ABSTRACT
The terms used in the realm of autism, such as the expression ‘autistic features’, used in the title of this book, may lead to diagnostic doubts because they are linked to infantile autism. The patients here described are adults who, though having achieved a more or less adequate degree of social integration, have an only partially developed personality as a result of autistic experiences in the early stages of life. This led to a difficulty in their emotional development, which impeded the normal process of symbolization and the experience of individuation and separation. The most primitive form of human experience takes place in a pre-symbolic phase through the rhythmic sensorial contact between the body surfaces of the baby and the caregiver. The skin represents the first point of contact and interpersonal relationship, and the development of attachment that comes from physical proximity – necessary due to the baby’s dependence – gradually gives rise to a conceptualization of one’s own body, its boundaries and the presence of the other person. Subsequently, the idea of the other as an absent object starts to form, along with a notion of affective and emotional proximity. The passage from physical attachment to affective attachment takes place through the caregiver’s ability to offer affection and meaning.
