In an era when psychology was striving to prove its empirical validity by embracing standardized tests like the Stanford-Binet intelligence scale (commonly known as the IQ test), the ward’s emphasis on “looking with open eyes,” as Asperger put it, seemed like a throwback to the nineteenth century, when clinicians like Jean-Martin Charcot encouraged his patients to make art. Michaels was shocked to see happy children at play, throwing a ball around, instead of sitting “fixed in numbered seats to await their turn, as we in America are accustomed to see them.”
