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Frances Tustin has contributed so much to our knowledge and treatment of autistic children. Now retired, except for supervision, her fourth book on autism, The Protective Shell in Children and Adults, has just been published. Other books include Autism and Childhood Psychosis, Autistic States in Children, and Autistic Barriers in Neurotic Patients. She has also published twenty papers regarding autism. Mrs. Tustin has lectured in Great Britain, the United States, Italy, France, Monaco, Scotland, and Ireland. She has been invited to Australia, Canada, Argentina, and Brazil, but her failing health has made these long journeys impossible for her.
I had arrived in London on February 11, 1990, giving myself a day to organize before our first planned interview, I was surprised to hear the phone ring in my hotel room. It was Mrs. Tustin. With what I was to learn was her characteristic generosity, she called to tell me the route to her home and departure times for Amersham. She had arranged for her housekeeper to meet me at the station. She was only worried, she said, that her poor health might interfere with our interview.
She began our first session by saying that, despite setbacks to her health, wonderful things had been happening to her. She asked if I had seen the little book, The Celebration of the Life and Works of Frances Tustin. She was delighted about its production by the Winnicott Society and proudly showed me her copy, bound in burgundy leather and stamped in gold. During our last session, she gave me a copy, inscribed.
Other honors she had recently received included being asked to contribute to a television program called “Key Figures in Psychoanalysis in England” for the fiftieth anniversary of Freud's death. Later, she showed me a 1984 letter from the British Psychoanalytic