LORNA WING 1928-2014
The psychiatrist Lorna Wing co-founded the UK’s National Autistic Society and was the first to identify Asperger syndrome as a subcategory of the condition.
Her interest in autism was prompted by the birth of her daughter Susie in 1956. Susie was restless even in infancy, screaming for much of the night and struggling to feed. As time went on, her behaviour became increasingly withdrawn.
Unlike most young children her age, she made no effort to draw her mother’s attention to objects of interest, leaving her parents – who were both psychiatrists – at a loss. It was only when Susie was three, and Lorna’s husband John Wing attended a lecture by Mildred Creak, a leading child psychiatrist of the day, that realisation dawned. Before long Susie was diagnosed with autism and moderate learning difficulties.
Wing subsequently directed her professional interest towards autism. In 1962 she joined a group of London parents to found the National Society for Autistic Children (later the National Autistic Society). Two years later, as a physician with the MRC Social Psychiatry Research Unit, she helped set up the Camberwell Case Register. For 20 years this body, among the first of its kind, gathered information on all patients using psychiatric services in the area.