AccessibleComputing Anarchism '''Anarchism''' is a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society , or anarchy . The following sources cite anarchism as a political philosophy: There are many types and traditions of anarchism, not all of which are mutually exclusive. Anarchist schools of thought can differ fundamentally, supporting anything from extreme individualism to complete collectivism. Anarchism is often considered to be a radical left-wing ideology, and much of anarchist economics and anarchist legal philosophy lect anti-statist interpretations of communism , collectivism , syndicalism or participatory economics . However, anarchism has always included an individualist strain supporting a market economy and private property , or morally unrestrained egoism . Some individualist anarchists are also socialist s while some anarcho-communists are also individualists . The position known as anarchism without adjectives insists on recognising the right of other tendencies to the name 'anarchist' while, obviously, having their own p erences for specific types of anarchist theory and their own arguments why other types are flawed. The central tendency of anarchism as a mass social movement has been represented by anarcho-communism and anarcho-syndicalism, with individualist anarchism being primarily a literary phenomenon. Some anarchists oppose all forms of aggression , supporting self-defense or non-violence ( anarcho-pacifism ), while others have supported the use of some coercive measures, including violent revolution and propaganda of the deed , on the path to an anarchist society. The term '' anarchism '' derives from the Greek ἄναρχος, ''anarchos'', meaning without rulers , from the p ix ἀν- (''an-'', without ) + ἀρχή (''archê'', sovereignty, realm, magistracy ) + -ισμός (''-ismos'', from the suffix -ιζειν, ''-izein'' -izing ). There is some ambiguity with the use of the terms libertarianism and libertarian in writings about anarchism. Since the 1890s from France, the term libertarianism has often been used as a synonym for anarchism and was used almost exclusively in this sense until the 1950s in the United States; its use as a synonym is still common outside the United States. Anarchist themes can be found in the works of Taoist sages Laozi , Zhuangzi and Bao Jingyan [http://robertgraham.wordpress.com/anarchism-a-documentary-history-of-libertarian-ideas-volume-one-from-anarchy-to-anarchism-300ce-1939/]. Zhuangzi wrote, '' A petty thief is put in jail. A great brigand becomes a ruler of a Nation, '' while Bao Jingyan said that as soon as the relationship between lord and subject is established, hearts become daily filled with evil designs, until the manacled criminals sullenly doing forced labour in the mud and the dust are full of mutinous thoughts. Diogenes of Sinope and the Cynic s, their contemporary Zeno of Citium , the founder of Stoicism , also introduced similar topics. The term anarchist first entered the English language in 1642, during the English Civil War , as a term of abuse , used by Royalists against their Roundhead opponents. in opposition to Jacobin centralisation of power, seeing revolutionary government as oxymoron ic. By the turn of the 19th century, the English word anarchism had lost its initial negative connotation. Modern anarchism sprang from the secular or religious thought of the Enlightenment , particularly Jean-Jacques Rousseau 's arguments for the moral centrality of freedom. From this climate William Godwin developed what many consider the first expression of modern anarchist thought . Benjamin Tucker instead credits Josiah Warren , an American who promoted stateless and voluntary communities where all goods and services were private , with being the first man to expound and formulate the doctrine now known as Anarchism. The first to describe himself as an anarchist was Pierre-Joseph Proudhon , a French philosopher and politician, which led some to call him the founder of modern anarchist theory. Anarchism as a social movement has regularly endured fluctuations in popularity. Its classical period, which scholars demarcate as from 1860 to 1939, is associated with the working-class movements of the 19th century and the Spanish Civil War -era struggles against fascism . In Europe, harsh reaction followed the revolutions of 1848 , during which ten countries had experienced brief or long-term social upheaval as groups carried out nationalist uprisings. After most of these attempts at systematic change ended in failure, conservative elements took advantage of the divided groups of socialists, anarchists, liberals, and nationalists, to prevent further revolt. In 1864 the International Workingmen's Association (sometimes called the First International ) united diverse revolutionary currents including French followers of Proudhon , Blanquists , Philadelphes , English trade unionists, socialists and social democrats . Due to its links to active workers' movements, the International became a significant organization. Karl Marx became a leading figure in the International and a member of its General Council. Proudhon's followers, the mutualists , opposed Marx's state socialism , advocating political abstentionism and small property holdings. In 1868, following their unsuccessful participation in the League of Peace and Freedom (LPF), Russian revolutionary Mikhail Bakunin and his collectivist anarchist associates joined the First International (which had decided not to get involved with the LPF). They allied themselves with the federalist socialist sections of the International, who advocated the revolutionary overthrow of the state and the collectivization of property. At first, the collectivists worked with the Marxists to push the First International in a more revolutionary socialist direction. Subsequently, the International became polarised into two camps, with Marx and Bakunin as their respective figureheads. Bakunin characterised Marx's ideas as centralist and predicted that, if a Marxist party came to power, its leaders would simply take the place of the ruling class they had fought against. In 1872, the conflict climaxed with a final split between the two groups at the Hague Congress , where Bakunin and James Guillaume were expelled from the International and its headquarters were transferred to New York. In response, the federalist sections formed their own International at the St. Imier Congress , adopting a revolutionary anarchist program. The anti-authoritarian sections of the First International were the precursors of the anarcho-syndicalists, seeking to replace the privilege and authority of the State with the free and spontaneous organization of labor. In 1886, the Federation of Organized Trades and Labor Unions (FOTLU) of the United States and Canada unanimously set 1 May 1886, as the date by which the eight-hour work day would become standard. In response, unions across the United States prepared a general strike in support of the event. The next day, 4 May, anarchists staged a rally at Chicago's Haymarket Square. A bomb was thrown by an unknown party near the conclusion of the rally, killing an officer. In the ensuing panic, police opened fire on the crowd and each other. Seven police officers and at least four workers were killed. Eight anarchists directly and indirectly related to the organisers of the rally were arrested and charged with the murder of the deceased officer. The men became international political celebrities among the labour movement. Four of the men were executed and a fifth committed suicide prior to his own execution. The incident became known as the Haymarket affair , and was a setback for the labour movement and the struggle for the eight hour day. In 1890 a second attempt, this time international in scope, to organise for the eight hour day was made.The event also had the secondary purpose of memorializing workers killed as a result of the Haymarket affair. Although it had initially been conceived as a once-off event, by the following year the celebration of International Workers' Day on May Day had become firmly established as an international worker's holiday. In 1907, the International Anarchist Congress of Amsterdam gathered delegates from 14 different countries, among which important figures of the anarchist movement, including Errico Malatesta , Pierre Monatte , Luigi Fabbri , Benoît Broutchoux , Emma Goldman , Rudolf Rocker , and Christiaan Cornelissen . Various themes were treated during the Congress, in particular concerning the organisation of the anarchist movement, popular education issues, the general strike or antimilitarism . A central debate concerned the relation