But it is not. It appears to be a photograph of Martha Gilbert, sister of the wife of Emily's brother Austin. Yet no where on the cover or inside the book is the reader informed of this fact. This is an outrageous misuse of a formal medical term. But this is not proper usage, and certainly not in any book that deserves to be taken seriously.
Real autism is a condition one is born with.
It concerns the structure of the brain and the connection of the nerves. There are also many cases of inaccurate translation. I will only note two. The translator and editors did not look at the context of the original work. If they had, they would have immediately grasped the meaning.