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: 自闭症在中文里面又叫孤独症，它是一种由于神经系统失调导致的发育障碍。这种病症的特征包括不正常的社交能力、沟通能力等等。

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: 说到autism这个字的词源，实际上是来自于拉丁语的autismus，而这个词最早是在1910年一位瑞士的精神科医生在定义精神分裂症的时候用到了这个词汇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: 在希腊语里面auto是“自己”、“自我”的意思，这位医生把auto定义为病态的自恋，也就是说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年维也纳大学医院的一位Hans Asperger医生借用了之前的瑞士医生对autismus的定义。

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: 由于自闭症患者在分析外界信息方面具有一定的困难，所以经常会表现为重复某一种刻板的行为。而且当外部的环境突然改变了，他们可能会无法理解，由此发生情绪失控的情况。

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: 自闭症是一种谱系障碍，意思就是说它是一大类很多种发育障碍的统称。有些患者经过治疗是可以比较好的融入社会的。

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