- severe social impairment of early childhood is the core symptom (though not the cause)
- lack of a sense of being a person/ of others - a severe disorder of intersubjectivity
- impairment of normal sense of emotional curiosity about and desire for relationships i.e not relating to a living person, but merely to a source of sensory stimulation
Professionals (diagnosis) tend to focus only on what autistic people have in common - issues of Cause get confused with Treatment.
However, every autistic child is different, with a different history and different needs.
Despite many years of research, no single cause of autism has been identified and extensive debate continues. However a major review into Autism by the Medical Research Council last year confirms a growing and dramatic increase in the diagnosis of autism and that these diagnoses were in much younger children. There is still intense speculation around the definition of autism and given the multiplicity of factors contributing to any diagnosis this is unlikely to ever be a straightforward issue. However research is pointing increasingly strongly to the importance of parent-led early intervention.
Research indicates that autism develops within the first two years of a child’s life and that intervention within that time does stand a good chance of averting autistic development. This places significant weight behind the importance of the parents’ very active involvement in working with their child.
Autistic Children
- do not understand that they are a person and that the other person is a human being
- do not communicate or play in ordinary ways + lack a sense of humour and irony
- do not want help: they literally ‘want a hand’, i.e. just the function which the hand performs
- engage in repetitive behaviours, strange rituals and obsessions
- are obsessed with sensory stimulation
- are often hypersensitive, but might appear not to see, hear, feel or to notice
- often show overall developmental delay
- lack the ability to learn easily, to take in and process experiences
Autistic children are like this some or most of the time, but the autistic state of mind comes and goes.
Every autistic child has an intact non-autistic part to their personality: we want to find the non-autistic child behind the autism and to observe in detail when, why and how the autistic symptoms decrease and the normal, non-autistic part of the child’s personality emerges.
Our own emotional responses may provide important information which tends to be missed in purely behavioural analyses of symptoms.
This non-autistic part may use, misuse, enjoy or exploit the autistic symptoms or it may oppose them and make efforts to reduce their influence.
Some autism seems to stem from a deficit, sometimes it seems to be a defensive self-protection against trauma. 
It can be a disorder or a deviance.
If left untreated, problems due to the first three may lead to the fourth.
"Autistic children seem to lack a sense of a world in which there are people with minds who could be both interesting and interested in them - now seen as essential for the development of the human mind. They need us to actively ‘reclaim’ them back into the world of human feeling and communication and to show them that the world beyond their private autism is indeed interesting. To do this the adult ‘must have a mind for two, energy for two, hope for two, imagination for two. Gradually, the child may begin to get interested, not yet in us, but in our interest in them." (Alvarez/ Reid 1999)
What is the Mind?
"As well as a whole inner world full of living objects, memories, facts, images, there are thoughts lit up by meaning and powered by their own energy. A mind is a vast panorama of thought-about feelings and felt-about thoughts which are constantly in interaction with one another. They are dynamic and energetic. Thoughts have their own power of existence: we can think about them, we can chase after them of we seem to be losing them, we follow them up where we can. We can shut them out and push them down. Sometimes they turn on us and chase and nag us in their turn. Sometimes we succeed in putting 2 of them together, sometimes they get together on their own without our permission. Sometimes they haunt us, often they elude us." (A. Alvarez 1996, 1998)
"Parents may inadvertently contribute to this downward cycle by second-guessing their child’s needs, so that neither child nor parent is aware that an opportunity for a potentially more lively engagement has been missed.’ Or their feelings of helplessness in the face of their child’s indifference has meant that the child is left too much to his own devices. When not addressed and treated, personality features of impatience and intolerance are in danger of becoming embedded into character. Then states can become traits. In some cases this may lead to a personality disorder in the person with autism." (Alvarez/ Reid 1999)