between anarchism and syndicalism (or trade union ism). Malatesta and Monatte were in particular disagreement themselves on this issue, as the latter thought that syndicalism was revolutionary and would create the conditions of a social revolution , while Malatesta did not consider syndicalism by itself sufficient. He thought that the trade-union movement was ormist and even conservative , citing as essentially bourgeois and anti-worker the phenomenon of professional union officials. Malatesta warned that the syndicalists aims were in perpetuating syndicalism itself, whereas anarchists must always have anarchy as their end and consequently rain from committing to any particular method of achieving it. The Spanish Workers Federation in 1881 was the first major anarcho-syndicalist movement; anarchist trade union federations were of special importance in Spain. The most successful was the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo (National Confederation of Labour: CNT), founded in 1910. Before the 1940s, the CNT was the major force in Spanish working class politics, attracting 1.58 million members at one point and playing a major role in the Spanish Civil War . The CNT was affiliated with the International Workers Association , a federation of anarcho-syndicalist trade unions founded in 1922, with delegates representing two million workers from 15 countries in Europe and Latin America. In Latin America in particular The anarchists quickly became active in organizing craft and industrial workers throughout South and Central America, and until the early 1920s most of the trade unions in Mexico , Brazil , Peru, Chile, and Argentina were anarcho-syndicalist in general outlook; the prestige of the Spanish C.N.T. as a revolutionary organization was undoubtedly to a great extent responsible for this situation. The largest and most militant of these organizations was the Federación Obrera Regional Argentina ...it grew quickly to a membership of nearly a quarter of a million, which dwarfed the rival socialdemocratic unions. The largest organised anarchist movement today is in Spain, in the form of the Confederación General del Trabajo (CGT) and the CNT . CGT membership was estimated to be around 100,000 for 2003. Other active syndicalist movements include the US Workers Solidarity Alliance and the UK Solidarity Federation . The revolutionary industrial unionist Industrial Workers of the World , claiming 2,000 paying members, and the International Workers Association , an anarcho-syndicalist successor to the First International, also remain active. Some anarchists, such as Johann Most , advocated publicizing violent acts of retaliation against counter-revolutionaries because we preach not only action in and for itself, but also action as propaganda. By the 1880s, the slogan propaganda of the deed had begun to be used both within and outside of the anarchist movement to er to individual bombings, regicide s and tyrannicide s. From 1905 onwards, the Russian counterparts of these anti-syndicalist anarchist-communists become partisans of economic terrorism and illegal ‘ expropriations ’. Illegalism as a practice emerged and within it The acts of the anarchist bombers and assassins ( propaganda by the deed ) and the anarchist burglars ( individual reappropriation ) expressed their desperation and their personal, violent rejection of an intolerable society. Moreover, they were clearly meant to be exemplary , invitations to revolt. . France's Bonnot Gang was the most famous group to embrace illegalism. However, as soon as 1887, important figures in the anarchist movement distanced themselves from such individual acts. Peter Kropotkin thus wrote that year in ''Le Révolté'' that a structure based on centuries of history cannot be destroyed with a few kilos of dynamite . A variety of anarchists advocated the abandonment of these sorts of tactics in favor of collective revolutionary action, for example through the trade union movement. The anarcho-syndicalist , Fernand Pelloutier , argued in 1895 for renewed anarchist involvement in the labor movement on the basis that anarchism could do very well without the individual dynamiter. Numerous heads of state were assassinated between 1881 and 1914 by members of the anarchist movement. For example, U.S. President McKinley 's assassin Leon Czolgosz claimed to have been influenced by anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman . This was in spite of Goldman's disavowal of any association with him, his registered membership in the Republican Party , and never having belonged to an anarchist organization. Bombings were associated in the media with anarchists because international terrorism arose during this time period with the widespread distribution of dynamite. This image remains to this day. Propaganda of the deed was abandoned by the vast majority of the anarchist movement after World War I (1914–1918) and the 1917 October Revolution . Anarchists participated alongside the Bolshevik s in both February and October revolutions , and were initially enthusiastic about the Bolshevik coup. However, the Bolsheviks soon turned against the anarchists and other left-wing opposition, a conflict that culminated in the 1921 Kronstadt rebellion which the new government repressed. Anarchists in central Russia were either imprisoned, driven underground or joined the victorious Bolsheviks; the anarchists from Petrograd and Moscow fled to the Ukraine . There, in the Free Territory , they fought in the civil war against the Whites (a grouping of monarchists and other opponents of the October Revolution) and then the Bolsheviks as part of the Revolutionary Insurrectionary Army of Ukraine led by Nestor Makhno , who established an anarchist society in the region for a number of months. Expelled American anarchists Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman were amongst those agitating in response to Bolshevik policy and the suppression of the Kronstadt uprising, before they left Russia. Both wrote accounts of their experiences in Russia, criticizing the amount of control the Bolsheviks exercised. For them, Bakunin 's predictions about the consequences of Marxist rule that the rulers of the new socialist Marxist state would become a new elite had proved all too true. The victory of the Bolsheviks in the October Revolution and the resulting Russian Civil War did serious damage to anarchist movements internationally. Many workers and activists saw Bolshevik success as setting an example; Communist parties grew at the expense of anarchism and other socialist movements. In France and the United States, for example, members of the major syndicalist movements of the CGT and IWW left the organizations and joined the Communist International . In Paris, the Dielo Truda group of Russian anarchist exiles, which included Nestor Makhno , concluded that anarchists needed to develop new forms of organisation in response to the structures of Bolshevism. Their 1926 manifesto, called the '' Organizational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft) '', was supported. Platformist groups active today include the Workers Solidarity Movement in Ireland and the North Eastern Federation of Anarchist Communists of North America. Synthesis anarchism emerged as an organizational alternative to platformism which tries to join anarchists of different tendencies under the principles of anarchism without adjectives . In the 1920s this form found as its main proponents Volin and Sebastien Faure . It is the main principle behind the anarchist federations grouped around the contemporary global International of Anarchist Federations . In the 1920s and 1930s, the rise of fascism in Europe transformed anarchism's conflict with the state. Italy saw the first struggles between anarchists and fascists. Italian anarchists played a key role in the anti-fascist organisation '' Arditi del Popolo '', which was strongest in areas with anarchist traditions, and achieved some success in their activism, such as repelling Blackshirts in the anarchist stronghold of Parma in August 1922. The veteran Italian anarchist, Luigi Fabbri, was one of the first critical theorists of fascism, describing it as the preventive counter-revolution. [http://robertgraham.wordpress.com/anarchism-a-documentary-history-of-libertarian-ideas-volume-one-from-anarchy-to-anarchism-300ce-1939/] In France, where the far right leagues came close to insurrection in the February 1934 riots , anarchists divided over a united front policy. In Spain, the CNT initially used to join a popular front electoral alliance, and abstention by CNT supporters led to a right wing election victory. But in 