Why can psychoanalysis not work for autistic people?
Even the wisest therapist faces the unknown when working with a person on the AS spectrum. The traditional dogmas and mechanisms of psychoanalysis rest on mistaken assumptions and interpretations without solid reference points, which scarcely correspond to these individuals' reality. AS generations, with their distinct genetic background, do not react like allistic people, and such interpretations or judgements can cause great harm.
Furthermore, family history and parental influence constitute a separate narrative, passed down from generation to generation. This is not a single story, but thousands of different stories, each shaped by the characteristics unique to each individual.
Perpetual evolution
An autistic person is a being in perpetual evolution, changing every day of their life. To communicate with them truly, one must speak with their soul, which requires developing a deep awareness of it. Yet once this awareness is acquired, the desire to practise psychoanalysis disappears, creating a major obstacle.
For the AS, it is not a matter of psychoanalysis, but of psychosynthesis. Exploring the unconscious through various techniques amounts to connecting the unconscious with identity.
The latter presents itself as a set of repetitions and automatic processes that mobilise different brain areas and require considerable energy. As Nadila sings in “Parle à ta tête”, this is the identity loop.
Cultivating an identity is normal for an allistic individual.
Gradually, allistic people cultivate an identity shaped by their ancestors, life experience, choices, tastes and feelings. The energy invested in the “self” is considerable: appearance, thoughts, convictions and personal culture form a daily routine.
The AS also possesses all this information, but does not organise it or constantly connect it with the records stored in certain parts of their brain. They rarely access it, because this proves too energy-consuming and too intimate. Absorbed in their passions, they struggle to explore their unconscious and move within a parallel world, a parallel consciousness, where information arrives differently. You are not truly present for them, except in the present moment, because your role differs from the one you usually embody.
Allistic people have difficulty adopting independent thought. They associate their ideas with their identity and with groups of collective thoughts, inevitably allowing themselves to be influenced by the latter, sharing those ideas and taking care not to stray from their identity. Who, then, guides the world in another direction, or even towards renewal? Those who have the freedom to think outside the usual frameworks.
The therapeutic work to be done with AS individuals
The AS is a free thinker, and even their unconscious has less influence over them. But where, then, do all their fears and anxieties come from? Many of the AS's fears come directly from the recent unconscious, that is, from the present, from recordings in the middle unconscious, and because the boundary between the present and the unconscious is infinitely thin, they feel all the closer. The work to be done with AS individuals thus consists in mastering the middle unconscious through the will and visualisation in the present, in order to correct the frightening image.
ACIM therapy
“I see nothing real at present.” “There is another way of observing the world.” “I could perceive peace instead.”