ABSTRACT
Autistic objects and autistic shapes are both auto-sensuous fabrications which are associated with and confirm a state in which the child's body feels undifferentiated from that of a very powerful being. A depressed mother whose capacity to bear these extreme states is very restricted cannot help her infant to come to terms with them. Faute de mieux, the infant is driven to develop the autistic reactions that have just been described to protect him or her from unbearable sensations. The comedian Woody Allen described such evasion pointedly and humorously when he said, 'It's not that I'm afraid of death. It's just that it don't want to be there when it happens. Disembodied states in relation to the terror of death. This means that the children are out of touch with her as a real human being. Daisy is beginning to feel that she will have to give up these delusory tranquillizers and invulnerabilities, and which is real although intangible.