1936, the CNT changed its policy and anarchist votes helped bring the popular front back to power. Months later, the former ruling class responded with an attempted coup causing the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939). In response to the army rebellion, an anarchist-inspired movement of peasants and workers, supported by armed militias, took control of Barcelona and of large areas of rural Spain where they collectivised the land. But even before the fascist victory in 1939, the anarchists were losing ground in a bitter struggle with the Stalinists , who controlled the distribution of military aid to the Republican cause from the Soviet Union . Stalinist-led troops suppressed the collectives and persecuted both dissident Marxists and anarchists. Anarchists in France and Italy were active in the Resistance during World War II . Anarchism sought to reorganize itself after the war. In 1939 the Mexican Anarchist Federation is established. In the early 1940s the Antifascist International Solidarity and Federation of Anarchist Groups of Cuba merge into the large national organization Asociación Libertaria de Cuba (Cuban Libertarian Association). From 1944 to 1947, the Bulgarian Anarchist Communist Federation reemerges as part of a factory and workplace committee movement, but is repressed by the new Communist regime. In 1945 in France the Fédération Anarchiste is established and the also synthesist Federazione Anarchica Italiana is founded in Italy . Korean anarchists form the League of Free Social Constructors in September 1945 An International Anarchist Congress with delegates from across Europe is held in Paris in May 1948. In 1955 the Anarcho-Communist Federation of Argentina renames itself as the Argentine Libertarian Federation . Anarchism continued to be influential in important literary and intellectual personalities of the time such as Albert Camus , Herbert Read , Paul Goodman , Dwight Macdonald , Allen Ginsberg , Julian Beck and the French Surrealist group led by André Breton which now openly embraced anarchism and collaborated in the Fédération Anarchiste . In the United Kingdom in the 1970s this was associated with the punk rock movement, as exemplified by bands such as Crass and the Sex Pistols . The housing and employment crisis in most of Western Europe led to the formation of communes and squatter movements like that of Barcelona , Spain. In Denmark, squatter s occupied a disused military base and declared the Freetown Christiania , an autonomous haven in central Copenhagen. Since the revival of anarchism in the mid 20th century, Around the turn of the 21st century, anarchism grew in popularity and influence as part of the anti-war, anti-capitalist, and anti-globalisation movement s. Anarchists became known for their involvement in protests against the meetings of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Group of Eight , and the World Economic Forum . Some anarchist factions at these protests engaged in rioting, property destruction, and violent confrontations with police, and the confrontations were selectively portrayed in mainstream media coverage as violent riots. These actions were precipitated by ad hoc, leaderless, anonymous cadres known as '' black bloc s''; other organisational tactics pioneered in this time include security culture , affinity groups and the use of decentralised technologies such as the internet. A landmark struggle of this period was the confrontations at WTO conference in Seattle in 1999 . International anarchist federations in existence include the International of Anarchist Federations , the International Workers' Association , and International Libertarian Solidarity . Anarchist schools of thought had been generally grouped in two main historical traditions, individualist anarchism and social anarchism , which have some different origins, values and evolution. The individualist wing of anarchism emphasises negative liberty , i.e. opposition to state or social control over the individual, while those in the social wing emphasise positive liberty to achieve one's potential and argue that humans have needs that society ought to fulfill, recognizing equality of entitlement . In chronological and theoretical sense there are classical — those created throughout the 19th century — and post-classical anarchist schools — those created since the mid-20th century and after. Beyond the specific factions of anarchist thought is philosophical anarchism , which embodies the theoretical stance that the state lacks moral legitimacy without accepting the imperative of revolution to eliminate it. A component especially of individualist anarchism philosophical anarchism may accept the existence of a minimal state as unfortunate, and usually temporary, necessary evil but argue that citizens do not have a moral obligation to obey the state when its laws conflict with individual autonomy. One reaction against sectarianism within the anarchist milieu was anarchism without adjectives , a call for toleration first adopted by Fernando Tarrida del Mármol in 1889 in response to the bitter debates of anarchist theory at the time. In abandoning the hyphenated anarchisms (i.e. collectivist-, communist-, mutualist- and individualist-anarchism), it sought to emphasise the anti-authoritarian beliefs common to all anarchist schools of thought. Mutualism began in 18th century English and French labour movements before taking an anarchist form associated with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon in France and others in the United States. Proudhon proposed spontaneous order , whereby organization emerges without central authority, a positive anarchy where order arises when everybody does what he wishes and only what he wishes and where business transactions alone produce the social order. Mutualist anarchism is concerned with reciprocity , free association, voluntary contract, federation, and credit and currency orm. According to William Batchelder Greene, each worker in the mutualist system would receive just and exact pay for his work; services equivalent in cost being exchangeable for services equivalent in cost, without profit or discount. Mutualism has been retrospectively characterised as ideologically situated between individualist and collectivist forms of anarchism. Proudhon first characterised his goal as a third form of society, the synthesis of communism and property. Individualist anarchism ers to several traditions of thought within the anarchist movement that emphasize the individual and their will over any kinds of external determinants such as groups, society, traditions, and ideological systems. What do I mean by individualism? I mean by individualism the moral doctrine which, relying on no dogma, no tradition, no external determination, appeals only to the individual conscience. [http://www.marx.org/archive/ryner/1905/mini-manual.htm ''Mini-Manual of Individualism'' by Han Ryner] Individualist anarchism is not a single philosophy but ers to a group of individualistic philosophies that sometimes are in conflict. In 1793, William Godwin , who has often been cited as the first anarchist, wrote '' Political Justice '', which some consider to be the first expression of anarchism. Godwin, a philosophical anarchist, from a rationalist and utilitarian basis opposed revolutionary action and saw a minimal state as a present necessary evil that would become increasingly irrelevant and powerless by the gradual spread of knowledge. Godwin advocated extreme individualism , proposing that all cooperation in labour be eliminated on the premise that this would be most conducive with the general good. Godwin was a utilitarian who believed that all individuals are not of equal value, with some of us of more worth and importance than others depending on our utility in bringing about social good. The ore he does not believe in equal rights, but the person's life that should be favoured that is most conducive to the general good. The most extreme form of individualist anarchism, called egoism, or egoist anarchism , was expounded by one of the earliest and best-known proponents of individualist anarchism, Max Stirner. Stirner's '' The Ego and Its Own '', published in 1844, is a founding text of the philosophy. without regard for God, state, or morality. To Stirner, rights were '' spooks '' in the mind, and he held that society does not exist but the individuals are its reality . Stirner advocated self-assertion and foresaw unions of egoists , non-systematic associations continually renewed by all parties' support through an act of will, which Stirner proposed as a form of organization in place of the state . Egoist