Full Description
Frances Tustin was a pioneering child psychotherapist who broke new ground in working with autistic children in the latter half of the twentieth century. This book amplifies and extends contributions by Tustin to the study and treatment of autism, autistic spectrum disorders and autistic defences and enclaves in non-autistic patients. It offers readers a contribution to the understanding and treatment of primitive mental states and primitive character disorders.
Contents
Introduction -- Finding a center of gravity via proximity with the analyst -- Daydreaming and hypochondria: when daydreaming goes wrong and hypochondria becomes an autistic retreat -- "Black holes" and "fear of breakdown" in the analysis of a fetishistic-masochistic patient -- Autistic states in patients with a narcissistic structure -- Sensual experience, defensive second skin, and the eclipse of the body: some thoughts on Tustin and Ferrari -- "Emotional" storms in autistoid dynamics -- "The very same is lost": in pursuit of mental coverage when emerging from autistic states -- Bion and the unintegrated states: falling, dissolving, and spilling -- Inhibition of curiosity due to concern about the object's response: difficulties in tolerating a "third position" in relation to autism -- Language used as an autistic object -- The struggle to make the autistic child human -- Beckett's Endgame: the collapse of mental life -- The autistic object, ethology, and neuroscience: a way to a Copernican revolution in the understanding of autistic spectrum disorders (ASD)?
