Retrospective diagnoses of autism

A retrospective diagnosis is the practice of identifying a condition in a historical figure using modern knowledge, methods and medical classifications.
Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) were first identified by Hans Asperger and Leo Kanner in 1943, and it was not until many years later that they were formally recognised by the medical community. Journalists, academics and autism professionals have speculated that certain famous or notable historical people had autism or other autism spectrum disorders such as Asperger syndrome. Such speculations are often disputed. For example, several autism researchers speculate that Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart was autistic or otherwise neurodivergent, while other researchers say there is not sufficient evidence to draw such conclusions.
Validity of retrospective diagnoses
Michael Fitzgerald of the Department of Child Psychiatry at Trinity College, Dublin, has written numerous books and articles on the subject, identifying over 30 individuals as possibly having AS, including Andy Warhol, Charles Darwin, Hans Christian Andersen, Lewis Carroll, Éamon de Valera, Keith Joseph, George Orwell, Enoch Powell, and W. B. Yeats. Ioan James is a British mathematician who, in 2005, published Asperger's Syndrome And High Achievement: Some Very Remarkable People, identifying a number of historic figures as autism candidates, including mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, writer Jonathan Swift, composer Erik Satie, Paul Dirac, and composer Béla Bartók.
Speculation of this sort is, by necessity, based on reported behavior and anecdotal evidence rather than any clinical observation of the individual. Psychologist and author Oliver Sacks wrote that many of these claims seem "very thin at best", and Fred Volkmar, of the Yale Child Study Center, has remarked that "there is unfortunately a sort of cottage industry of finding that everyone has Asperger's". research, in particular, has been heavily criticised, and described by some as "fudged pseudoscience" and "frankly absurd". Glen Elliott, a psychiatrist at the University of California at San Francisco, is unconvinced that either Newton or Einstein had Asperger syndrome, particularly due to the unreliability of diagnoses based on biographical information. Elliot stated that there are a variety of causes that could explain the behaviour in question. Although it is impossible to diagnose autism in individuals who are no longer living, Simon Baron-Cohen believes that studying historical figures with autistic traits will help reveal the reasons why some autistic people excel and others struggle.

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