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Although much has been written about primary, or infantile, autism as described by Kanner (1942) and on schizophrenia, the literature contains little about secondary autism. Secondary autism is a syndrome of enormous social deficits resulting from cognitive and perceptual disabilities that stem from a biological abnormality in the filtering system and produce underarousal, overarousal, or both. A weak ego structure results in perceptual and cognitive abnormalities. The fragility of the ego structure makes closeness and intimacy difficult, even seemingly impossible in the beginning stage.
This is a story of my own experience of secondary autism. It is the story of Red (the pseudonym I used when I wrote the original version in graduate school). I hope it will be of help to therapists in their work with patients such as myself.
Red “survived” a “normal” childhood in “normal” schools through the graduate level and has since held a full-time professional position in a library. In junior high and high school, teachers thought she was withdrawn, painfully shy, and lacking in self-confidence, but they never recommended therapy to her parents. While in college and in graduate school studying special education, Red worked with children with primary autism. She