Xiaohua: Welcome to Round Tables’ Word of the Week. This week we are talking about autism as this past Wednesday, April the 2nd, was International Autism Awareness Day.

John: That’s right. So generally speaking, autism is a developmental disorder that usually shows itself around the age of 3 years old. It’s characterized by low social interaction and poor communication.

Xiaohua: 自閉癥在中文里面又叫孤獨癥，它是一種由于神經系統失調導致的發育障礙。這種病癥的特征包括不正常的社交能力、溝通能力等等。

John: The Latin word autismus, the English translation is autism, was actually coined by the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Blueler in 1910 as he was defining symptoms of schizophrenia.

Xiaohua: 說到autism這個字的詞源，實際上是來自于拉丁語的autismus，而這個詞最早是在1910年一位瑞士的精神科醫生在定義精神分裂癥的時候用到了這個詞匯autismus。

John: Yeah, and so, he derived it from the Greek word autos that meaning is “self” and used it to mean “morbid self-admiration.”

Xiaohua: 在希臘語里面auto是“自己”、“自我”的意思，這位醫生把auto定義為病態的自戀，也就是說病人沉浸在自己的幻想世界中。

John. And so the word autism itself first took its modern sense in 1938 when Hans Asperger adopted Blueler’s terminology “autistic psychopaths” to in a lecture in Germany about child psychology.

Xiaohua: 再晚一些，在1938年維也納大學醫院的一位Hans Asperger醫生借用了之前的瑞士醫生對autismus的定義。

Yeah, and that’s some of the history of the word. But in terms of autism itself, it seems for a lot of Chinese people all the impression they got is from this film 海洋天堂. And in that film, this autistic adult already has really repetitive behavior and sometimes he’s intolerant to any little change in the outside environment.

John: Autistic people in general are actually very difficult to get along with mostly because they are prone to explosions, I guess you might say, where something is not exactly how it should be or not exactly how they are used to and also you couple that with an inability for their brain to filter sensory input. So, for autistic people, especially more severe cases, you do see a lot of unwillingness to communicate in some ways, but also a tendency towards blow-ups or just losing control emotionally.

Xiaohua: 由于自閉癥患者在分析外界信息方面具有一定的困難，所以經常會表現為重復某一種刻板的行為。而且當外部的環境突然改變了，他們可能會無法理解，由此發生情緒失控的情況。

John: Right. It’s important also to mention that autism, it exists on a spectrum. Actually the way it’s referred to now is “autism spectrum disorder.” What you have, you have very extreme cases on the one end and then very light cases on the other end. Just because someone is diagnosed with Asperger’s or autism doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re going to be impossible to help or impossible to get along with, really you have to look at case by case.

Xiaohua: 自閉癥是一種譜系障礙，意思就是說它是一大類很多種發育障礙的統稱。有些患者經過治療是可以比較好的融入社會的。

And that wraps up Round Table’s Word of the Week.