anarchists claim that egoism will foster genuine and spontaneous union between individuals. Egoism has inspired many interpretations of Stirner's philosophy. It was re-discovered and promoted by German philosophical anarchist and LGBT activist John Henry Mackay . Individualist anarchism inspired by Stirner attracted a small following of European bohemian artists and intellectuals as well as young anarchist outlaws in what came to be known as illegalism and individual reclamation (see European individualist anarchism ). Social anarchism calls for a system with public ownership of means of production and democratic control of all organizations, without any government authority or coercion . It is the largest school of thought in anarchism. Social anarchism rejects private property, seeing it as a source of social inequality, and emphasises cooperation and mutual aid . However, collectivization was not to be extended to the distribution of income, as workers would be paid according to time worked, rather than receiving goods being distributed according to need as in anarcho-communism. This position was criticised by anarchist communists as effectively uphold[ing] the wages system . Collectivist anarchism arose contemporaneously with Marxism but opposed the Marxist dictatorship of the proletariat , despite the stated Marxist goal of a collectivist stateless society. Anarchist, communist and collectivist ideas are not mutually exclusive ; although the collectivist anarchists advocated compensation for labour, some held out the possibility of a post-revolutionary transition to a communist system of distribution according to need. In the early 20th century, anarcho-syndicalism arose as a distinct school of thought within anarchism. With greater focus on the labour movement than previous forms of anarchism, syndicalism posits radical trade union s as a potential force for revolutionary social change, replacing capitalism and the state with a new society, democratically self-managed by the workers . It is often combined with other branches of anarchism, and anarcho-syndicalists often subscribe to anarchist communist or collectivist anarchist economic system s. An early leading anarcho-syndicalist thinker was Rudolf Rocker , whose 1938 pamphlet ''Anarchosyndicalism'' outlined a view of the movement's origin, aims and importance to the future of labour. Anarchism continues to generate many philosophies and movements, at times eclectic, drawing upon various sources, and syncretic , combining disparate and contrary concepts to create new philosophical approaches. Since the revival of anarchism in the United States in the 1960s, Another recent form of anarchism critical of formal anarchist movements is insurrectionary anarchism , which advocates informal organization and active resistance to the state; its proponents include Wolfi Landstreicher and Alfredo M. Bonanno . Intersecting and overlapping between various schools of thought, certain topics of interest and internal disputes have proven perennial within anarchist theory. An important current within anarchism is Free love . Free love advocates sometimes traced their roots back to Josiah Warren and to experimental communities, viewed sexual freedom as a clear, direct expression of an individual's self-ownership. Free love particularly stressed women's rights since most sexual laws discriminated against women: for example, marriage laws and anti-birth control measures. but also there existed Ezra Heywood and Angela Heywood's '' ''The Word'' '' (1872–1890, 1892–1893). The publication staunchly advocated free love and women's rights , and critiqued Comstockery -- censorship of sexual information.Also M. E. Lazarus was an important American individualist anarchist who promoted free love. In New York's Greenwich Village , bohemian feminists and socialists advocated self-realisation and pleasure for women (and also men) in the here and now. They encouraged playing with sexual roles and sexuality, and the openly bisexual radical Edna St. Vincent Millay and the lesbian anarchist Margaret Anderson were prominent among them. Discussion groups organised by the Villagers were frequented by Emma Goldman , among others. Magnus Hirschfeld noted in 1923 that Goldman has campaigned boldly and steadfastly for individual rights, and especially for those deprived of their rights. Thus it came about that she was the first and only woman, indeed the first and only American, to take up the defense of homosexual love before the general public. In fact, before Goldman, heterosexual anarchist Robert Reitzel (1849–1898) spoke positively of homosexuality from the beginning of the 1890s in his Detroit-based German language journal '' Der arme Teufel ''. In Europe the main propagandist of free love within individualist anarchism was Emile Armand . He proposed the concept of ''la camaraderie amoureuse'' to speak of free love as the possibility of voluntary sexual encounter between consenting adults. He was also a consistent proponent of polyamory . In Germany the stirner ists Adolf Brand and John Henry Mackay were pioneering campaigners for the acceptance of male bisexuality and homosexuality . More recently, the British anarcho-pacifist Alex Comfort gained notoriety during the sexual revolution for writing the bestseller sex manual '' The Joy of Sex ''. The issue of free love has a dedicated treatment in the work of French anarcho- hedonist philosopher Michel Onfray in such works as ''Théorie du corps amoureux : pour une érotique solaire'' (2000) and ''L'invention du plaisir : fragments cyréaniques'' (2002). In 1901, Catalan anarchist and free-thinker Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia established modern or progressive schools in Barcelona in defiance of an educational system controlled by the Catholic Church. The schools' stated goal was to educate the working class in a rational, secular and non-coercive setting . Fiercely anti-clerical, Ferrer believed in freedom in education , education free from the authority of church and state. Murray Bookchin wrote: This period [1890s] was the heyday of libertarian schools and pedagogical projects in all areas of the country where Anarchists exercised some degree of influence. Perhaps the best-known effort in this field was Francisco Ferrer's Modern School (Escuela Moderna), a project which exercised a considerable influence on Catalan education and on experimental techniques of teaching generally. La Escuela Moderna, and Ferrer's ideas generally, formed the inspiration for a series of '' Modern Schools '' in the United States , Cuba , South America and London . The first of these was started in New York City in 1911. It also inspired the Italian newspaper '' Università popolare '', founded in 1901. Another libertarian tradition is that of unschooling and the free school in which child-led activity replaces pedagogic approaches. Experiments in Germany led to A. S. Neill founding what became Summerhill School in 1921. Summerhill is often cited as an example of anarchism in practice. However, although Summerhill and other free schools are radically libertarian, they differ in principle from those of Ferrer by not advocating an overtly political class struggle -approach. In addition to organizing schools according to libertarian principles, anarchists have also questioned the concept of schooling per se. The term deschooling was popularized by Ivan Illich , who argued that the school as an institution is dysfunctional for self-determined learning and serves the creation of a consumer society instead. Anarchism is a philosophy which embodies many diverse attitudes, tendencies and schools of thought; as such, disagreement over questions of values, ideology and tactics is common. The compatibility of capitalism , nationalism and religion with anarchism is widely disputed. Similarly, anarchism enjoys complex relationships with ideologies such as Marxism , communism and capitalism . Anarchists may be motivated by humanism , divine authority , enlightened self-interest , veganism or any number of alternative ethical doctrines. Phenomena such as civilization , technology (e.g. within anarcho-primitivism and insurrectionary anarchism ), and the democratic process may be sharply criticised within some anarchist tendencies and simultaneously lauded in others. On a tactical level, while propaganda of the deed was a tactic used by anarchists in the 19th century (e.g. the Nihilist movement ), contemporary anarchists espouse alternative direct action methods such as nonviolence , counter-economics and anti-state cryptography to bring about an anarchist society. About the scope of an anarchist society, some anarchists advocate a global one, while others do so by local ones. The diversity in anarchism has led to widely different use of identical terms among different anarchist traditions, which has led to many definitional concerns in anarchist theory . AfghanistanHistory AfghanistanGeography AfghanistanPeople AfghanistanCommunications AfghanistanTransportations AfghanistanMilitary AfghanistanTransnationalIssues AssistiveTechnology AmoeboidTaxa Autism 1) Please follow the Wikipedia style guidelines for editing medical articles WP:MEDMOS . 