The Growth of Understanding

This paper was requested by Dr. Ithier, the Editor of Patio, a French psychoanalytic journal, for an issue to be devoted to “Innovations in Psychoanalysis”. She asked for an “interview-article” describing my own findings in relation to childhood autism, and also gave permission for it to be published in an English journal.

Thus, this paper will describe how I became involved in working intensively with autistic children, and where I was led in my attempts to understand them. Dr. Peter Medawar, the well-known British research scientist, whose sayings I shall quote from time to time in this paper has rightly stressed the part that luck and opportunity play in making new discoveries, however small these may be (Medawar 1979). Thus, this paper will be an account of the many privileges I have had which encouraged me to embark on the difficult task of trying to get in touch with these inaccessible children. Dr. Medawar quotes Fontanelle who said, “Ces hasards ne sont que pour ceux qui jouent bien!” (“These strokes of good fortune are only for those who play well.”) But to “play well” we have to remember the words of Pasteur who said, “Fortune favours the prepared mind.” Thus, this contribution must acknowledge the many people who have shed light upon my path and helped to prepare my mind for the daunting task of entering the mind of an autistic child in such a way that changes in his view of the world could be inaugurated.

Preparation for the Task

Firstly, I have been helped and supported by being married to a physical scientist who in his own specialty has been an innovator. My personal analysis with Dr. W.R. Bion also brought me into contact with an original mind. In addition, in my Kleinian training as a Child Psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic in London, I had the great good fortune to have as my teachers Dr. Esther Bick and Dr. John Bowlby, both of whom, from their different points of view, impressed upon their students the value of detailed observation