ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the bearing of the autism and expression on the values of integrity and inward reflection. Any powerful desire or emotion may give rise to autistic thinking or imagining. Repression itself represents a shutting-off of reality from awareness and therefore a form of autism. The autistic thinking is the occupying of the mind with a situation which does not for that person at that time exist. It would probably be fair to say that in fact most thinking in most of human history has been not realistic but autistic. Nowhere, in fact, is the tension between autism and realism more clearly seen than in the work of a creative artist. Understanding of reality is one of those rare hard-won fruits of civilization which is only built up by centuries of effort. The same is true of every region of reality: the explicit statement of relationships is secondary to the intuitive appreciation.
