Concept
Dismantling
Meltzer's term, in Explorations in Autism (1975), for the passive coming apart of the self in autistic states. By letting attention drift, the child lets the senses go their separate ways, so that sight, sound, touch and smell each attach to whatever is most stimulating at the moment and are no longer brought together on one object; what Bion called common sense is undone. Unlike active, sadistic splitting, dismantling involves no attack and no anxiety, and it can be reassembled almost at once, leaving a mindless state rather than a fragmented one.
Development
1975
introduced by Donald Meltzer
In Explorations in Autism Meltzer describes dismantling as a passive suspension of attention that lets the senses fall apart, each fixing on its own object. Unlike splitting, it involves no sadism.
In Explorations in Autism: A Psycho-Analytical Study (1975)
Relations
- 1975 introduced by Donald Meltzer
In Explorations in Autism Meltzer describes dismantling as a passive suspension of attention that lets the senses fall apart, each fixing on its own object. Unlike splitting, it involves no sadism.
- diverges from Splitting
Like splitting, dismantling breaks experience apart, but it is passive rather than sadistic: attention simply lapses so the senses drift to separate objects, and they come together again easily once attention returns.
Works
- 1975
Explorations in Autism: A Psycho-Analytical Study
The report of a research group of child psychotherapists, led by Meltzer with John Bremner, Shirley Hoxter, Doreen Weddell and Isca Wittenberg, on the intensive analysis of four autistic children, Timmy, John, Barry and Piffie. Meltzer's theoretical chapters describe autism proper as a mindless state brought about by dismantling, a passive suspension of attention that lets the self come apart along the lines of the senses. Post-autistic states are marked by two-dimensional, surface-to-surface relating and by adhesive identification, Esther Bick's term, which first appeared in print in Meltzer's writings of this year. The cases also reveal a disturbed geography of the life-space, which the publisher calls the geography of the internal mother and which later shaped Meltzer's theory of the claustrum. A chapter on dimensionality in mental functioning ranks one-, two-, three- and four-dimensional ways of relating to objects, space and time; the publisher presents it as the first theory of dimensionality in psychoanalysis.
See also
Linked from
People
References
- Explorations in Autism: A Psycho-Analytical Study1975Evidence for a relation