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We have elsewhere (Giannotti, De Astis 1979; Giannotti, De Astis, Catarci 1982) examined aspects of early developmental processes in the child on the basis of clinical material from psychotherapeutic work on structured cases of autism and childhood psychosis.
We paid special attention to the role of the birth experience, the mother-child relationship and to drives - in particular the oral-aggressive drive, as it emerges during dentition. In this paper, we shall consider and elaborate that theme, drawing out its implications for the autistic pathological structure and giving clinical examples.
On the basis of clinical experience, we intend to stress the fact that problems and difficulties related to dentition are a fundamental element of normal and pathological development.
Early dentition covers a period from approximately six to 30 months, reaching its culmination most often around the period immediately preceding deambulation. It therefore covers a good part of childhood development, and the way its bodily, symbolic, affective, aggressive and destructive meanings are integrated is strictly dependent on preceding experiences and on the quality of early environment.
Briefly to summarize psychic development, especially as far as emotional and affective difficulties are concerned, we recall the normal autistic phase which occurs in the first weeks of life, when the child satisfies his need and experiences his first emotions mainly at a bodily level through his omnipotent autistic activities. At this stage, the child's libidinal cathexis and the bodily experiences which result from it are predominantly oriented towards enteroceptive stimuli, while the mother helps relieve excessive stimulation, both internal and external, by acting essentially as a protective shield (Masud Khan 1963).
Most recent studies on the newborn baby (Brazelton 1980) based on direct infant-observation confirm how early the suckling