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This paper explores the differing organisation of time and space across the three clinical subgroups of autism described by the Vista Autism Center (VAC): congenital sensory-based (deep) autism; the autisto-psychotic spectrum; and post-traumatic autistic-like withdrawal. Drawing on Tustin, Meltzer, Bion, Bick, Haag, Rhode and Alvarez, alongside original VAC constructs including osmotic diffuse anxiety, mantling and dismantling, and the anxieties-of-being, the paper argues that spatiotemporal disruption in autism takes qualitatively distinct forms across the three subgroups. The paper draws on Einstein's theory of General Relativity – its discovery that space and time form a single fabric, spacetime, curved by the presence of mass – as a heuristic for understanding psychic experience vis-à-vis the primary object. I propose that psychic spacetime is constituted by the emotional link to an object: Proximity and distance vis-à-vis the other, simultaneously define both where and when one is, so that the failure of self-object differentiation in autism collapses the coordinates of space and time in a single movement. Brief clinical vignettes illustrate each configuration.
The full text is available in German.