An Island at the Edge of the World: Encounters with Autistic Children and Their Families

Four-year-old Simon walks heavily around my office, his weight forward on the balls of his feet. He's tall, like his mother, and handsome, but without any spark. Nothing about me or the room seems to register particularly with him. He's neither wary nor curious. His lack of interest affects me strangely; I feel like a nebulous version of myself — as if without some recognition from him, I become hazy and unformed. I ground myself with a breath.

I want to tell you about Simon and even now find it is a struggle to do this. Our encounter felt flimsy, faint — a meeting without meeting, neither of us affecting the other. It's hard to evoke Simon with any vividness — in large part, I think, because he was not vivid to me.

This gap is common in my experience with the autistic children I meet. It explains why I sometimes find myself alone in my office trying on their movements — ways of looking, talking, bouncing, or humming. It's why I sometimes jump up to demonstrate when speaking with colleagues. “He stands like this,” I say. Or “she does this thing where she tilts her head at the light … like this.” Trying to know people like Simon takes me into my own body, as if there is a deep physical route to empathy, to knowing another person.

“Just play as you would at home,” I've told Simon's mother.

“He doesn't really play,” she tells me, “not like my older son did.”

“He's impossible to engage,” she says, and I see what she means. In fact, mother and son are both low and flat, though in different ways. He moves slowly and seems blank and disconnected. She's more connected, but discouraged and depressed. She tells me Simon has just six words, only three of which he uses functionally (such as “go!”). When Simon begins pounding his hands hard against my file cabinet, she adds despairingly, “And now he's getting aggressive.”

I never expected to find myself here with a boy like Simon. When I entered training, I planned to become a psychotherapist for adults,

but as I read psychoanalytic