ABSTRACT
Heinz was a 15-year-old boy who had withdrawn almost totally from any contact outside the family. He did go to school, but was socially an outsider who was only tolerated to prevent his being even further isolated. Instead of speaking he would make barking sounds interspersed with a few words. Only when he was furious was he able briefly to speak in full sentences. His intellectual abilities were not impaired, as had been shown by a test a few years earlier. A period of in-patient adolescent psychiatric treatment had been cut short by the family because Heinz had become homesick, and his mother could also no longer bear to be separated from him. Heinz suffered from a marked infantile autism.
