Infantile Autism has been split off from the cluster and offers itself for investigation of its unique features. It has an identity of its own.

Infantile autism and the schizophrenias
Leo Kanner
Johns Hopkins University
Behavioral Science. 1965 Oct;10(4):412-20




5. Infantile autism has been split off from the cluster and offers itself for investigation of its unique features. It has an identity of its own.

6. Some of the remaining controversies are based more on semantics than on intrinsic essentials.

In closing, I would like to quote from a paper, entitled "Schizophrenia as a Concept," which I presented at a symposium in 1959. I said there: "Child psychiatry is showing the way to the practical application of Bleuler's vision of the plurality of the schizophrenias. It is encouraging to note that similar attempts are beginning to be made with regard to the adult schizophrenias. The smug certainty about a disease schizophrenia has been definitely sloughed off. For the time being, there is still much groping and more or less emotionally tinted clinging to cherished opinions. But so long as facts are scarce, it is inevitable that there be differences of opinion about the delineation of the concept itself, about etiology, and about therapeutic procedures. It is my opinion that in the foreseeable future the same thing will happen to the schizophrenias as has happened to the hyperpyrexias, the insanities, and the amentias and that, when we stop searching for an identical cause and treatment of different ailments tied together in the schizophrenia bundle, we may expect the opening up of new and clearer vistas. But this, also, is only an opinion."