Learning to talk to Marie – the use of objects as interpreters in the relationship with autistic child

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to share with speech therapists who work with autistic patients, some questions and hypothesis that emerged from the experience of attendance of an autistic girl. The work started when she was four years old and lasted for two years and nine months. Based on a theoretical understanding of autism and on the notion of a possible transference relationship in autistic children therapy, I tried to demonstrate, through examples derived from therapeutic sessions, a kind of work that consists in showing my ideas to the patient using objects as intermediaries. These objects I called “interpreter objects”. I intended to highlight particularly the moments of the therapeutic process in which, just by using these objects, under the effect of a relationship in which fusional illusion predominated, we managed to establish a non-autistic contact.