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This paper underlines and explores the connections between emotional and cognitive development at a very early stage, starting from the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of a 4–year-old boy with autistic features. Development of the personality and development of the mind are shown to proceed together and to be interwoven when the therapist starts to help the child to modulate the terror and the rage related to separation. The development of the idea of a good nipple and the introjection of it as a mental structure is considered an important step on the way towards separation between mother and baby and towards the formation within the baby's self of a space where symbols of the external world can be placed. Autistic features are considered as an extreme form of denial of both internal and external reality.
Dr Roger Money-Kyrle's work on cognitive development was essential to the ideas expressed in this paper.