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This clear and dense book appears as part of a series of ‘introductory critical texts’, entitled Makers of Modern Psychotherapy. Its publication so soon after Frances Tustin's death in November 1994 is to be welcomed not only by those interested in learning about her life and work but by those who are mourning the loss of a most original thinker, an inspiring teacher, supervisor, colleague and beloved friend.
In the introduction, Spensley defines her objectives: ‘This book is about the distinguished contribution to the psychoanalytic investigation of Autism which Frances Tustin has made’ (p. 1). On the following page she specifies that she is also interested in the ‘reassessment of the tenuous links first observed between autism and psychosis with the aim more of illuminating psychosis than autism’ (p. 2). She thus indicates that her interests are twofold, and that the book will offer more than its title may suggest.
The first two biographical chapters give a lively, insightful account of Frances Tustin's religious family background, childhood, studies and training as a child psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic. The different influences and experiences that led to her ‘discovery of autism’ (p. 20) and the publication of her first book Autism and Childhood Psychosis in 1972 are described. However, Spensley's account of Tustin's life and work ends at this point, and one has to consult the chronology and the bibliography at the end of the book to find out about the titles of her three subsequent books as well as the existence of the many articles and papers that she wrote. She concludes the biographical part of the book with some equivocal remarks about this time being ‘a critical period in Tustin's life when her relationships were in turmoil. She had left her analyst; she had left the Tavistock Child Guidance Centre; she had left the workshop which Meltzer had set up for the study of autism; and she had moved out of London’ (p. 19). The reader, who might be using Sp