ABSTRACT
The events and circumstances which have been outlined as contributing to the development of psychogenic autism are only important in so far as they have affected the psychic situation of the patient. An important part of cognitive and emotional development is the creation of more and more effective working simulations of reality. Other autistic children seem to have suffered disturbances in utero, and so are born prone to be autistic even from birth. The fact that disturbances in utero can lead to autistic-type reactions after birth was brought home to by a case supervised recently. Grotstein has suggested that, as the result of the mother's depression, some of them may have suffered a 'biochemical assault in the amniotic bath'. In relatively normal development, on the basis of his own constitutional 'blueprint', the child absorbs the constructions of his family and of the culture in which he lives.
