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‘This book is not primarily a biography, but is about the distinguished contribution to the psychoanalytic investigation of autism which Frances Tustin has made,’ Sheila Spensley states in her introduction. It does indeed give us a brief, illuminating biography in which one gets glimpses of Frances Tustin's sunny and enthusiastic personality, as well as her emotional honesty. And it does indeed give a succinct precis and explanation of her original and creative formulations on autism, but it goes much further than this and is about a great deal more.
This slim volume (only 129 pages of text) is packed with a vast amount and range of material. Starting with details of Frances Tustin's childhood, adult life and professional development, it moves on to elucidate the controversies in thinking around autism, traces the development of child psychiatry, the development of ideas and theories of psychosis and autism in both adults and children, devotes two chapters to mental handicap and learning impairment and finishes with a chapter entitled ‘The restoration of God’.
The extent and scope of the subject matter covered is both the richness and challenge of this book. The writing is dense, packed with theories, information and ideas.
Frances Tustin's work and thinking are presented within the context of psychoanalytic and psychiatric thinking of the time. Thus, as a reader, besides attempting to understand the originality and scope of Tustin's work, one has to grapple with distillations of theories from Henry Maudsley, Baron-Cohen, Mahler, Bion, Bick, Klein, Ogden, Stern, Rutter, Wing, Meltzer, Winnicott and even quotes from The Madness of George III by Alan Bennett. I found myself wondering who the readership of this book would be. The fly-leaf makes claims to its accessibility to non-specialist readers, but the arguments and terms of reference are