Pioneering, prodigious and perspicacious: Grunya Efimovna Sukhareva's life and contribution to conceptualising autism and schizophrenia

Acknowledgements: The authors would like to acknowledge critical assistance provided by Dr Ekaterina Ostashchenko, former postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge and now a lecturer in psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University, with expertise in psycholinguistics and social cognition in autism. Dr Ostashchenko checked sections of this paper drawn from the Russian-language literature and also reviewed Russian transliteration. Thanks are due to Richard Turner at Green Templeton College Library and librarians at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, for helping locate articles written by Sukhareva in journals which have since ceased publication. The authors also acknowledge Thomas Maisel at the University of Vienna archives, Kathy Lafferty and Becky Schulte of the Spencer Research Library, University of Kansas, and Christopher Henry, Christine Ruggere, and Will Bryant of the Welch Medical Library at Baltimore’s John Hopkins University for their help in addressing enquiries and locating archive material. Thanks are due to Professor Jimmy Potash and Professor James Harris, both of John Hopkins University, for directing our attention to important material concerning autism history.
Grunya Efimovna Sukhareva's seminal role in being the first to publish a clinical description of autistic traits in 1925, before both Kanner and Asperger, has been revealed relatively recently. Nevertheless, Sukhareva's work is little known and largely unrecognised beyond Russia. Amidst calls for greater recognition of her pivotal contribution in the genesis of autism conceptualisation and categorisation, this article provides a biographical and historical background. Sukhareva's wide-ranging psychiatric work is adumbrated and her pioneering efforts in conceptualising both schizophrenia and autism are elucidated. The article reflects on possible explanations for the belated and incomplete recognition of Sukhareva's role. The current article indicates how Sukhareva's work was ahead of its time in reflecting modern criteria for autism diagnoses and in its focus on female case studies. Sukhareva's somewhat precarious position as a foremost psychiatrist condemned in the Stalinist years for being anti-Marxist is explicated. The article outlines further directions for academic research on Sukhareva's work and contributions.