2) Use for explicitly cited erences. 3) Reference anything you put here with notable erences, as this subject tends to attract a lot of controversy.-- '''Autism''' is a disorder of neural development characterized by impaired social interaction and communication , and by restricted and repetitive behavior. These signs all begin before a child is three years old. Autism affects information processing in the brain by altering how nerve cells and their synapse s connect and organize; how this occurs is not well understood. It is one of three recognized disorders in the autism spectrum (ASDs), the other two being Asperger syndrome , which lacks delays in cognitive development and language, and Pervasive Developmental Disorder-Not Otherwise Specified (commonly abbreviated as PDD-NOS), which is diagnosed when the full set of criteria for autism or Asperger syndrome are not met. Autism has a strong genetic basis, although the genetics of autism are complex and it is unclear whether ASD is explained more by rare mutation s, or by rare combinations of common genetic variants. The prevalence of autism is about 1–2 per 1,000 people worldwide; however, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reports approximately 9 per 1,000 children in the United States are diagnosed with ASD. The number of people diagnosed with autism has increased dramatically since the 1980s, partly due to changes in diagnostic practice; the question of whether actual prevalence has increased is unresolved. Parents usually notice signs in the first two years of their child's life. The signs usually develop gradually, but some autistic children first develop more normally and then regress . Early behavioral or cognitive intervention can help autistic children gain self-care, social, and communication skills. Although there is no known cure, there have been reported cases of children who recovered. Not many children with autism live independently after reaching adulthood, though some become successful. An autistic culture has developed, with some individuals seeking a cure and others believing autism should be accepted as a difference and not treated as a disorder. Autism is a highly variable neurodevelopmental disorder and tend to continue through adulthood, although often in more muted form. It is distinguished not by a single symptom, but by a characteristic triad of symptoms: impairments in social interaction; impairments in communication; and restricted interests and repetitive behavior. Other aspects, such as atypical eating, are also common but are not essential for diagnosis. Autism's individual symptoms occur in the general population and appear not to associate highly, without a sharp line separating pathologically severe from common traits. Social deficits distinguish autism and the related autism spectrum disorder s (ASD; see '' Classification '') from other developmental disorders. Unusual social development becomes apparent early in childhood. Autistic infants show less attention to social stimuli, smile and look at others less often, and respond less to their own name. Autistic toddlers differ more strikingly from social norms ; for example, they have less eye contact and turn taking, and do not have the ability to use simple movements to express oneself, such as the deficiency to point at things. Most autistic children display moderately less attachment security than non-autistic children, although this difference disappears in children with higher mental development or less severe ASD. Older children and adults with ASD perform worse on tests of face and emotion recognition. Children with high-functioning autism suffer from more intense and frequent loneliness compared to non-autistic peers, despite the common belief that children with autism p er to be alone. Making and maintaining friendships often proves to be difficult for those with autism. For them, the quality of friendships, not the number of friends, predicts how lonely they feel. Functional friendships, such as those resulting in invitations to parties, may affect the quality of life more deeply. There are many anecdotal reports, but few systematic studies, of aggression and violence in individuals with ASD. The limited data suggest that, in children with mental retardation, autism is associated with aggression, destruction of property, and tantrums. A 2007 study interviewed parents of 67 children with ASD and reported that about two-thirds of the children had periods of severe tantrums and about one-third had a history of aggression, with tantrums significantly more common than in non-autistic children with language impairments. About a third to a half of individuals with autism do not develop enough natural speech to meet their daily communication needs. Differences in communication may be present from the first year of life, and may include delayed onset of babbling , unusual gestures, diminished responsiveness, and vocal patterns that are not synchronized with the caregiver. In the second and third years, autistic children have less frequent and less diverse babbling, consonants, words, and word combinations; their gestures are less often integrated with words. Autistic children are less likely to make requests or share experiences, and are more likely to simply repeat others' words ( echolalia ) for example, they may look at a pointing hand instead of the pointed-at object, In a pair of studies, high-functioning autistic children aged 8–15 performed equally well as, and adults better than, individually matched controls at basic language tasks involving vocabulary and spelling. Both autistic groups performed worse than controls at complex language tasks such as figurative language, comprehension and inference. As people are often sized up initially from their basic language skills, these studies suggest that people speaking to autistic individuals are more likely to overestimate what their audience comprehends. Autistic individuals display many forms of repetitive or restricted behavior, which the Repetitive Behavior Scale-Revised (RBS-R) categorizes as follows. No single repetitive or self-injurious behavior seems to be specific to autism, but only autism appears to have an elevated pattern of occurrence and severity of these behaviors. Autistic individuals may have symptoms that are independent of the diagnosis, but that can affect the individual or the family. An estimated 0.5% to 10% of individuals with ASD show unusual abilities, ranging from splinter skills such as the memorization of trivia to the extraordinarily rare talents of prodigious autistic savant s. Many individuals with ASD show superior skills in perception and attention, relative to the general population. An estimated 60%–80% of autistic people have motor signs that include poor muscle tone , poor motor planning , and toe walking ; Unusual eating behavior occurs in about three-quarters of children with ASD, to the extent that it was formerly a diagnostic indicator. Selectivity is the most common problem, although eating rituals and food usal also occur; this does not appear to result in malnutrition . Although some children with autism also have gastrointestinal (GI) symptoms, there is a lack of published rigorous data to support the theory that autistic children have more or different GI symptoms than usual; studies report conflicting results, and the relationship between GI problems and ASD is unclear. Parents of children with ASD have higher levels of stress. Siblings of children with ASD report greater admiration of and less conflict with the affected sibling than siblings of unaffected children or those with Down syndrome ; siblings of individuals with ASD have greater risk of negative well-being and poorer sibling relationships as adults. Autism is one of the five pervasive developmental disorder s (PDD), which are characterized by widespread abnormalities of social interactions and communication, and severely restricted interests and highly repetitive behavior. These symptoms do not imply sickness, fragility, or emotional disturbance. Of the five PDD forms, Asperger syndrome is closest to autism in signs