ABSTRACT
Psychoanalytic work with children on the autistic spectrum sheds light on many issues of basic importance, but perhaps the most fundamental of these concerns the processes involved in being welcomed into the human family. Developmental and observational studies carried out over the last twenty-five years have immensely enriched our understanding of what tiny babies are capable of in the way of social relationships. In psychoanalysis, as always, the clinical study of what happens when there are problems—and particularly of what happens when these problems begin to be overcome—makes it possible to fill in some of the detail which the smooth, almost automatic quality of normal developmental processes can seem to obscure.
