Explorations in Autism: A Psychoanalytical Study

'Explorations in Autism is a turning-point in both the understanding of and the clinical approach to autism. The clinical material gradually unveils the geography of the internal mother (which proved crucial for the development of Meltzer’s ‘claustrum’ theory) and allowed him to draft, for the first time in psychoanalysis, a theory of the dimensionality of mental life.’

- CARMO DI SOUSA LIMA, Portuguese Psychoanalytical Society

‘The rigorous exploration reported in this book has shed a totally new light on the subjective experience of autistic children and hence on the primitive developmental phases of every human mind. A new metapsychological model of the psyche stems from the description here of fundamental concepts like primal depression, dismantling, adhesive identity, dimensionality as a parameter of mental functioning.’

- DIDIER HOUZEL, French Psychoanalytical Association and Professor of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Caen

'Donald Meltzer’s brilliant "lessons" supervising my analysis of a post-autistic boy have increased my psychoanalytical instruments for investigating the transference and countertransference: how to observe emotional and behavioural facts during the session (not only verbalizations), and how to seek out my own dream images in order to carry on with the analysis.'

- MARISA PELELLA MELEGA, Brazilian Psychoanalytical Society, Sao Paulo

'These modalities observed in autistic children have a more general scope than in psychopathology and even lead us to rethink certain basic concepts in psychoanalysis. The research recorded in this book allowed Meltzer to come into contact with children who were unable to form an object containing a space to be used in their mental development. Later, using conclusions drawn from this work,

Meltzer went on to formulate the "aesthetic conflict" in a book which pairs with this one: The Apprehension of Beauty (1988).'

- VIRGINIA UNGAR, Buenos Aires Psychoanalytical Association, Chair, IPA

‘Meltzer’s understanding of sense perception and language development is inspiring. He was so far ahead of his time that we are only beginning to realise how he anticipated recent developmental research. In this book, by way of clinical work, he extended the scope of psychoanalysis to wide new fields of thought.'

- MARIA RHODE, Emeritus Professor of Child Psychotherapy, Tavistock Clinic/University of East London