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Current theories of autism, whether founded upon biological, genetic, behavioral, or psychoanalytic views, are based on a one-person approach to human development: they look at the individual as distinct from the environment. In particular, biological and genetic approaches (Gillberg, 1990; Prior. 1987) look for defects in the child's neurochemical or genetic makeup. Cognitive behaviorists (Rutter, 1985; Lovaas, 1987), without attempting to venture further into the etiological debate, approach the autistic child from the vantage point of targeting behavioral and cognitive deficits. And psychoanalysts (Bettelheim, 1967; Mahler, 1968; Tustin, 1990) have focused on the child's internal conflicts around, respectively, parental rejection and loss of a sense of efficacy, inability to emerge from a normal autistic state, and loss of an illusion of oneness with the caregiver.1
While these theories have given us a rich and varied picture of the disorder, they also give seemingly contradictory and fragmented explanations. The recent conceptualization of a two-person psychology, as outlined by Stolorow and his coworkers (Atwood & Stolorow, 1984; Stolorow, Brandchaft, & Atwood, 1987) provides us with a new framework with which to understand the development of psychopathology and the nature of the therapeutic situation. Additionally, the work of infant researchers such as Stern (1985) and Sander (1975) has provided us with a complementary understanding of the nature of human development from within the context of the interaction between mother and infant in the first two years of life. Finally, because autism manifests itself so early in the infant's life, it may also be useful to incorporate ideas about the nature of the intrauterine experience into our understanding of the symptomatology