Asperger's Children: Psychodynamics, Aetiology, Diagnosis, and Treatment

The DSM-5 (2013) classifies all autism-related disorders, including Asperger’s, under the heading “autism spectrum disorder.” This book argues that this lumping together is unhelpful for clinicians. Instead, finer diagnostic distinctions are helpful to clinicians who treat children with Asperger’s whereas lumping everything together is not.

The book spells out in detail the psychodynamics the author has repeatedly uncovered in Asperger’s children, adolescents, and adults. There are suggestions about central factors in the aetiology of Asperger’s Disorder. There is a section suggesting how Asperger’s can be adequately diagnosed from “the outside” (using external descriptive features) and more importantly from “the inside” (based on internal psychodynamic processes). Finally, there is a section outlining psychodynamic treatment approaches to Asperger’s children, based on their psychodynamics and on which type of Asperger’s is present.

There are numerous case illustrations to help the reader appreciate the central psychodynamics that are regularly observed in Asperger’s children, namely splitting of the self into victim and bully aspects, and projective identification into remote objects. On the basis of their psychodynamics, and especially which aspect of their split self is predominant, three different types of Asperger’s are outlined which require different treatment approaches.