Gregory Bateson was an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician, and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. His writings include Steps to an Ecology of Mind (1972) and Mind and Nature (1979).
The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the largest psychiatric organization in the world. It has more than 38,000 members who are involved in psychiatric practice, research, and academia representing a diverse population of patients in more than 100 countries. The association publishes various journals and pamphlets, as well as the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). The DSM codifies psychiatric conditions and is used mostly in the United States as a guide for diagnosing mental disorders.
Leo Kanner was an Austrian-American psychiatrist, physician, and social activist best known for his work related to infantile autism. Before working at the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Kanner practiced as a physician in Germany and South Dakota. In 1943, Kanner published his landmark paper Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact, describing 11 children who displayed "a powerful desire for aloneness" and "an obsessive insistence on persistent sameness." He named their condition "early infantile autism". Kanner was in charge of developing the first child psychiatry clinic in the United States and later served as the Chief of Child Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. He is one of the co-founders of The Children's Guild, a nonprofit organization serving children, families and child-serving organizations throughout Maryland and Washington, D.C., and dedicated to "Transforming how America Cares for and Educates its Children and Youth." He is widely considered one of the most influential American psychiatrists of the 20th century.
Bruno Bettelheim was an Austrian-born psychologist, scholar, public intellectual and writer who spent most of his academic and clinical career in the United States. An early writer on autism, Bettelheim's work focused on the education of emotionally disturbed children, as well as Freudian psychology more generally. In the U.S., he later gained a position as professor at the University of Chicago and director of the Sonia Shankman Orthogenic School for Disturbed Children, and after 1973 taught at Stanford University.
Sir Simon Philip Baron-Cohen is a British clinical psychologist and professor of developmental psychopathology at the University of Cambridge. He is the director of the university's Autism Research Centre and a Fellow of Trinity College.
Arthur Michael Kleinman is an American psychiatrist, social anthropologist and a professor of medical anthropology, psychiatry and global health and social medicine at Harvard University.
Richard Noll is an American clinical psychologist and historian of medicine. He has published on the history of psychiatry, including two critical volumes on the life and work of Carl Gustav Jung, books and articles on the history of dementia praecox and schizophrenia, and in anthropology on shamanism. His books and articles have been translated into fifteen foreign languages and he has delivered invited presentations in nineteen countries on six continents.
Anthropological Quarterly is a widely read peer-reviewed journal covering topics in social and cultural anthropology. It is housed at the George Washington University Institute for Ethnographic Research.
Psychological anthropology is an interdisciplinary subfield of anthropology that studies the interaction of cultural and mental processes. This subfield tends to focus on ways in which humans' development and enculturation within a particular cultural group—with its own history, language, practices, and conceptual categories—shape processes of human cognition, emotion, perception, motivation, and mental health. It also examines how the understanding of cognition, emotion, motivation, and similar psychological processes inform or constrain our models of cultural and social processes. Each school within psychological anthropology has its own approach.
Unstrange Minds is a nonfiction book by anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker about the rise in autism diagnoses throughout the world over the last twenty years.
Joseph Towles was an African American anthropologist and author of the books Nkumbi Initiation and Asa: Myth of Origin of the Blood Brotherhood Among the Mbo of the Ituri Forest. Towles was born in Senora, Virginia, to Arcellius Towles and Lucy Blair and was raised in Virginia before moving to New York City to pursue acting. He graduated with an undergraduate degree in anthropology from Pace University, and received a Ph.D. from Makerere University in Uganda.
Geraldine Dawson is an American child clinical psychologist, specializing in autism. She has conducted research on early detection, brain development, and treatment of autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and collaborated on studies of genetic risk factors in autism. Dawson is William Cleland Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and professor of psychology and neuroscience, former director, Duke Institute for Brain Sciences and founding director of the Duke Center for Autism and Brain Development at Duke University Medical Center. Dawson was president of the International Society for Autism Research, a scientific and professional organization devoted to advancing knowledge about autism spectrum disorders. From 2008 to 2013, Dawson was research professor of psychiatry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was chief science officer for Autism Speaks. Dawson also held the position of adjunct professor of psychiatry at Columbia University and is professor emerita of psychology at University of Washington. She is a fellow of the American Psychological Society, American Psychological Association, International Society for Autism Research, and the Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology.
Roy Richard Grinker Sr. was an American neurologist and psychiatrist, Professor of Psychiatry at University of Chicago, and pioneer in American psychiatry and psychosomatics.
Melvin Sabshin, M.D. was an American psychiatrist, the medical director of the American Psychiatric Association from 1974 to 1997, and a leader in psychiatry placing it firmly within the discipline of medicine. He worked quietly within many groups and organizations to attain the changes he believed necessary to advance the profession of psychiatry.
Walter Reich is an American magazine editor, psychiatrist, and writer. He was the 2003 recipient of the AAAS Award for Scientific Freedom and Responsibility.
The history of autism spans over a century; autism has been subject to varying treatments, being pathologized or being viewed as a beneficial part of human neurodiversity. The understanding of autism has been shaped by cultural, scientific, and societal factors, and its perception and treatment change over time as scientific understanding of autism develops.
Koreans in Japan: Critical Voices from the Margin is a 2000 book edited by Sonia Ryang and published by Routledge. It discusses Zainichi Koreans in Japan.
Sheila Miyoshi Jager is an American historian. She is a Professor of East Asian Studies at Oberlin College, author of two books on Korea, co-editor of a third book on Asian nations in the post-Cold War era, and a forthcoming book on great power competition in northeast Asia at the turn of the 19th-20th century. She is a well-known historian of Korea and East Asia.
The theory of the double empathy problem is a psychological and sociological theory first coined in 2012 by Damian Milton, an autistic autism researcher. This theory proposes that many of the difficulties autistic individuals face when socializing with non-autistic individuals are due, in part, to a lack of mutual understanding between the two groups, meaning that most autistic people struggle to understand and empathize with non-autistic people, whereas most non-autistic people also struggle to understand and empathize with autistic people. This lack of understanding may stem from bidirectional differences in communication style, social-cognitive characteristics, and experiences between autistic and non-autistic individuals, but not necessarily an inherent deficiency. Recent studies have shown that most autistic individuals are able to socialize, communicate effectively, empathize well or build good rapport, and display social reciprocity with most other autistic individuals. This theory and subsequent findings challenge the commonly held belief that the social skills of autistic individuals are inherently and universally impaired across contexts, as well as the theory of "mind-blindness" proposed by prominent autism researcher Simon Baron-Cohen in the mid-1990s, which suggested that empathy and theory of mind are universally impaired in autistic individuals.
