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JCPTX 20(1):57-83 (1994)

Towards Solid Ground: The Ongoing Psychotherapeutic Journey of an Adolescent Boy with Autistic Features

Author: Judith Edwards

Introduction

In this paper I would like to trace the development of thinking and sense of self in an adolescent boy whom I will call Joe, whose initial dread of annihilation and falling into limitless space became gradually modified as he grew more able to anchor himself within a space-time continuum and find his feet on what he came to call his ‘solid ground’.

Time, according to my encyclopaedia, is:

a concept that measures the duration of events and the periods that separate them. It is a fundamental parameter of all changes, measuring the rates at which they occur; it provides a scale of measurement enabling events that have occurred to be distinguished from those that are occurring and those that will occur. It appears intuitively to be flowing in one direction only, for all observers. However according to Einstein's theory of relativity this is not the case. The rate at which time passes (as measured by a clock) is not the same for observers in different frames of reference that are
Page 57
moving at a constant velocity with respect to each other. Thus according to the time dilation effect if two observers are moving at a constant velocity relative to each other it appears to each that the other's time processes are slowed down. In order to pinpoint an event in the universe, its position in a four dimensional space-time continuum must be specified. This continuum consists of three space dimensions and one of time. (Macmillan, 1988)

In a black hole, defined as ‘a gravitationally collapsed object’, time slows down infinitely. The boundary of the black hole is defined as ‘the event horizon’, and Stephen Hawking (1992) quotes Dante in his evocation of their magnitude: ‘abandon hope all ye who enter here’. He does however go on to assert that black holes are not eternal, and what I hope to show in this paper is the struggle Joe went through in order to make at least a partial recovery from what might be thought of as gravitational collapse, and to enter the space-time continuu

JCPTX 20(1):57-83 (1994)

Towards Solid Ground: The Ongoing Psychotherapeutic Journey of an Adolescent Boy with Autistic Features

Author: Judith Edwards

Introduction

Time, according to my encyclopaedia, is:

a concept that measures the duration of events and the periods that separate them. It is a fundamental parameter of all changes, measuring the rates at which they occur; it provides a scale of measurement enabling events that have occurred to be distinguished from those that are occurring and those that will occur. It appears intuitively to be flowing in one direction only, for all observers. However according to Einstein's theory of relativity this is not the case. The rate at which time passes (as measured by a clock) is not the same for observers in different frames of reference that are
Page 57
moving at a constant velocity with respect to each other. Thus according to the time dilation effect if two observers are moving at a constant velocity relative to each other it appears to each that the other's time processes are slowed down. In order to pinpoint an event in the universe, its position in a four dimensional space-time continuum must be specified. This continuum consists of three space dimensions and one of time. (Macmillan, 1988)