ABSTRACT
Delicato's The Ultimate Stranger discloses the sensory systems of children on the autistic end of the spectrum. Thirty thousand years ago, shamans from the Aurignacian epoch crept deeply within the caves at Chauvet to draw and paint images of the animals with which they coexisted. Since time immemorial, humankind has responded to ephemerality by devising creative responses that attempt to record, reflect or commemorate experience through the arts and other activities. It may have been so intense that the everydayness of the suburban screen might have rivalled anything imagined in the darkness, echoes and other sensations of a Palaeolithic cave. Spectrum issues are commonly first encountered during childhood, blossoming further through latency and early adolescence. Winnicott considered transitional space as a portal to the creative self, a zone of potential transformation.
