Unlike an illness, vulnerability depends on the respective environment.
Just as light skin color represents a vulnerability to sunburn, autism represents a vulnerability to a disruption of social interaction and thus to individual development.
And just as there are people with light skin but no sunburn, there are also autistic people without a “pervasive developmental disorder.”
The “spectrum” must therefore be expanded to include autistic people who have not developed any disorders/illnesses and therefore cannot be “diagnosed.”
At the same time, the spectrum can be explained and the causes understood.
Depending on the time of onset of a social interaction disorder, different disorders of the various developmental strands naturally occur:
