Article
On the Concept of an Autistic-Contiguous Position
Ogden reads the British object-relations thinking of the preceding two decades as having begun to explore forms of experience lying outside those described by Klein, Winnicott, Fairbairn and Bion, and proposes for them the concept of an autistic-contiguous position, more primitive than both the paranoid-schizoid and the depressive positions. The three stand in dialectical relation, each creating, preserving and negating the others. The autistic-contiguous position is a sensation-dominated, pre-symbolic mode of generating experience, which supplies much of experience's sense of boundedness and an early sense of the place where experience occurs. Its characteristic anxiety is an unspeakable terror that this boundedness will dissolve, felt as leaking, falling or dissolving into endless, shapeless space. With clinical illustrations, the paper discusses the position's principal defences, its ways of organising experience, its forms of object relatedness and its avenues of psychological change.
Main ideas
- British object-relations thinking had begun to explore experience outside the states described by Klein, Winnicott, Fairbairn and Bion.
- An autistic-contiguous position is proposed, more primitive than the paranoid-schizoid and depressive positions.
- The three positions are dialectically related: each creates, preserves and negates the others.
- It is a sensation-dominated, pre-symbolic mode of generating experience that supplies boundedness and an early sense of the place where experience occurs.
- Its anxiety is an unspeakable terror of the dissolution of boundedness: leaking, falling or dissolving into endless, shapeless space.
- The paper discusses, with clinical illustration, the position's defences, organisation of experience, object relations and routes to psychological change.
What it shows
- 1989
Thomas H. Ogden introduced Autistic-contiguous position
Frances Tustin influenced Thomas H. Ogden
Ogden based the autistic-contiguous position partly on Tustin's clinical work with autistic children, including her accounts of autistic shapes and autistic objects.
Esther Bick influenced Thomas H. Ogden
Bick's account of the skin as a primal container, and of the 'second skin' formations that arise when it fails, informed Ogden's description of the surface sensations that organise the autistic-contiguous mode.
- 1989
Autistic-contiguous position derives from Paranoid-schizoid position
Ogden modelled the new position on Klein's idea of a position and placed it beneath the paranoid-schizoid as a third, more primitive mode. The three stand in dialectical relation rather than in sequence.