frankl certainly left a mark in Asperger’s work before fleeing Vienna in 1937. When he reached Baltimore, the same year, he started working with Kanner, who always recognized Frankl’s influence on his work, something that his Viennese colleague never did explicitly. George Frankl’s interest towards Disturbances of Affective Contact, a terminology that would have get forgotten in the following years because of the large fortune of the term Autism, was laying the foundations for many interesting developments, both for the research and the clinical practice. For these reasons, the author of this contribution has curated the first Italian edition of Frankl’s manuscript, that has remained unpublished for over 70 years. The hope here is to give back to George Frankl his place into the history of autism.
Keywords
George Frankl, Asperger, Kanner, History of autism.