35 Facts About Leo Kanner

Leo Kanner was an Austrian-American psychiatrist, physician, and social activist best known for his work related to infantile autism.

Leo Kanner was in charge of developing the first child psychiatry clinic in the United States and later served as the Chief of Child Psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

Leo Kanner was born as Chaskel Leib Kanner in Klekotow, Austria-Hungary on June 13,1894, to Abraham Kanner and Clara Reisfeld Kanner.

Leo Kanner spent the first years of his life in Klekotow with his family and was brought up according to Jewish tradition and custom.

In 1906, Leo Kanner was sent to Berlin to live with his uncle.

At a young age, Leo Kanner appreciated the arts and wanted to pursue a career as a poet; unfortunately, he was not able to get his works published.

In 1913, Leo Kanner graduated from the Sophien-Gymnasium, a public state high school in Berlin, where he excelled in the sciences.

Leo Kanner then passed the graduating Staatsexamen exam in 1919 and enrolled at the University of Berlin medical school.

Leo Kanner began doing work with normal heart sound to the relationship of the electrocardiogram.

Leo Kanner stated: "Little did I know, if I had remained in Germany I would have been perished by Hitler in the Holocaust".

Leo Kanner studied the effects of adrenalin on the blood pressure of patients with functional paralysis.

In 1930, with monetary support from the Macy and Rockefeller Foundations, Meyer and Edward A Park were able to establish the Children's Psychiatry Service at the Harriet Lane Home at Johns Hopkins, which was the first child psychiatry clinic in the United States, and appointed Kanner to develop the program.

Out of his own concern, Leo Kanner decided to track down the 166 patients and found them plagued with a variety of dreadful outcomes such as STDs, tuberculosis, prostitution, imprisonment, institutionalization, and even death.

Leo Kanner reported that the 166 released patients had a total of 165 children, many of whom became orphans or died due to neglect.

Apart from his social activism for the mentally ill, during the run-up to World War II, Leo Kanner was instrumental in rescuing hundreds of Jewish physicians from the horrors of the Nazis by relocating them to work in the United States.

Later on, Leo Kanner served as the Chief of Child Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins until his retirement from the position in 1959 and attaining the position of Emeritus.

Leo Kanner expressed a great deal of concern about the usual mistreatment of neurodivergent children.

From 1938, Leo Kanner began to study a group of eleven young children who came to see him at his clinic at the Johns Hopkins Hospital.

For each of the cases, Leo Kanner provides a detailed account of the symptoms, health, results of diagnostic tests, familial background, and future development and progression of the children.

Leo Kanner indicated that the fundamental issue of this disorder is the children's inability to relate to people and objects in an ordinary way from birth.

The notion of the innate nature of what Leo Kanner called "extreme aloneness" was evident by recurrent reports of the failure of the children to "assume at any time an anticipatory posture" and adjust their bodies upon being picked up by their parents.

Additionally, Leo Kanner observed that the children's behavior was governed by an anxious and obsessive desire for sameness, and that this resulted in their repetitions of actions, such as their verbal utterances, as well as limited spontaneous activity.

Leo Kanner indicated that four of the children had been considered deaf or hard of hearing early on.

Leo Kanner noted that the children had no particular health difficulties and that their EEG results were normal.

Leo Kanner did observe that 5 of the 11 children had relatively large heads, and a few were somewhat clumsy in their gait.

Leo Kanner concluded that Native Americans rarely got general paralytic dementia because syphilis had been in their population for so long that it lost the power to produce general paralysis.

However, Leo Kanner believed that with time, the white race could gain a similar resistance to general paralysis like that of the Native Americans.

Leo Kanner focused on how early infantile autism was related and unrelated to the "intrinsic nature" of other conditions such as dementia infantilis and childhood schizophrenia.

Leo Kanner reported that the babies with early infantile autism were unusually apathetic, did not respond normally to people, did not assume proper posture to be picked up, startled at anything that disrupts their isolation, and lacked responsiveness.

Leo Kanner had trouble finding autistic children of unsophisticated parents.

Leo Kanner found that most of the parents had unaffectionate, mechanical relationships with their autistic children and would oftentimes dismiss them entirely.

Leo Kanner is known as the Father of Child Psychiatry.

Leo Kanner was the first physician in the United States to be identified as a child psychiatrist.

In 1943, Leo Kanner first described the syndrome of early infantile autism.

The Dr Leo Kanner Award was created by the Mind Research Foundation for those who actively serve children with autism and their families.