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.