and likely causes; Rett syndrome and childhood disintegrative disorder share several signs with autism, but may have unrelated causes; PDD not otherwise specified (PDD-NOS; also called ''atypical autism'') is diagnosed when the criteria are not met for a more specific disorder. Unlike with autism, people with Asperger syndrome have no substantial delay in language development . whereas autism itself is often called ''autistic disorder'', ''childhood autism'', or ''infantile autism''. In this article, ''autism'' ers to the classic autistic disorder; in clinical practice, though, ''autism'', ''ASD'', and ''PDD'' are often used interchangeably. The manifestations of autism cover a wide spectrum , ranging from individuals with severe impairments—who may be silent, mentally disabled , and locked into hand flapping and rocking—to high functioning individuals who may have active but distinctly odd social approaches, narrowly focused interests, and verbose, pedantic communication. Because the behavior spectrum is continuous, boundaries between diagnostic categories are necessarily somewhat arbitrary. or on how much support the individual requires in daily life; these subdivisions are not standardized and are controversial. Autism can also be divided into syndromal and non-syndromal autism; the syndromal autism is associated with severe or profound mental retardation or a congenital syndrome with physical symptoms, such as tuberous sclerosis . Although individuals with Asperger syndrome tend to perform better cognitively than those with autism, the extent of the overlap between Asperger syndrome, HFA, and non-syndromal autism is unclear. Validity of ASD subtypes: Some studies have reported diagnoses of autism in children due to a loss of language or social skills, as opposed to a failure to make progress, typically from 15 to 30 months of age. The validity of this distinction remains controversial; it is possible that regressive autism is a specific subtype, Research into causes has been hampered by the inability to identify biologically meaningful subpopulations and by the traditional boundaries between the disciplines of psychiatry , psychology , neurology and pediatrics . Newer technologies such as fMRI and diffusion tensor imaging can help identify biologically relevant phenotype s (observable traits) that can be viewed on brain scan s, to help further neurogenetic studies of autism; one example is lowered activity in the fusiform face area of the brain, which is associated with impaired perception of people versus objects. It has long been presumed that there is a common cause at the genetic, cognitive, and neural levels for autism's characteristic triad of symptoms. Autism has a strong genetic basis, although the genetics of autism are complex and it is unclear whether ASD is explained more by rare mutation s with major effects, or by rare multigene interactions of common genetic variants. Complexity arises due to interactions among multiple genes, the environment, and epigenetic factors which do not change DNA but are heritable and influence gene expression . Studies of twins suggest that heritability is 0.7 for autism and as high as 0.9 for ASD, and siblings of those with autism are about 25 times more likely to be autistic than the general population. Hence, a substantial fraction of autism cases may be traceable to genetic causes that are highly heritable but not inherited: that is, the mutation that causes the autism is not present in the parental genome. Several lines of evidence point to synaptic dysfunction as a cause of autism. Gene replacement studies in mice suggest that autistic symptoms are closely related to later developmental steps that depend on activity in synapses and on activity-dependent changes. All known teratogen s (agents that cause birth defect s) related to the risk of autism appear to act during the first eight weeks from conception , and though this does not exclude the possibility that autism can be initiated or affected later, it is strong evidence that autism arises very early in development. Although evidence for other environmental causes is anecdotal and has not been confirmed by reliable studies, Environmental factor s that have been claimed to contribute to or exacerbate autism, or may be important in future research, include certain foods, infectious disease , heavy metals , solvent s, diesel exhaust , PCBs , phthalates and phenol s used in plastic products, pesticide s, brominated flame retardant s, alcohol , smoking , illicit drug s, vaccine s, although no links have been found, and some have been completely dis-proven. Parents may first become aware of autistic symptoms in their child around the time of a routine vaccination. This has led to theories blaming vaccine overload , a vaccine preservative or the MMR vaccine for causing autism. Although these theories lack convincing scientific evidence and are biologically implausible, parental concern about a potential vaccine link with autism has led to lower rates of childhood immunizations , outbreaks of previously-controlled childhood diseases in some countries, and the preventable deaths of several children. Vaccines and autism: Autism's symptoms result from maturation-related changes in various systems of the brain. How autism occurs is not well understood. Its mechanism can be divided into two areas: the pathophysiology of brain structures and processes associated with autism, and the neuropsychological linkages between brain structures and behaviors. The behaviors appear to have multiple pathophysiologies. Unlike many other brain disorders such as Parkinson's , autism does not have a clear unifying mechanism at either the molecular, cellular, or systems level; it is not known whether autism is a few disorders caused by mutations converging on a few common molecular pathways, or is (like intellectual disability) a large set of disorders with diverse mechanisms. Autism appears to result from developmental factors that affect many or all functional brain systems, and to disturb the timing of brain development more than the final product. Neuroanatomical studies and the associations with teratogens strongly suggest that autism's mechanism includes alteration of brain development soon after conception. Just after birth, the brains of autistic children tend to grow faster than usual, followed by normal or relatively slower growth in childhood. It is not known whether early overgrowth occurs in all autistic children. It seems to be most prominent in brain areas underlying the development of higher cognitive specialization. Hypotheses for the cellular and molecular bases of pathological early overgrowth include the following: Interactions between the immune system and the nervous system begin early during the embryonic stage of life, and successful neurodevelopment depends on a balanced immune response. It is possible that aberrant immune activity during critical periods of neurodevelopment is part of the mechanism of some forms of ASD. Although some abnormalities in the immune system have been found in specific subgroups of autistic individuals, it is not known whether these abnormalities are relevant to or secondary to autism's disease processes. As autoantibodies are found in conditions other than ASD, and are not always present in ASD, the relationship between immune disturbances and autism remains unclear and controversial. The relationship of neurochemical s to autism is not well understood; several have been investigated, with the most evidence for the role of serotonin and of genetic differences in its transport. Others have pointed to a role for group I metabotropic glutamate receptors (mGluR) in the pathogenesis of one type of autism, Fragile X . Some data suggest an increase in several growth hormone s; other data argue for diminished growth factor s. Also, some inborn errors of metabolism are associated with autism but probably account for less than 5% of cases. The mirror neuron system (MNS) theory of autism hypothesizes that distortion in the development of the MNS interferes with imitation and leads to autism's core features of social impairment and communication difficulties. The MNS operates when an animal performs an action or observes another animal perform the same action. The MNS may contribute to an individual's understanding of other people by enabling the modeling of their behavior via embodied simulation of their actions, intentions, and emotions. MNS and autism: ASD-related patterns of low function and aberrant activation in the brain differ depending on whether the brain is doing social or nonsocial tasks. In autism there is evidence for reduced functional