ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author examines an attempt to understand autistic and false-self states through both the body and the mind. Her thesis will be that where there is an absence in the mother’s internal world of the baby in her mind, the identity of the baby becomes vulnerable both in the mind of the mother and in the mind of the child. The absence of thought about and around the baby both in the internal world and later in external reality can produce a state of mind where thinking is experienced as dangerous in the developing child. The author focuses on what happens in the mind of the child that contributes to the creation of a fake self and a lack of authenticity, and how that falseness and lack of authenticity is experienced in the psychotherapeutic work. She looks at the part the body plays as a defence against feeling and how the body is experienced and contained.
