Project description

This thesis’ goal is to analyze social and cultural representations of autism in Quebec from 1970 to 1998. This project results from a notable increase in documented cases of autism in Canada, particularly in Quebec, over the past 20 years. This increase has been attributed by some members of the general public to a non-scientific controversy linking the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism. We therefore aim to analyse historical representations of autism prior to this increase and this popular controversy. We will address the following questions: how are autism and autistic people represented in Montreal’s French Canadian press, from 1970 to 1998? Which stereotypes due to this representation were most prevalent amongst professionals and the general public? How did perceptions of this same audience change throughout the two decades that this research spans? We will describe the evolution of these perceptions, which occurred whilst certain large movements in Quebec influenced our views of autism. Among these, one can count the deinstitutionalisation movement of the 1960s, free vaccination programs for populational health in the 1980s, promotion of childrens’ health rights in the case of Jacques Lapierre c. Le Procureur Général du Québec et al., the dismantlement of the myth of the “refrigerator mother”, the rise of a movement leading mothers to turn to health professionals, and finally, the revision of the definition of autism in DSM-III leading to a significant increase in the number of cases.