connectivity of the default network , a large-scale brain network involved in social and emotional processing, with intact connectivity of the task-positive network , used in sustained attention and goal-directed thinking. In people with autism the two networks are not negatively correlated in time, suggesting an imbalance in toggling between the two networks, possibly lecting a disturbance of self- erential thought. A 2008 brain-imaging study found a specific pattern of signals in the cingulate cortex which differs in individuals with ASD. The underconnectivity theory of autism hypothesizes that autism is marked by underfunctioning high-level neural connections and synchronization, along with an excess of low-level processes. Evidence for this theory has been found in functional neuroimaging studies on autistic individuals and by a brainwave study that suggested that adults with ASD have local overconnectivity in the cortex and weak functional connections between the frontal lobe and the rest of the cortex. Other evidence suggests the underconnectivity is mainly within each hemisphere of the cortex and that autism is a disorder of the association cortex . From studies based on event-related potential s, transient changes to the brain's electrical activity in response to stimuli, there is considerable evidence for differences in autistic individuals with respect to attention, orientiation to auditory and visual stimuli, novelty detection, language and face processing, and information storage; several studies have found a p erence for non-social stimuli. For example, magnetoencephalography studies have found evidence in autistic children of delayed responses in the brain's processing of auditory signals. In the genetic area, relations have been found between autism and schizophrenia based on duplications and deletions of chromosomes; research showed that schizophrenia and autism are significantly more common in combination with 1q21.1 deletion syndrome . Research on autism/schizophrenia relations for chromosome 15 (15q13.3), chromosome 16 (16p13.1) and chromosome 17 (17p12) are inconclusive. Two major categories of cognitive theories have been proposed about the links between autistic brains and behavior. The first category focuses on deficits in social cognition . The empathizing–systemizing theory postulates that autistic individuals can systemize—that is, they can develop internal rules of operation to handle events inside the brain—but are less effective at empathizing by handling events generated by other agents. An extension, the extreme male brain theory, hypothesizes that autism is an extreme case of the male brain, defined psychometrically as individuals in whom systemizing is better than empathizing; These theories are somewhat related to the earlier theory of mind approach, which hypothesizes that autistic behavior arises from an inability to ascribe mental states to oneself and others. The theory of mind hypothesis is supported by autistic children's atypical responses to the Sally–Anne test for reasoning about others' motivations, and the mirror neuron system theory of autism described in '' Pathophysiology '' maps well to the hypothesis. The second category focuses on nonsocial or general processing. Executive dysfunction hypothesizes that autistic behavior results in part from deficits in working memory , planning, inhibition , and other forms of executive function. A strength of the theory is predicting stereotyped behavior and narrow interests; two weaknesses are that executive function is hard to measure and that executive function deficits have not been found in young autistic children. Neither category is satisfactory on its own; social cognition theories poorly address autism's rigid and repetitive behaviors, while the nonsocial theories have difficulty explaining social impairment and communication difficulties. A combined theory based on multiple deficits may prove to be more useful. About half of parents of children with ASD notice their child's unusual behaviors by age 18 months, and about four-fifths notice by age 24 months. According to an article in the ''Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders'', failure to meet any of the following milestones '' is an absolute indication to proceed with further evaluations. Delay in erral for such testing may delay early diagnosis and treatment and affect the long-term outcome. '' US and Japanese practice is to screen all children for ASD at 18 and 24 months, using autism-specific formal screening tests. In contrast, in the UK, children whose families or doctors recognize possible signs of autism are screened. It is not known which approach is more effective. Screening tools designed for one culture's norms for behaviors like eye contact may be inappropriate for a different culture. Although genetic screening for autism is generally still impractical, it can be considered in some cases, such as children with neurological symptoms and dysmorphic feature s. Several diagnostic instruments are available. Two are commonly used in autism research: the Autism Diagnostic Interview-Revised (ADI-R) is a semistructured parent interview, and the Autism Diagnostic Observation Schedule (ADOS) uses observation and interaction with the child. The Childhood Autism Rating Scale (CARS) is used widely in clinical environments to assess severity of autism based on observation of children. A pediatrician commonly performs a preliminary investigation by taking developmental history and physically examining the child. If warranted, diagnosis and evaluations are conducted with help from ASD specialists, observing and assessing cognitive, communication, family, and other factors using standardized tools, and taking into account any associated medical conditions . A differential diagnosis for ASD at this stage might also consider mental retardation , hearing impairment , and a specific language impairment The presence of autism can make it harder to diagnose coexisting psychiatric disorders such as depression . ASD can sometimes be diagnosed by age 14 months, although diagnosis becomes increasingly stable over the first three years of life: for example, a one-year-old who meets diagnostic criteria for ASD is less likely than a three-year-old to continue to do so a few years later. In the UK the National Autism Plan for Children recommends at most 30 weeks from first concern to completed diagnosis and assessment, though few cases are handled that quickly in practice. A 2009 US study found the average age of formal ASD diagnosis was 5.7 years, far above recommendations, and that 27% of children remained undiagnosed at age 8 years. Although the symptoms of autism and ASD begin early in childhood, they are sometimes missed; years later, adults may seek diagnoses to help them or their friends and family understand themselves, to help their employers make adjustments, or in some locations to claim disability living allowances or other benefits. Underdiagnosis and overdiagnosis are problems in marginal cases, and much of the recent increase in the number of reported ASD cases is likely due to changes in diagnostic practices. The increasing popularity of drug treatment options and the expansion of benefits has given providers incentives to diagnose ASD, resulting in some overdiagnosis of children with uncertain symptoms. Conversely, the cost of screening and diagnosis and the challenge of obtaining payment can inhibit or delay diagnosis. It is particularly hard to diagnose autism among the visually impaired , partly because some of its diagnostic criteria depend on vision, and partly because autistic symptoms overlap with those of common blindness syndromes or blindism s. The main goals when treating children with autism are to lessen associated deficits and family distress, and to increase quality of life and functional independence. No single treatment is best and treatment is typically tailored to the child's needs. Although many psychosocial interventions have some positive evidence, suggesting that some form of treatment is p erable to no treatment, the methodological quality of systematic review s of these studies has generally been poor, their clinical results are mostly tentative, and there is little evidence for the relative effectiveness of treatment options. Intensive, sustained special education programs and behavior therapy early in life can help children acquire self-care, social, and job skills, and often improve functioning and decrease symptom severity and maladaptive behaviors; claims that intervention by around age three years is crucial are not substantiated. Available approaches include applied