A Lacanian Approach to Autism

Psychoanalytic treatment of autism has advanced by leaps and bounds in recent decades. It now focuses on difficulties in interaction between parents and children, leading to what is termed here a “failure to dance,” a failure to pick up on each other’s cues, to respond to each other’s needs and wants. The children end up feeling uninvited into their parents’ world, and the parents end up feeling rebuffed and despondent. Jacques Lacan’s work can shed light on what goes wrong between parents and children such that giving and receiving are rejected, recognition and reciprocity are refused, looks and words cannot be exchanged, pain and joy cannot be shared. Lacan’s work can also be helpful for developing individualized treatment that will allow a child to stop turning away from, blocking, and circumventing adults, and instead begin to speak to them, intelligibly, and in the hope of being heard, comforted, and appreciated. Relying on a deep grasp of the nature of language and modes of language acquisition, psychoanalysis can teach us how to approach infants on their way to autism in a manner that re-invites them into the world and helps them to find a pathway of their own in life. And it can teach us how to work with children, adolescents, and adults who are already clearly autistic in their functioning, assisting them in finding an independent place for themselves in the world.