Encounters with Autistic States

Book excerpt: This text presents the work of 21 eminent psychoanalysts and child therapists from three continents - including Professors Didier Houzel of France and Renata Gaddini of Italy; Drs. David Rosenfeld of Argentina, James Grotstein, Victoria Hamilton, Judith Mitrani and Thomas Ogden of the USA; and Susanna Isaacs-Elmhirst and Isca Wittenberg of England - who explore and expand upon the work of the late Frances Tustin, which was devoted to the psychoanalytic understanding of the bewildering elemental world of the autistic child. Her realization that neurotic and borderline patients are haunted by the same primeval forces which constitute an enclave of autism has been profound, and the notion that autistic manoeuvres serve as a protective shell against the terrifying premature awareness of bodily separateness and dissolution into nothingness has had a substantial impact upon the re-thinking of many notable workers in the mental health field.