Trauma pré-natal e autismo, Suzanne Maiello, Rome, Italy

"... nature and nurture are interwoven from the very beginning, and that the further we go backwards in time towards the origins of life, the less it is possible to separate the physical and the psychic aspects of events."

"The earlier in development a traumatic event occurs, the more any protective reaction will be rooted in the body and the senses."

"she attributed the mental state of children who were born autistic to prenatal 'aversion reactions''

"Freezing is a liquid's way of becoming a solid body."

"... all the mothers of her autistic patients had been clinically depressed before or after the birth of their babies (1986, 1990)."

"Infant observation teaches us how differently babies react to frustrating situations. It is tenable that individual differences exist also before birth."

"Touch and hearing are the main sensuous channels through which the foetus establishes contact with its environment."

"The effect of this aversion reaction could be that of remaining in or returning to an asymbolic state of 'unmentalized experience' (Mitrani, 1992)."

"We know that although the mothers of Tustin's autistic patients were all depressed, not all children of depressed mothers escape into autistic isolation. In children who are born with autism there may have been a deficit of this prenatal 'protomental filter' resulting in them being exposed even more helplessly to the osmotic pressure of the maternal emotional and mental state."

"The mother saturated every moment of possible reflective silence with an uninterrupted flow of words."

"It was, perhaps, my perception of Rosetta's liquid mental state, together with the paroxysmal quality of her panic, and her total inability to show me what I could do to hold her together, that made me think of the utter helplessness of the foetus when there is a threat of miscarriage. It is a matter of life and death, and there is nothing the foetus can do about it."

"... suggest that the discovery of her own powerful voice may have broken the circle and opened the way to freeing herself from the terror- stricken adhesive closeness to her mother and to feeling the emotion of existing as an individual."

"Kanner's metaphor of the 'refrigerator mothers' is met perfectly by Tustin's image of the 'frozen child'. Container and contained share an experience of coldness."