Autism Books - Psychoanalysis


Anne Alvarez.
Live company: psychoanalytic psychotherapy with autistic, borderline, deprived, and abused children (London: Tavistock/Routledge, 1992). Also New York. Subjects include: Autism, psychoanalysis, schizophrenia in children and abused children. Reader's comment: psychoanalytic gibberish. ISBN: 0415060974 (paperback, 246 pages). [autism,psychoanalysis]
Bruno Bettelheim.
The Empty Fortress: Infantile autism and the birth of the self (New York: The Free Press, 1967). ISBN: 0029031400 (New York, Free Press, hardcover, 424 pages); ISBN: 1199383155 (Free Press); ISBN: 119938318X (Free Press). [autism,psychoanalysis]
Bruno Bettelheim.
A Home for the Heart (New York: Knopf, 1974). Also, Knopf, 1994, hardcover, 461 pages, and University of Chicago Press, 1984. About Bettelheim's Orthogenic School at the University of Chicago for schizophrenic and autistic children. [autism,psychoanalysis]
David C. Cipolloni.
An extraordinary silence: the emergence of a deeply disturbed child (Westport, Conn.: Bergin & Garvey, 1993). ISBN: 0897893573 (hardcover, 145 pages). [autism,psychoanalysis]
Eleanor Craig.
One, Two, Three ... The Story of Matt, A Feral Child (McGraw-Hill, 1978). Republished 1991. Presents a case history of a child who is variously described as autistic, schizophrenic, and retarded, who is rescued by the therapist author from his over-protective mother. It's unclear whether she believes that his mother caused all his problems or was merely exacerbating them. The book only reveals in very very small print that it's "a composite of a number of cases of the problems faced by the social service and medical profession in the diagnosis, treatment, and development of capabilities of such children" (i.e. this didn't actually take place). [autism,disability,psychoanalysis,account]
Richard D'Ambrosio.
No language but a cry (New York: Dell Pub. Co., 1987). Copyright 1970. 314 pages. Account of treatment of a girl who was mute after severe abuse. It is clear she should not be classified as having autism as generally understood. ISBN: 0440364574 (paperback, Dell, 1979). [autism,account,psychoanalysis]
Edward Dolnick.
Madness on the Couch: Blaming the Victim in the Heyday of Psychoanalysis (Simon & Schuster, 1998). Presents a case against the manner in which psychoanalysts have approached a number of psychological conditions including depression, schizophrenia, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and autism. ISBN: 0684824973 (hardcover, 352 pages). [autism,disability,psychoanalysis]
Judith Edwards, editor.
Being Alive: Building On The Work Of Anne Alvarez (Brunner-Routledge, 2001). ISBN: 1583911308 (hardcover, 232 pages); ISBN: 1583911316 (paperback, 232 pages, Brunner-Routledge, 2001). [autism,psychoanalysis]
Michael Fordham.
The Self and Autism (London: William Heineman Medical Books Ltd., 1976). ISBN: 0433308826 (hardcover, Kamac Books, June 2000). [autism,psychoanalysis]
Selma Fraiberg.
Insights from the Blind (Basic Books, 1977). A psychoanalytic book on blind children with autism. ISBN: 0465033180 . [autism,disability,psychoanalysis]
Lawrence E. Hedges.
Working the Organizing Experience: Transforming Psychotic, Schizoid, and Autistic States (Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1994). ISBN: 1568212550 (hardcover, 298 pages, 1995). [autism,psychoanalysis]
Bronwen Hocking.
Little Boy Lost (London: Bloomsbury, 1990). Reader: A desperately depressing book in which the author explains how her son's autism is all her fault for not loving him enough, and how psychotherapy is his only hope. ISBN: 0747507007 (hardcover, 224 pages); ISBN: 0747509557 (paperback, 224 pages, 1991). [autism,account,psychoanalysis]
Florence Milnes Kozak.
Autistic Children: A Working Diary (Pittsburgh, Pa.: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1986). Part of the series Contemporary community health. Describes the author's work with autistic children, using first a psychoanalytic approach, then a behavioral one. ISBN: 0822953838 (paperback, 172 pages). [autism,account,psychoanalysis,behavioral]
Rosine Lefort & Robert Lefort.
Birth of the Other (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1994). 357 pages. Marc Du Ry, Lindsay Watson, and Leonardo Rodriguez translators. Original title: Naissance de l'autre. ISBN: 0252019008 (hardcover, 1994); ISBN: 0252063937 (paperback, 1994). [autism,account,psychoanalysis]
Ken Lenchitz.
Autism and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: Ending Autistic Fixation (Charles C Thomas Pub, 2001). ISBN: 0398070962 (hardcover); ISBN: 0398070970 (paperback). [autism,treatment,psychoanalysis]
Boris Mayer Levinson & Lucille Osterweil.
