A Descriptive Study on the Psychic Functioning of an AutisticAbstract:
This paper is based on the analysis of autobiographies written by the parents of autistic in order to deepen the current scientific knowledge about the psychic functioning in autism. Our qualitative analysis of these autobiographical books evidenced how autistic children who manifested severe symptoms in childhood left the classic autism, became speaking autistic and were able to develop in all areas. We particularly focused on the qualitative analysis of the autobiographical accounts of the Clark Family, which allowed us to elucidate several aspects of the structure of language and thought of her autistic youngest child, Jessy Park; moreover, it provided us with an interesting repertoire of the interventions and the effects of those interventions, making possible the evolution of the autistic symptoms. The choice of using autobiographical material as the substrate of this research, although unusual in the field of studies in psychology in the field of autism, provided us with a significant amount of clinical data covering 40 years of Jessy's life, of which we focused on her first fifteen years, which enabled us to fulfill the proposed goal of deepening scientific knowledge about autism.
Keywords: Autism; Autobiography; Thought; Language