TITLE:
What Autists Can Teach Us about Social Interactions and How Psychoanalytic Treatment Can Contribute to It
AUTHORS:
Ana Beatriz Freire, Fabio Malcher
KEYWORDS:
Psychoanalysis, Autism, Social Interaction
JOURNAL NAME:
Psychology,
Vol.5 No.11,
August
25,
2014
ABSTRACT:
This
paper aims to bring contributions from psychoanalysis to the debate about
autism. We assume that while working with the autistic it is imperative to
single out each case and not to seek out a standardized approach, based on a previous
knowledge. The therapist oriented by psychoanalysis starts to work from a point
of view where stereotyped or seemingly bizarre behaviors are taken as a
resource used by the subject to protect himself from the invasion experienced
in his relationship with others. The treatment, therefore, would not seek to
eliminate such behaviors, but to promote the elaboration, on the autistic part,
of a way of his own to belong in the world, as we will be able to follow in the
exposition of a clinical case in which the subject makes use of objects in a
unique manner to mediate his relationship with the other and promote his social
interaction.