ABSTRACT
Autism is frequently associated with mental handicap and is itself a form of mental handicap. Difficulties with being curious, and showing curiosity, are, fundamental in those people with autism, or who show autistic states, but are also common in many other people, including those who might seek psychoanalytic treatment. This chapter considers the inhibition of curiosity seen in non-autistic individuals to be on a continuum with that seen in autism. It suggests both patients feared that their curiosity about their mothers would reveal unacceptable facts, which they considered to be deficits, which would then risk exposing their mothers and, by reflection, themselves to guilt and shame. In some situations, the origin of the problem lies with the mother's intrinsic problem in developing a third position, with a contribution from her psychic atopia, which reflects difficulties in the quality of her relationship with her internal father.
