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This introduction will begin to elaborate on the original work of Frances Tustin, her theoretical conceptualizations with regard to autistic states in children and adults, and various applications of the same. Following a succinct biographical note, I shall outline the development of Tustin's thinking and attempt to clarify several notions that she articulated in an effort to become more precise in the psychoanalytic diagnosis, dynamic understanding, and psychoanalytic therapy of autistic states.
Frances Tustin was born Frances Daisy Vickers on October 15, 1913, the only child of deeply religious Northern English parents. Father, a lay reader in the Church of England and a school teacher, was absent for a number of years during World War I when he became a prisoner of war. During that period, he lost his religious faith and, upon returning home, engaged vigorously in the application of progressive liberal teaching methods in small-town primary schools. The gulf between Tustin's mother, a deaconess of the Church – religious, proper and somewhat phobic – and her humorous, independent-minded and restless father grew, culminating in the mother's sudden decision to leave her husband, taking Frances away with her. Divorce was not a consideration for her, as this was offensive in the eyes of the Church. Then thirteen years old, Tustin was deeply attached to her father and the separation had a profound effect upon her.
As a young woman, Tustin trained as a primary school teacher in a church-sponsored establishment. She was married briefly and divorced until, in 1946, she met and married Arnold Tustin, a witty, literate professor of electrical engineering, whose death in 1994 she survived by only ten months when she succumbed to intestinal cancer in November of that same year at the age of 81.
In 1950, Tustin was introduced to the field of child psychotherapy in London. She trained at the Tavistock Clinic and qualified in 1953. It would not escape the attention of those familia