NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity

by Steve Silberman

In 1938, Asperger’s mentor Hamburger gave a lecture to the society titled “National Socialism and Medicine” that left no doubts about his loyalties. It was an odd speech for a physician of his stature, more of a rant on the power of faith healing (which he called “nature healing”) than to the work of “so-called scientists,” as he put it. He began by telling the roomful of eminent physicians that sports and tourism did “more for health than all the doctors put together.” Then he extolled the virtues of the “practical country doctor” (a ruddy Aryan, no doubt) who spread “courage and confidence” among the sick, inspiring blind, unquestioning faith among his patients. “This faith, in all cases,” he said, “leads to the improvement—often even to the elimination—of the symptoms of the disease.” Hitler was playing a similar role for the whole Reich, he explained. “Now we must face the fact that a single man, a non-medical man, through his superior qualities, has opened up new avenues of health for the eighty million folk of Germany.” One of these avenues was the Führer’s refusal to coddle the mentally ill in “luxurious” institutions. Only an “over-intellectualized Jewish patient” would question the wisdom of his doctor’s diagnosis, Hamburger pointedly added—implying that only Jews and other undesirables would challenge Hitler’s diagnosis of society’s ills. It was a vision of the Reichsführer as the Grand Placebo, healing the Volk of all manner of maladies and malaises by overwhelm...