Autistic-contiguous position

A mode of generating experience that Thomas Ogden proposed in 1989 as more primitive than Klein's paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions. It is sensory-dominated and presymbolic, and builds a rudimentary sense of self from rhythm, the feel of surfaces, and contact with the skin. Its characteristic anxiety is a terror of leaking, dissolving or falling into shapeless space, and its defences include autistic shapes and objects. Drawing on Frances Tustin and Esther Bick, Ogden held that all three modes exist together throughout life in dialectical tension, each creating, preserving and negating the others, rather than as stages that follow one another.