Leo Kanner

Leo Kanner around 1955

Leo Kanner (born June 13, 1894 in Klekotow, today Klekotiv (Клекотів), small town north of Brody , Galicia , Austria-Hungary (today Ukraine ); † April 3, 1981 in Sykesville , Maryland ) was an Austro-American child and adolescent psychiatrist, who was the first to describe early childhood autism , which is also named Kanner autism after him. From 1930 Kanner built the department for child and adolescent psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins Hospital . He is considered the founder of child and adolescent psychiatry in the USA.

Life

Kanner grew up in Klekotow and later in Brody, where he attended the German-speaking KK Kronprinz-Rudolf-Gymnasium . In 1906 his family moved to Berlin, mainly for economic reasons, where they ran a small hotel. Kanner continued his education at the Realgymnasium Boxhagen-Rummelsburg and Sophien-Gymnasium . In 1913 he graduated from high school and began studying medicine at the University of Berlin . There he was a student of Wilhelm von Waldeyer and Oscar Hertwig, among others . During the First World War he was drafted into the Austro-Hungarian army and had to interrupt his studies. He was a member of the medical and military service of the Imperial and Royal Infantry Regiment No. 10 and was deployed in various reserve hospitals. In 1916 he was temporarily posted back to Berlin to take his physics course. After the war, Kanner continued his studies, including with Friedrich Kraus , who later became his doctoral supervisor . He successfully passed the state examination and finished his studies at the University of Berlin in December 1919.

A few weeks after completing his studies, Kanner, who had previously been an Austrian citizen, received Prussian citizenship. With her it was possible for him to work as a doctor in Berlin. At the beginning of 1920 he became an assistant at the 2nd Medical Clinic of the Charité , which was under the direction of Friedrich Kraus. On June 1, 1920, he defended his doctoral thesis "Investigations into the influence of rest, sleep and work on the electrocardiogram and cardiophonogram with special consideration of conduction time and arousal time" in the colloquium and concluded the oral examination with "very good". The following year the work was published in the journal for experimental pathology and therapy . On December 15, 1920, Kanner received his license to practice medicine and then worked as a doctor at the Charité and his own practice in Berlin. On February 11, 1921 he married Dziunia, b. Lewin, the daughter of one of his mother's cousins.

After discussions with an American doctor from Aberdeen in December 1923, Kanner decided to emigrate to the USA. There he suspected more promising future prospects than in Germany, where economic downturn and inflation prevailed. Starting from Cuxhaven, he and his wife and daughter arrived in New York in February 1924. Kanner then took a position as an intern at the State Hospital in Yankton , South Dakota , a huge hospital with many neuro-psychiatric diseases. After passing the exam, he received the status of an American doctor. From 1924 he published several works on ethnological studies in the field of teeth and finally in 1928 the book Folklore of the teeth, which was well received . Contributions in the field of ethno- neuropsychiatry followed. In 1928 Kanner received a three-year fellowship ("Fellowship in Psychiatry") for the Henry Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore . In the same year he became an employee of the clinic under Director Adolf Meyer . There he worked with Paul Schilder , among others , with whom he researched changes in the perception of movement . In the course of his time as a fellow, Kanner was increasingly involved by Meyer. His reputation in Baltimore rose steadily as he published and made contacts with members of the mental health movement, charities and schools , among others . From 1930 Kanner published regularly in the journal Medical Life founded by Victor Robinson on historical topics and folklore.

At this time, there was growing interest in the United States in the mental health of children and their protection. In 1922 the first Child Guidance Institute was founded in St. Louis and in 1930 the White House Conference on Child Health and Protection took place in Washington . In order to reduce identified deficits among paediatricians in the field of psychology and psychiatry, the first child psychiatric counseling service was set up at a hospital in the USA at the Johns Hopkins Hospital. From November 1, 1930, Kanner took over the management of the Children's Psychiatric Service at the Johns Hopkins Hospital and gradually built it up. It was the first child psychiatric institution at a children's hospital in the USA. In addition to Meyer, Kanner was supported by, among others, Edwards Albert Park , Professor of Pediatrics. Kanner published his findings in English and German-language magazines, and gave lectures, seminars and lectures on problems in child psychiatry. The Johns Hopkins University awarded him the title of associate professor . In 1935 he published his standard work Child Psychiatry, the first comprehensive presentation of child psychiatry in English.

