ABSTRACT
Taking up Derek Hook’s analysis of the imaginary in his “Lacan and the psychological,” and connecting it to the clinical, this chapter explores the lived-experience of childhood autism. Drawing upon analyst and patient testimonies, these resources offer a description of the autistic child’s lack of bodily boundedness, which leads to its troubled relationship to otherness and various other perturbations. Using both psychoanalytic (Ogden, Lacan) and phenomenological (Merleau-Ponty) resources, this chapter investigates whether there exists a dimension of universal human experience that resonates with that of the autistic’s. In particular, Merleau-Ponty’s notion of flesh is connected with Ogden’s autistic-contiguous position to demonstrate the common flesh shared between those who are structurally autistic and the common human experience.
