Autism

AUTISM (from Greek autos-self), a concept for designating a psychopathological state that reduces to the immersion of the personality in its own internal experiences, which begin to be formed and governed by peculiar laws with a weakening of the influence of reality on their formation, and to the loss of abilities to connect with external events and relationships. This concept was introduced into psychopathology by Bleuler to define one of the most characteristic symptoms of schizophrenia (see). Severe schizophrenics live, having separated themselves from everything around them, in a special world created by delusions and hallucinations; in this world, their boldest desires are fulfilled, and the most incredible fears are realized. Such an autistic world seems real to the patient, at least to no lesser extent than the real world. According to Bleuler, autistic experiences are not characteristic only of patients. To the typical manifestations of A., Bleuler relates dreams and daydreams. All art, in his opinion, has autistic roots; folk superstitions, mythology, religion, metaphysics are entirely autistic products; even in politics and science, autistic functions (the unwillingness to reckon with obviousness) play a large role. However, these sociological statements are erroneous both from a methodological and a factual side: the social phenomena indicated by Bleuler stem from moments of a sociological character and are governed by sociological regularities. Furthermore, according to Bleuler, sharp boundaries cannot be established between "normal" A. and its pathological forms: from the fantasy of a boy who, sitting on a stick, imagines himself a commander, up to a hysterical person in a twilight state, and up to a schizophrenic who fulfills his actually unrealizable desires through hallucinations, there is a whole scale of transitions. Bleuler opposes the autistic attitude to the realistic [fonction du reel Janet]: while the latter is realized, mainly, in intellectual activity, the former is governed, predominantly, by the action of affects. With reality, the autistic personality often enters into direct conflict, since, not reckoning with its requirements, it easily runs into obstacles; hence suspicion (in schizophrenics with persecutory delusions) and an even greater withdrawal into oneself. The driving forces of autistic experiences are the basic drives of the personality, among which, according to Bleuler, sexual drive has special significance [Bleuler, by bringing autism closer to Freud's autoeroticism, shares with the latter its main exaggerations and errors]. Autistic thinking is affective and, as such, tendentious: the affects governing it open a way only for associations corresponding to them, inhibiting the opposite ones; unpleasant representations are thereby repressed. Refusing to reckon with logic reproducing real relationships, and flowing usually with a weakened directing role of active attention, autistic thinking can also dissociate: it is not rare that it simultaneously gives expression to the most diverse tendencies and drives hidden in a person, regardless of whether they contradict each other or not; for their thoughts, A. sometimes uses the first material that comes to hand: associations by similarity, a random coincidence of any perceptions and representations take the place of logical combinations. As a result, autistic thinking operates with insufficiently thought-out concepts, connects a whole series of them in a bizarre way into one (condensation), puts in place of one concept another which actually has only secondary common components with the first (displacement), expresses ideas in risky symbols, while the latter are understood by it simultaneously in their own and in a figurative meaning - finally, autistic thinking tends to ignore real relations of place and time. Along with the use of the described mechanisms of affective-dissociated thinking, the autistic personality usually also uses normal logic, so that in the same course of thoughts, both autistic and realistic combinations can occur. The causes of A. are most often reduced personal activity, forcing one to prefer the fulfillment of desires only in dreams to the struggle for their real realization, and increased vulnerability, prompting the personality to pathologically close itself in its shell. However, there are types of A. characterized, on the contrary, by increased activity directed at the stubborn implementation of autistic fantasies.