After the National Socialists seized power in Germany, Kanner, who himself came from a family of Jewish faith, got involved with persecuted doctors who emigrated to the USA. He was a member of the Maryland Committee on Medical Émigrés in Baltimore and supported Erich Benjamin , for whom he organized a position in the Children's Psychiatric Service . He wrote an extensive obituary for his friend Gustav Aschaffenburg , who taught at Johns Hopkins University after his emigration.

In 1933 he was appointed "Associate Professor" and later Professor of Child Psychiatry. After Kanner had previously published on a wide range of topics in the field of psychiatry, from 1938 he concentrated on a small group of children with very special, autistic symptoms. In 1943, Kanner published the article Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact , in which he presented eleven case studies, in the second volume of Nervous Child magazine . In the following year, a short version appeared in The Journal of Pediatrics under the title Early infantile autism , which, like the synonym Kanner syndrome, became a well-established term in the literature. A year later, the Austrian Hans Asperger published another form of developmental disorder. In the years that followed, Kanner continued to participate in the scientific discourse on early childhood autism. He has worked as an editor or co-editor of the journals Nervous Child , Journal of Child Psychiatry , Zeitschrift für Kinderpsychiatrie and American Journal of Psychiatry . Kaner's international reputation contributed to the fact that in 1950 child psychiatry was recognized in the USA as an independent medical subject. In 1957, Kanner became a professor of child psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University. His retirement followed two years later . He was always committed to the welfare of disabled children. With his commitment, he put an end to the practice of placing disabled children as servants. In 1971 he published a follow-up study on the further development of the patients he described in 1943 in the Journal of Autism and Childhood Schizophrenia . In 1981, Kanner died of a heart attack at his home in Sykesville , Maryland , aged 86 . He left behind his wife and son Albert Kanner, who was an ophthalmologist in the School of Medicine at the University of Wisconsin . Several obituaries appeared, including by Leo Kanner's pupil and closest collaborator, Leon Eisenberg (1922–2009).

Fonts (selection)

• Child psychiatry. Charles C. Thomas, Springfield 1935.
• Autistic disturbances of affective contact. In: Nervous Child. 1943, Vol. 2, pp. 217-250.
• Folklore of the teeth. The Macmillan Company, New York 1928.
• In defense of mothers; how to bring up children in spite of the more zealous psychologists. CC Thomas, Springfield, Ill. 1941.
• Childhood psychosis: initial studies and new insights. VH Winston, Washington 1973, ISBN 0-470-45610-8 .

literature

• Klaus-Jürgen Neumärker: Leo Kanner. In: Rolf Castell (Ed.): Hundred Years of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry: Biographies and Autobiographies. V & R Unipress, Göttingen 2008, ISBN 978-3-89971-509-5 , pp. 47-70.
• Leon Eisenberg: Obituary Leo Kanner, MD - 1894–1981. In: Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 22, 1981, pp. 317-322.

Web links

• Literature by and about Leo Kanner in the bibliographic database WorldCat
• Leo Kanner in the Encyclopædia Britannica

Individual evidence

1. ^ Klaus-Jürgen Neumärker: Leo Kanner. In: Rolf Castell (Ed.): Hundred Years of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Göttingen 2008, p. 51.
2. ^ Klaus-Jürgen Neumärker: Leo Kanner. In: Rolf Castell (Ed.): Hundred Years of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Göttingen 2008, p. 54.
3. ↑ Sabine Schuchart: Leo Kanner, lawyer for disadvantaged children. Series: Famous Disease Discoverers. Deutsches Ärzteblatt vol. 116, issue 41, October 11, 2019
4. ^ Klaus-Jürgen Neumärker: Leo Kanner. In: Rolf Castell (Ed.): Hundred Years of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Göttingen 2008, p. 58.
5. ^ Klaus-Jürgen Neumärker: Leo Kanner. In: Rolf Castell (Ed.): Hundred Years of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Göttingen 2008, p. 59.
6. ^ Klaus-Jürgen Neumärker: Leo Kanner. In: Rolf Castell (Ed.): Hundred Years of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Göttingen 2008, p. 60.
7. ^ Kanner L .: Autistic disturbances of affective contact. In: Nerv Child . tape 2 , 1943, p. 217-250 .
8. ^ Klaus-Jürgen Neumärker: Leo Kanner. In: Rolf Castell (Ed.): Hundred Years of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. Göttingen 2008, p. 63.
9. ↑ David Bird: Dr. Leo Kanner, 86, Child Psychologist. In: The New York Times April 7, 1981. Retrieved February 27, 2015.