2.1. General concept
Autism is one of the most fascinating disorders that medicine and psychology have had
to face. Isolation or solitude is one of the most enigmatic characteristics of autism. In
fact, when American psychiatrist Leo Kanner (1943) describes the autistic disorder for
the first time, he points out that the pathognomic sign is the inability to relate to other
people, which causes an
“extreme autistic solitude”
. In this first description, Kanner speci‐
fies a series of common characteristics in the children that he studied, which we can
summarise below:
•
Inability to relate to other people, at least in a normal way
•
Extreme autistic solitude which apparently isolates the child from the outside world
•
Deficiencies in the language, which may include muteness, pronominal inversion, echola‐
lia or an idiosyncratic way of speaking, among others
•
In some cases, an excellent literal memory
•
Preference for certain specific foods (from a very young age)
•
Fear of intense noises
•
An obsessive desire to repeat and insistence on an invariable environment
2
•
Scarce repertoire of spontaneous activities (like normal play)
•
Strange motor stereotypes, like spinning or swaying
•
Normal physical appearance
•
Appearance of the disorder in the first three years of life