ABSTRACT
In this chapter I shall describe the intensified use of some infantile, maternal and paternal countertransferences that arose in my work with a nine-year-old boy with autism who had virtually no language. Alongside the more usual psychoanalytic explanatory and reflective comments, I came to use a kind of ‘motherese’ when I begged him to pay attention to me, rather than to his autistic figures. (For a fuller discussion of the previous clinical use of this term, borrowed from developmental research (Trevarthen and Marwick, 1986), see Alvarez (1996).) I also, however, came to realize that I was also using a kind of ‘fatherese’ when I amplified upon, and invited him to take note of, the strength and assertiveness that were buried in some of his autistic repetitive movements. This more emotional manner of speaking on my part involved the kind of work I have described previously (Alvarez, 1996, 1999) as being developmentally informed. In addition, I used a second kind of ‘fatherese’ tone in my firm dismissal of his more complacent, omnipotent activities. He was a child who at times was all too comfortable in and with his autism and had little interest in other human beings, especially when they were talking to him.
