A STUDY OF ONE OF THE BODILY FOUNDATIONS OF INTERSUBJECTIVITY IN THE AUTISTIC CHILD: THE BODY ITSELF AS EMOTIONAL SHARING

The authors propose an epistemological reflection based on clinical and theoretical arguments in regard to the baby and the small child. They consider that part of the body which is experienced in the course of an interaction and which is engaged in the capacity to think. These are the first elements emerging front a long-term research project at the Autism Resource Center, the subject of which is the study of the foundations of interactive and communicative capacities. The discussions are centered on the severe troubles of intersubjectivity which are habitually found in autistilc children. This work, in keeping with the paradigm developed in France by Bernard Golse, leads to a new hypothesis where emotion and the body itself hold the most important roles. This hypothesis argues for the necessity to create a "space of contact" in the small child whether he be autistic or not, so as to set the primary capacities of self- and object-representation into motion and thus to allow for the progressive, ecological development of the intersubjective relation.