ABSTRACT
However, we need to be aware that, in some forms of childhood autism, psychological and physiological factors can be so closely inter twined that it is difficult to say which set in motion the vicious circle of over-developed auto-sensuousness. Infants with neurological impairments are likely to be more difficult to nurture, and are thus more liable to fall into bottomless pits and to show autistic features. In others, nurturant lacks can have occurred very early (even in utero, for example, as the result of toxaemia), and thus are indistinguishable from constitutional defects. Obviously, great discretion needs to be exercised in assessing whether an autistic child is likely to benefit from psychotherapy. How ever, the few autistic children who have recovered spontaneously, and those who have benefited from educational and psychotherapeutic tech niques, must have found some way around any physiological and neuro logical impairments which may have existed.
