Autism: The Symptom of Anti-psychoanalysis?

The word “autism” has met with considerable success, which is difficult to explain. However, Freud did not accept it because it was invented by Jung and Bleuler based on an autoeroticism devoid of Eros. Melanie Klein, who described the first case (Dick), never used the term, contrary to Anna Freud and her disciple Bruno Bettelheim. However, the heated controversies the latter sparked gave rise to the first movements opposed to psychoanalysis, with the departure of one of his collaborators, Éric Schopler, who designed a behavioral method involving parents at the beginning of the 1960s. With autism considered as a handicap, the notion of infantile psychosis has practically disappeared. The current term in use is “autism spectrum,” which designates a scale of syndromes going from knowledgeable calculations to serious ruptures of the relation with the other. This sinister spectrum is a threat to child psychoanalysis in general because it justifies research in techno-sciences and the widespread use of cognitive-behavioral methods. Why, however does the word “autism” continue to fascinate psychoanalysts?