The autism spectrum concept arose to include children excluded by a too-narrow diagnosis

Evidence

Wing knew that this definition was so narrow that it excluded many children who were neuroatypical and needed supports. So she developed the idea that autism was not a fixed set of symptoms, but a spectrum, presenting in a range of different ways depending on the individual, and could include people who are very verbal and physically capable. Her research eventually led to autism being diagnosed as a “spectrum disorder.” To bolster her argument for a more expansive definition, she called attention to then-obscure writings by an Austrian pediatrician named Hans Asperger, who had done research into autism at the same time as Kanner, but in Vienna, including in the period when Austria was under Nazi control. — Naomi Klein, Doppelganger, 669

Categorization

• XREF: The Nazi-era provenance of Asperger’s research prefigures the book’s Mirror World thesis — the far right claiming wellness-adjacent history.
• QUESTION: Klein sets up the Asperger-Nazi connection but leaves it dangling here — is she going to develop it into a claim about the deeper history of the wellness/far-right convergence?