Major Appointments (Institution, Location, Dates)
Appointed Assistant Physician at the State Hospital in Yankton County, South Dakota, in 1924
Selected by Adolf Meyer and Edward Park in 1930 to develop the first child psychiatry service in a pediatric hospital at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore
Appointed Associate Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins in 1933
Retired in 1959 and replaced as Chief of Child Psychiatry by Leon Eisenberg
Landmark Clinical, Scientific, and Professional Contributions
Dr. Leo Kanner’s 1935 book, Child Psychiatry, won him international acclaim, but it was his 1943 paper, Autistic disturbances of affective contact, withits fine detailed clinical descriptions on what he called “early infantile autism” – which is still referenced by autism professionals around the world to this day, despite a number of deficiencies (in particular, Kanner’s startling insistence that the 11 children in his 1943 study had “normal cognitive potentiality”). Kanner considered five...
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References and Readings
Eisenberg, L. (1956). The autistic child in adolescence. American Journal of Psychiatry, 112(8), 607–612.
Eisenberg, L. (1957). The fathers of autistic children. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 27, 715–724.
Feinstein, A. (2010). A history of autism: Conversations with the pioneers. Oxford, UK: Wiley-Blackwell.
Kanner, L. (1935). Child psychiatry. Springfield, IL: C.C. Thomas Publishing.
Kanner, L. (1941). In defence of mothers. Springfield, IL: C.C. Thomas Publishing.
Kanner, L. (1943). Autistic disturbances of affective contact. Nervous Child, 2, 217–250.
Kanner, L. (1949). Problems of nosology and psychodynamics in early childhood autism. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 19(3), 416–426.
Kanner, L. (1954). General concept of schizophrenia at different ages. Proceedings of the Association for Research into Nervous and Mental Diseases, 33, 451–453.
Kanner, L. (1965). Infantile autism and the schizophrenias. Behavioural Science, 10(4), 412–420.
Kanner, L. (1971). Follow-up study of eleven autistic children originally reported in 1943. Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia, 1(2), 119–145.
Kanner, L. (1972). How far can autistic children go in matters of social adaptation? Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia, 2(1), 9–33.
Kanner, L. (1973). Childhood psychosis: Initial studies and new insights. Washington, DC: Winston.
Kanner, L., & Eisenberg, L. (1956). Early infantile autism, 1943–55. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 26(3), 556–566.
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Feinstein, A. (2013). Kanner, Leo. In: Volkmar, F.R. (eds) Encyclopedia of Autism Spectrum Disorders. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-1698-3_1864
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