Autism: myth or reality? (Springfield, Ill.: C.C. Thomas, 1984). 259 pages. ISBN: 0398049602 . [autism,psychoanalysis]
Daniel Marcelli.
Position autistique in naissance de la psyche (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1986). 194 pages. I also saw the date as 1995. [autism,psychoanalysis,french]
Donald Meltzer.
Explorations in Autism: A Psycho-Analytical Study (Strath Tay: Clunie Press, 1975). ISBN: 0902965034 (paperback, 250 pages, Kamac Books, 2000). [autism,psychoanalysis]
Alice Miller.
Breaking Down the Wall of Silence: The liberating experience of facing painful truth (Plume, 1997). Revised edition. Makes a mention of autism, but I think it is mostly about child abuse. ISBN: 0452011736 (paperback, 187 pages). [autism,account,psychoanalysis]
Gerald O'Gorman.
The Nature of Childhood Autism (London: Butterworths, 1967). 134 pages. Treats autism as withdrawal from reality. ISBN: 0407326014 . [autism,psychoanalysis]
Richard Pollak.
The Creation of Dr. B: A Biography of Bruno Bettelheim (Simon & Schuster, 1997). http://www.richardpollak.com Reader: excellent stuff. ISBN: 0684809389 (480 pages, paperback, Touchstone, 1998). [autism,biography,psychoanalysis]
Maria Rhode & Trudy Klauber.
The Many Faces of Asperger's Syndrome (Karnac Books, 2004). Part of the series Tavistock Clinic Series. ISBN: 1855759306 (paperback, 302 pages). [autism,aspergers,psychoanalysis]
Mira Rothenberg.
Children with emerald eyes: histories of extraordinary boys and girls (New York: Dial Press, 1977). About a third of the book concerns autism. ISBN: 1556434480 (paperback, 295 pages, North Atlantic Books, 2003); ISBN: 0671433806 ; ISBN: 0385270275 (Doubleday); ISBN: 0525482865 (E. P. Dutton). [autism,account,psychoanalysis]
Rex W. Speers & Cornelius Lansing.
Group Therapy in Childhood Psychosis (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1965). Account of group therapy for children with autism and childhood schizophrenia (and a separate group for their parents). Claims it's all the fault of the mothers. Reader's comment: horrible, almost as bad as Bettelheim. [autism,psychoanalysis]
Sheila R. Spensley.
Frances Tustin: The Borderlands of Autism and Psychosis (London: Routledge, 1995). Part of the series The Makers of Modern Psychotherapy. Also, New York. ISBN: 0415092620 (hardcover, 176 pages); ISBN: 0415092639 (paperback, 176 pages). [autism,biography,psychoanalysis]
Nina Sutton.
Bettelheim: A Life and Legacy (Basic Books, 1996). Reader: tries to excuse Bettelheim, gets through the whole book without really mentioning that his views on autism were wrong; read Pollak's biography instead! ISBN: 0465006353 ; ISBN: 0813390990 (paperback, 606 pages, Westview Press, 1997). [autism,biography,psychoanalysis]
Stanislaus Andrew Szurek, ed. & I. N. Berlin, ed..
Clinical Studies in Childhood Psychoses: 25 Years in Collaborative Treatment and Research: The Langley Porter Children's Service (New York: Brunner/Mazel, 1973). Reader: parent-blaming psychoanalytic writings on autism. ISBN: 0876300603 . [autism,psychoanalysis]
Frances Tustin.
Autistic Barriers in Neurotic Patients (London: Karnac, 1986). 326 pages. A psychoanalytic view of Autism (Note: the psychoanalytic theories are no longer wide held). Frances Tustin developed a hypothesis that "early-childhood autism is a two-stage illness: the first stage being an unduly close association with the mother, the father often being virtually absent or excluded. Such a child has been described as a `cork child' to plug the hole of the mother's depression and loneliness. The second stage is when this over-vulnerable, 'hot-housed' child inevitably becomes aware of bodily separateness. This is in such a sudden and painful way for it to be a life-threatening disaster. It is traumatic." She seems to have been active in UK and has good contacts with psychiatrists in USA, Italy, France and Spain. ISBN: 0300038402 . [autism,psychoanalysis]
Frances Tustin.
Autistic States in Children (Routledge & Paul, 1981). Written by a psychologist and puts forth the idea that autism in some children is of psychological origin. [autism,psychoanalysis]
Frances Tustin.
Autistic States in Children, Revised Edition (London: Tavistock/Routledge, 1992). ISBN: 0415081297 (New York, paperback, 255 pages). [autism,psychoanalysis]

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