Autism and Personality: Findings from the Tavistock Autism Workshop [Paperback]

Anne Alvarez (Editor), Susan Reid (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 19, 1999

Taking a psychoanalytic and developmental approach, Autism and Personality outlines in considerable detail the new developments in therapeutic techniques used by the Tavistock Autism Team and Workshop to treat autistic children. It also underlines the importance of support for parents and siblings, who are all too often ignored under considerable stress. The book presents fresh ideas about the importance of personality for the developmental course of the condition, and the implications for psychotherapeutic technique. Using case vignettes to illustrate the theoretical ideas emerging from the Workshop, coupled with case studies which highlight the patient's changing contact with the therapist, it gives a fascinating picture of the individuality of each child and of the sensitivity and skill required for each treatment.

Accessible to professionals and also to parents, Autism and Personality is a valuable insight into the nature and course of this condition and its treatment.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Adolescent Psychotherapists at the Tavistock Clinic in the UK London and Co-Convenors of the Tavistock Autism Service and Workshop. Dr. Alvarez is the author of Live Company: Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy with Autistic, Abused and Borderline Psychotic Children (Routledge, 1992). Dr. Reid founded the Autism Research Workshop in 1986 and is the editor of Developments in Infant Observation (Routledge, 1997).

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Routledge (August 19, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 041514602X
• ISBN-13: 978-0415146029
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.1 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,891,767 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars It's all in the reading...., February 17, 2000

By 

Karen Batres (Garza Garcia, Nuevo León Mexico) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Autism and Personality: Findings from the Tavistock Autism Workshop (Paperback)

While the first customer reviewer has a valid and respectable opinion about this book, which should be taken into account, my feeling is that he has misread it. The contributors to this book never deny the neurologic aspects of autism, and often maintain that a child's extreme susceptibility to events that for others would not be traumatic, is due to precisely these neurologic factors. Nor do they maintain that there is another child within, rather that all autistic children have functional areas that need to be developed so that they can take part in life. They also point out that certain personality traits can affect the autistic condition, and vice versa, a statement that refutes the notion that autistic children have little "personality" other than the disorder itself. Let me put it this way: it has been shown that mothers who reflect back to their babies what the babies seem to be feeling enhance the development and interconnection of pre-frontal lobe neurons. We are floundering when we try to separate neurology and psychology, as if the two did not interact in ways we still not not understand. Additionally, the contributors to this book make a point of saying that parents ARE NOT AT FAULT when a child has autism; their viewpoint is parent-friendly, not to say parent-empathic. The other reviewer, does, however, have a point that is worth emphasizing: it is one thing to make the kind of interpretations which I found in this book, and quite another to make the leaps-of-faith interpretations sometimes typical of Kleinian analysts, whose heavy-handed interventions would be enough to turn anyone off. This is a technical book for therapists, and the non-technical reader searching for enlightenment about autism might do better going somewhere else. It requires a knowledge of several schools of psychology, and may seem confusing to those unfamiliar with different schools of psychoanalysis.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A much more human approach to autism, June 29, 2004

By A Customer

This review is from: Autism and Personality: Findings from the Tavistock Autism Workshop (Paperback)

Behavioral approaches seem to be the only viable treatment option for autism today. However, the fact that we are dealing with a human being seems to be lost in this whole mechanical process. There is something sad and dehumanizing about "training" a person as one would a dog or any other animal. With a psychoanalytic approach, the idea of a personality is reintroduced to autism. This idea that autism is not the person, offers a more humanistic and optimistic approach to looking at autism. For those that assume that psychoanalytic theory just places blame on the parents, those readers will be surprised to find that much of the book is dedicated to offering support and hope to parents who the authors suggest very often suffer from a form of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder upon having a child diagnosed as autistic. This book does not say that this is the "right" treatment for all children or that it always works, but it provides another alternative to those who find behavioral approaches too impersonal and mechanical.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Problem-laden approach to Autism, July 24, 2007

By 

Mr. Colin Moore (Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Autism and Personality: Findings from the Tavistock Autism Workshop (Hardcover)

This book is marred by its basic though unstated premise that Autism is a pathology or disease rather than a condition of existence. It falls into the trap of treating people with autism as "sufferers" who have to be cured. A more useful approach is to treat it as a condition that impacts the person's ability to communicate and socialise and that help must centre around working on ways to lessen these impacts. As well as this, many of the problems that autistic people face are really due to the inability of others to understand their communication. In other words a lot of work has to go into changing the social environment rather than trying to "fix" a dysfunctional autistic. Still the book does have useful insights into the need of carers and siblings for recognition and support. Overall, though, I find more and more that psychoanalytic approaches are less useful than approaches like those of Atwood and other writers. I am not an authority on psychodynamics, but it seems more and more to me like a model rooted in the past with a dead weight of theoretical and historical baggage to divest itself of before it can address the real worl challenges of people with autism and their carers and siblings.