ABSTRACT
Very often, each new psychotic child that we see seems to be unlike any other that we have seen before and to form a diagnostic category of his own. This baffling variety of presenting appearance is because inborn characteristics and impediments in the child intertwine with those of the parents and with outside circumstances which have been catastrophically disturbing. In this chapter, differential diagnosis on the basis of the type of autism manifested by the child will be suggested as a means of classification which would avoid what Creak (1967, p. 369) has termed ‘cramping over-simplification’. The common psychiatric division of psychotic children into those suffering from Early Infantile Autism and those suffering from childhood Schizophrenia is too rigid and leaves out many children who do not fit into the above categories.