behavior analysis (ABA), developmental models, structured teaching , speech and language therapy , social skills therapy, and occupational therapy . Educational interventions can be effective to varying degrees in most children: intensive ABA treatment has demonstrated effectiveness in enhancing global functioning in preschool children and is well-established for improving intellectual performance of young children. The appropriateness of including children with varying severity of autism spectrum disorders in the general education population is a subject of current debate among educators and researchers. Many medications are used to treat ASD symptoms that interfere with integrating a child into home or school when behavioral treatment fails. More than half of US children diagnosed with ASD are prescribed psychoactive drug s or anticonvulsant s, with the most common drug classes being antidepressant s, stimulant s, and antipsychotic s. Aside from antipsychotics, there is scant reliable research about the effectiveness or safety of drug treatments for adolescents and adults with ASD. Lack of research on drug treatments: Although many alternative therapies and interventions are available, few are supported by scientific studies. Lack of support for interventions: Treatment is expensive; indirect costs are more so. For someone born in 2000, a US study estimated an average lifetime cost of $ ( net present value in dollars, inflation-adjusted from 2003 estimate), with about 10% medical care , 30% extra education and other care, and 60% lost economic productivity. Publicly supported programs are often inadequate or inappropriate for a given child, and unreimbursed out-of-pocket medical or therapy expenses are associated with likelihood of family financial problems; one 2008 US study found a 14% average loss of annual income in families of children with ASD, and a related study found that ASD is associated with higher probability that child care problems will greatly affect parental employment. US states increasingly require private health insurance to cover autism services, shifting costs from publicly funded education programs to privately funded health insurance. After childhood, key treatment issues include residential care, job training and placement, sexuality, social skills, and estate planning . No cure is known. Most autistic children can acquire language by age 5 or younger, though a few have developed communication skills in later years. Most children with autism lack social support , meaningful relationships, future employment opportunities or self-determination . Although core difficulties tend to persist, symptoms often become less severe with age. Acquiring language before age six, having an IQ above 50, and having a marketable skill all predict better outcomes; independent living is unlikely with severe autism. A 2004 British study of 68 adults who were diagnosed before 1980 as autistic children with IQ above 50 found that 12% achieved a high level of independence as adults, 10% had some friends and were generally in work but required some support, 19% had some independence but were generally living at home and needed considerable support and supervision in daily living, 46% needed specialist residential provision from facilities specializing in ASD with a high level of support and very limited autonomy, and 12% needed high-level hospital care. A 2005 Swedish study of 78 adults that did not exclude low IQ found worse prognosis; for example, only 4% achieved independence. A 2008 Canadian study of 48 young adults diagnosed with ASD as preschoolers found outcomes ranging through poor (46%), fair (32%), good (17%), and very good (4%); 56% of these young adults had been employed at some point during their lives, mostly in volunteer, sheltered or part-time work. Changes in diagnostic practice and increased availability of effective early intervention make it unclear whether these findings can be generalized to recently diagnosed children. Most recent review s tend to estimate a prevalence of 1–2 per 1,000 for autism and close to 6 per 1,000 for ASD; because of inadequate data, these numbers may underestimate ASD's true prevalence. PDD-NOS 's prevalence has been estimated at 3.7 per 1,000, Asperger syndrome at roughly 0.6 per 1,000, and childhood disintegrative disorder at 0.02 per 1,000. The number of reported cases of autism increased dramatically in the 1990s and early 2000s. This increase is largely attributable to changes in diagnostic practices, erral patterns, availability of services, age at diagnosis, and public awareness, though unidentified environmental risk factors cannot be ruled out. The available evidence does not rule out the possibility that autism's true prevalence has increased; a real increase would suggest directing more attention and funding toward changing environmental factors instead of continuing to focus on genetics. Boys are at higher risk for ASD than girls. The sex ratio averages 4.3:1 and is greatly modified by cognitive impairment: it may be close to 2:1 with mental retardation and more than 5.5:1 without. The risk is greater with older fathers than with older mothers; two potential explanations are the known increase in mutation burden in older sperm, and the hypothesis that men marry later if they carry genetic liability and show some signs of autism. Several other conditions are common in children with autism. They include: A few examples of autistic symptoms and treatments were described long before autism was named. The '' Table Talk '' of Martin Luther , compiled by his notetaker, Mathesius, contains the story of a 12-year-old boy who may have been severely autistic. Luther reportedly thought the boy was a soulless mass of flesh possessed by the devil, and suggested that he be suffocated, although a later critic has cast doubt on the veracity of this report. The earliest well-documented case of autism is that of Hugh Blair of Borgue, as detailed in a 1747 court case in which his brother successfully petitioned to annul Blair's marriage to gain Blair's inheritance. The Wild Boy of Aveyron , a feral child caught in 1798, showed several signs of autism; the medical student Jean Itard treated him with a behavioral program designed to help him form social attachments and to induce speech via imitation. The New Latin word ''autismus'' (English translation ''autism'') was coined by the Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler in 1910 as he was defining symptoms of schizophrenia . He derived it from the Greek word ''autós'' (αὐτός, meaning ''self''), and used it to mean morbid self-admiration, erring to autistic withdrawal of the patient to his fantasies, against which any influence from outside becomes an intolerable disturbance . The word ''autism'' first took its modern sense in 1938 when Hans Asperger of the Vienna University Hospital adopted Bleuler's terminology ''autistic psychopaths'' in a lecture in German about child psychology . Asperger was investigating an ASD now known as Asperger syndrome , though for various reasons it was not widely recognized as a separate diagnosis until 1981. Almost all the characteristics described in Kanner's first paper on the subject, notably autistic aloneness and insistence on sameness , are still regarded as typical of the autistic spectrum of disorders. Kanner's reuse of ''autism'' led to decades of confused terminology like ''infantile schizophrenia'', and child psychiatry's focus on maternal deprivation led to misconceptions of autism as an infant's response to rigerator mother s . Starting in the late 1960s autism was established as a separate syndrome by demonstrating that it is lifelong, distinguishing it from mental retardation and schizophrenia and from other developmental disorders, and demonstrating the benefits of involving parents in active programs of therapy. As late as the mid-1970s there was little evidence of a genetic role in autism; now it is thought to be one of the most heritable of all psychiatric conditions. Although the rise of parent organizations and the destigmatization of childhood ASD have deeply affected how we view ASD, and many primary care physician s and medical specialist s still express some beliefs consistent with outdated autism research. The Internet has helped autistic individuals bypass nonverbal cues and emotional sharing that they find so hard to deal with, and has given them a way to form online communities and work remotely. Sociological and cultural aspects of autism have developed: some in the community seek a cure, while others believe that autism is simply another way of being. AlbaniaHistory AlbaniaPeople AsWeMayThink