Autism Spectrum Disorders in the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, 1956–2021

Between 2021 and 2024, I completed my medical doctoral dissertation at the Institute for Ethics and History of Medicine at the University of Tübingen, focusing on the history of autism research in German-speaking child and adolescent psychiatry.

The project was based on a systematic literature review of the Zeitschrift für Kinder- und Jugendpsychiatrie und Psychotherapie and its predecessor journals. All issues published over a period of 65 years, from 1956 to 2021, were examined. In total, 394 publications related to autism were identified, of which 141 addressed the topic in greater depth and were included in the detailed qualitative analysis.

Drawing on this extensive body of source material, the study traces how the scientific understanding of autism changed within German child and adolescent psychiatry. Particular attention is given to changes in diagnostic concepts and nosological classification, the emergence and decline of different aetiological models, and the history of therapeutic approaches and their increasing empirical foundation. At the same time, the study illustrates how scientific trends emerge, become established, and, in some cases, subsequently disappear.

The research has since been published as a monograph of the same title, released by LIT Verlag in 2026 as part of its Medizin series. The publisher describes the book as a historical account of the transformation from early associations between autism and schizophrenia to the contemporary spectrum concept, together with the accompanying debates on diagnosis, aetiology, and treatment.

Tilman Julian Rauh: Autismus-Spektrum-Störungen in der Zeitschrift für Kinder- und Jugendpsychiatrie und Psychotherapie von 1956 bis 2021. LIT Verlag, 2026. ISBN 978-3-643-15871-0.