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| Foreword | |
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| Acknowledgements | |
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| Introduction | |
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| Why I'm writing this book | |
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| What this book is not | |
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| An apology to my readers who have autism or Asperger's disorder | |
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| Understanding How to Understand a Disease | |
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| The medical model of disease | |
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| What did the Romans think? | |
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| The Dark Ages of child psychiatry - before 1940 | |
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| Professor Leo Kanner (1894-1981) | |
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| Professor Hans Asperger (1906-1980) | |
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| The Clinical Symptoms: From Severe Autism to Asperger's Disorder | |
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| Some general points | |
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| Symptoms due to developmental delays | |
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| Autism and intelligence | |
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| The Life Course of Autism and Asperger's Disorder | |
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| The life course of severe autism | |
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| The life course of mild/high-functioning autism | |
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| The life course of Asperger's disorder | |
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| Searching the Brain for Clues | |
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| A model to guide the search for abnormal brain development | |
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| Studying brain wave activity | |
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| Spinning chairs, movie cameras, and microscopes | |
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| Neurotransmitters and "Nervous Mice" | |
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| Some concluding comments | |
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| Searching for Causes | |
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| Searching medical histories for possible causes | |
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| Our "Rolls Royce" study in Utah | |
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| Questions of genetics | |
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| Supportive Treatments: Which Ones, When, and for Whom | |
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| Some general points | |
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| Specific supportive programs and support systems | |
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| Unproven theories about the causes of autism, and treatments to avoid | |
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| My Casebook | |
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| Children and adults with autism or Asperger's disorder | |
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| Autistic parents of autistic children | |
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| The Importance of Obtaining a Diagnosis | |
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| On diagnosis | |
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| The "Official Diagnostic Criteria" | |
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| Diagnostic criteria for autistic disorder | |
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| Diagnostic criteria for Asperger's disorder | |
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| Epilogue | |
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| Suggestions for Gathering Further Information | |
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| Index | |
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| List of Tables | |
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| The life course of autism and Asperger's disorder | |
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| A detailed medical model of autism and Asperger's disorder | |
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| List of Figures | |
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| The medical model of disease | |
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| Comparison of developmental pathways in normal development, autism and Asperger's disorder | |
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| A computer model of the brain | |