This essay argues that Carlo Collodi's The Adventures of Pinocchio depicts autistic phenomena in its protagonist and that it may be read as an allegory of emergence from autism. The autobiographical literature of autistic writers and key psychoanalytic studies are employed for the insights they provide into autism's subjective and intersubjective dimensions; a perspective is thereby developed which presents Collodi's text as a symbolic portrait of the condition. Emerging from autism proper into post-autism early in the tale, Pinocchio's adventures principally involve difficulties with object-relations due to his sensory distortions, psychic two-dimensionality and lack of a theory of mind. Paralleling his absconding from and subsequent search for Geppetto are the activities of his superego figures; internal objects both bad and good, such as the Fox and Cat and Talking Cricket. These characters and their influence, particularly with regard to the tale's most famous theme of lying and truth-telling, indicate whether Pinocchio is lost to relationship in an autistic state or object-related. The idealized Blue Fairy is argued to be Pinocchio's internalization of Geppetto's maternal capacity; with both figures acting as reclaiming objects instrumental in Pinocchio's evolution of mind and ultimate recovery from autism.