Becky: Motive in her mindlessness: the discovery of autistic

schools. The important issue is whether and how the condition can be modified, not who does the modifying.

Fundamental to our approach is the degree of work pursued with the children's parents, other family members, and the wider network of schools, nurseries, paediatricians, language and arts therapists. This approach is central to all the work in the Child and Family Department at the Tavistock, but autism is a communication disorder, and there is extra potential for non-communication and miscommunication both within the family and between the family and other helping agencies, or between the agencies themselves. The provision of support for parents and siblings carries no aetiological implication: it may, however, help parents to find their child easier to understand and to live with. We wish to help the parents to find the non-autistic child behind the autism, and to help the child to find a strengthened parent behind the often traumatised and sometimes nearly despairing carer. Our Tavistock view is that both sides of the work are essential if benign circles are to be set in motion.

The reader will find many observations of the conditions under which the autistic symptomatology waxes and wanes, and the conditions under which the normal, non-autistic part of the personality of the child emerges. It is our view that our close and intense observation of these children - and of our own responses to them - may provide important information likely to be missed in purely behavioural analyses of symptoms. We study not only what the patient just did or seems about to do, but, importantly, the differing states of mind in. ourselves which may have preceded or accompanied these changes. Our current research projects with Dr Anthony Lee, using video, process recordings and independent psychological evaluations, should throw further light on these important issues. This book presents our clinical findings.

Anne Alvarez and Sue Reid