ABSTRACT
Frances Tustin (1972, 1981, 1986, 1990) devoted her life’s work to the psychoanalytic understanding of the bewildering elemental world of the autistic child. Her realisation that some of our more neurotic adult patients are haunted by these same primeval forces which constitute an enclave of autism has been profound. The notion that autistic manoeuvres serve as a protective shell against the terrifying awareness of bodily separateness and dissolution into nothingness has had a substantial impact upon the rethinking of such notable analysts as Boyer (1990), Grotstein (1983), D. Rosenfeld (1984) and H.A. Rosenfeld (1987).
