Élever la bizarrerie à la dignité du style. Pour une éthique de l’accompagnement des patients autistes

Objectives

This article aims to identify how the analytical framework can lead an autistic subject to create an artisanal solution that allows him to enter the world.

Method

The Lacanian theoretical conceptualization is based on clinical observations collected during the treatment of a young autistic boy.

Results

We argue that engaging in therapeutic work with an autistic patient can offer him a potential environment – which we distinguish from potential space – in which his particular quirks can be elevated to the dignity of a style that the autistic child will himself shape and that will allow him a certain social bond.

Discussion

We qualify the therapeutic space offered by the analytical framework as a potential environment, which we define as the coordinates of the encounter set up by the clinician bringing into existence a Stimmung from which the child can experience his or her instinctual movements. Stimmung is to be understood as the phenomenological quality of the potential environment, simultaneously including tuning, invocative address, disposition, and atmosphere, i.e. a possible relationship with the Other. Clinical intervention would allow the child not to represent himself in this potential environment – which is the nature of potential space –, but to present himself to the world. It is the clinician's responsibility to bring into existence an Other who can isolate and put into circulation the subject's oddity – which could be considered a failure – bringing forth a singularizing sign and elevating it to the dignity of style that the autistic child will shape.

Conclusion

The style, thus obtained, corresponds to the possibility of a singular enunciative position – inscribing a presence in the world by tempering the weight of the subject –, which, in autism, always requires a certain amount of tinkering in order to arrive at a solution.