autistic [E20] Autistic and autism come from German autistisch and Autismus, words coined by the Swiss psychiatrist Paul Eugen Bleuler (1857–1939) in 1910 in the mistaken belief that people with this neurological condition were detached from reality, in much the same way that Bleuler also coined the term schizophrenia [E20] from the Greek elements schiso- ‘split’ and phren ‘mind’ in the mistaken belief that this described the condition. Autistic is based on Greek auto- ‘self, by one’s self’ found in many other words such as automobile [L19th] ‘self mobile’.