SIXTY YEARS AGO, the Austrian pediatrician Hans Asperger wrote about children who were smart, with above average vocabulary, but who exhibited a number of behaviors common to people with autism, such as pronounced deficiencies in social and communication skills. The condition was named Asperger’s syndrome in 1981. In 1994, it was added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders used by mental health professionals. Asperger’s has always been with us, but it’s a condition that has flown under the radar until quite recently. When I was a child, mental heath workers incorrectly
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