Nicholson has been linked to many actresses and models, including Michelle Phillips, Bebe Buell and Lara Flynn Boyle. He had a intimate relationship with Anjelica Huston from 1973 to 1989. The relationship ended when the media reported Rebecca Broussard was pregnant with their child. Nicholson and Broussard had two children together, Lorraine and Raymond. Nicholson's other children are Jennifer (born with Sandra Knight) and Honey Hollman (born with Winnie Hollman). Susan Anspach says that her son, Caleb Goddard, was fathered by Nicholson. He is not sure that he is the father. Nicholson describes himself as a "lifelong Irish Democrat", and is highly against abortion. He is Roman Catholic. In 2020, Nicholson endorsed Bernie Sanders's second presidential campaign for the 2020 nomination.
1860s
June 20
January 4
Autism
Autism is the name of a disorder affecting brain development. It is one of a group of disorders called autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Asperger syndrome, atypical autism and childhood autism are kinds of autism spectrum disorders.
ASD is a condition that affects the way a person relates to their environment. The word "spectrum" is used because not all people with autism have the same traits and difficulties. Some people find interacting more difficult than others. Autism may be very apparent in someone or they may show no outward signs of it. The main areas of difficulty are in social interaction, verbal and nonverbal communication and restricted or repetitive behaviors and interests. In most cases of autism, motor communication {doing things} is affected. All these signs develop in the child's first two to three years of age.
People who have autism find it difficult to act in a way that other people think is "normal". They may find it difficult to talk to other people and to look at other people in the eyes. Some people with autism do not like being touched. A person who has autism can seem to be turned inwards. They may talk only to themselves, rock themselves backwards and forwards, and laugh at their own thoughts. They might not like any type of change and may find it very difficult to learn a new behavior like going to school.
Autism is caused by the way that the brain develops, both before and after a baby is born. About one in every 160 children has an autism spectrum disorder. It has no known cure, and many autistic people do not want a cure. They want it to be accepted as a difference. This is known as neurodiversity.
The word “autism” comes from the Greek word “autos”, meaning “self.” The term describes conditions in which a person is removed from social interaction—hence, an “isolated self”. The term "autism" was first used by a psychiatrist named Eugen Bleuler in 1911 to describe one group of symptoms of schizophrenia. Sigmund Freud considered this idea and thought it was related to narcissism.
Three decades later, researchers in the United States began to use the term autism to describe children with emotional or social problems. Two researchers by the name of Hans Asperger and Leo Kanner were the pioneers of the research study for autism in the 1940s.
In 1943 Leo Kanner (a doctor from Johns Hopkins University) did a study of 11 children. He found out that they had difficulties such as changing environments, being sensitive to certain stimuli, having speech problems and allergies to food. Later he named the children’s condition “early infantile autism”, now called "autism".
In 1944 Hans Asperger studied separately a group of children and found very similar conditions. The children in Hans Asperger's group did not repeat words and they had no speech problems like Kanner's did. However, the children did have problems with fine motor skills such as holding a pencil. The children he studied seemed to be clumsier than other children. They also had “[...] a lack of empathy, little ability to form friendships, one-sided conversation, intense absorption in a special interest and clumsy movements”. Hans Asperger described a "milder" form of autism, his discovery is now called Asperger syndrome.
In 1943 and 1949, Kanner described the children he studied in scientific papers. In these papers, he wrote that he thought the children's parents were not loving them enough. He wrote that this might be part of the reason why the children had autism. For example, in 1949 he wrote that the children's parents showed no warmth, or love, to their children. He thought the parents were so "cold" that he compared them to refrigerators:"“[The children] were left neatly in refrigerators which did not defrost. Their withdrawal seems to be an act of turning away from such a situation to seek comfort in solitude”."This idea became known as the "refrigerator mother theory". For decades parents were blamed for causing their children's autism by not loving their children enough. By now, we know this is not true.
Schizophrenia and autism were linked in many researchers’ studies. Only since the 1960s, medical professionals began to have a separate understanding of these two disorders. Since 1980, Kanner’s so called early infantile autism is listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Precisely because of the vague distinction between schizophrenia and autism, the DSM came out with a more accurate definition of autism in 1987. Henceforth, early infantile autism is called autism disorder. Furthermore, for the first time the DSM introduced standardized criteria to diagnose autism. The fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders expanded the definition of autism and included milder cases of autism. But especially the Asperger’s syndrome was added in 1994. With the release of the fifth edition of the DSM in 2013 the subtypes of autism are summarized into the general term Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Individuals are now diagnosed on an autism spectrum with varying levels of intensity (mild, moderate and severe).
Different studies resulted in different numbers of the frequency of autism spectrum disorders. One study stated ten cases of classical autism, 2.5 cases of Asperger's syndrome and 15 cases of mild autism (PDD-NOS) in 10,000 people - tendency: increasing. Other sources speak about 60 autism spectrum disorder cases in 10,000 people. However, the number of autism cases is not equal in men and in women. Here, the results of studies vary highly. Researchers in general say that 3-4 men are diagnosed for every woman that is diagnosed. This ratio decreases for severe cases to 1:1. It increases for high-functioning cases and in Asperger's syndrome reaches a ratio of 8:1. Recently, the awareness has increased that this ratio may be so high because studies are simply missing female autistic people. This could be because tests for autism typically focus on male autism traits. Another possible explanation is that autistic females may be better at adapting to social expectations and hiding their social problems. Studies have suggested that the brains of autistic females may rather be like neurotypical men’s (non-autistic men) brains of the same age. These could be reasons why it is not so easy to realise whether a woman is autistic - and therefore, why more men than women are diagnosed.