in a 1969 speech at a u.s. convention for parents with children on the autism spectrum, kanner said, "herewith, i officially acquit you people as parents." however, in the 1979 edition of his textbook "child psychiatry", he states that childhood schizophrenia (a phrase often used for autism until the 1970s) was more closed correlated with parental attitudes than with a person's genetic background.