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The well-known absorption in and interest for music in autistic childten caused the author to devote special attention to this feature. Identical male twins aged three and a half were treated in weekly sessions at the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic's out-patient department. The boys presented the usual clinical picture of such children: food fads, very incomplete habit training, poor and obsessional play activity, complete lack of speech, and a marked interest in music. The mother is described as narcissistic and immature, the father as compulsive and intelligent. The mother was quite unconcerned about the abnormality of her children, but the father started a search for medical advice when the children were eighteen months old, and finally Dr. J. L. Deperts diagnosed them as autistic at the age of three. The mother's favourite was A., the first-born, and he responded with a 'glassy stare'. He was clinging to the mother and ignored all the other adults. B. showed some preference for the father but ignored all adults more or less. The first six months of treatment showed slight improvement—more so in B. B.'s first word was 'car'—the car that brought him to the Clinic. Both children formed some contact with their respective therapists who were at first treated as objects or completely ignored. In the last four months of treatment, which lasted altogether ten months, most of the gains were lost again owing to family unrest. The children were referred to the James Jackson Putnam Children's Center, and Dr. Sherwin's paper ends here.
No details about the family are given; only the fact that the twins had been separated is mentioned. B., for whom the father could not care during daytime, was entrusted to a 'rigid, ignorant and rather rejecting woman.'
The author does not mention any further contact with the parents or any advice given to them. The setting for treatment or special training of the hospital staff is not mentioned either. The reader is thus unab