Cogprints

The Image of the Mother's Eye: Autism and Early Narcissistic Injury

McDowell, Maxson J. (2002) The Image of the Mother's Eye: Autism and Early Narcissistic Injury. [Journal (On-line/Unpaginated)] (Unpublished)

This is the latest version of this eprint.

Full text available as:

[img] HTML
63Kb

Abstract

Autism results from a pervasive cascade of developmental failure. Prevailing theory is that the primary deficit in autism (primary cause of the cascade) is a biological or genetic abnormality in the brain. This paper challenges that theory. Though a primary cause should be both necessary and sufficient, none of the biological or genetic factors which are statistically linked to autism is either necessary or sufficient to cause autism. Another objection derives from the logic of cascades. A cascade’s primary cause is the same in kind as the events which comprise the cascade. Autism is a cascade of psychological failures. The associated biological and genetic factors must, I argue, increase the incidence of a primary psychological deficit. I hypothesize: (1) The acquisition of the image of the mother’s eye is a critical very early step in development. Because the image symbolizes psychological containment, it is an essential element in the self-organization of the personality. (2) Failure to acquire (or retain) that image is the primary deficit in autism. I show that these hypotheses are consistent with Holland’s paradigm of self-organization in complex adaptive systems. The paper uses clinical data to illustrate the hypotheses. It then synthesizes evidence from experiments on infant vision, from Stern’s observations of infant-mother pairs, and from observations on the incidence of autism in infants with cranial nerve palsy, or congenital blindness, or severe early deprivation. To this it links evidence from studies of evolutionary changes in the primate eye and from experiments on the visual behavior of mildly autistic adults. Theories of a biological cause have been undermined by the recent dramatic increase (273% from 1987 to 1998) in the incidence of autism in California. This increase was recently (October 2002) confirmed by Robert Byrd and co-workers; previously it had been widely dismissed as an artifact of measurement. The increase cannot be explained by genetic factors. It is unlikely that the physical, chemical or biological environment in California deteriorated sufficiently in one decade to account for such a large increase. It is more likely that a change in social behavior (affecting a psychological factor) could be sufficiently rapid. Because of the significance to public health of the rapid increase in autism, there is likely to be a vigorous new effort to identify its cause(s). The problem should be debated across disciplinary lines. This paper is a timely contribution to that debate. If the primary deficit is psychological then, to some extent, research should be redirected towards exploring autism at the psychological level. Scientists may need to evaluate suggestions derived, for example, from psychoanalytic data. My paper attempts this difficult collaboration. It shows that the image-of-the-eye hypothesis leads to a testable prediction: that autism is statistically linked to the early use of daycare.

Item Type:Journal (On-line/Unpaginated)
Keywords:Autism, Narcissism, Image, Eye, Kohut, Stern, Primary deficit, Primary cause, Self-organization, Eye contact, Asperger's syndrome, Developmental cascade, Congenital blindness, Intersubjective, Theory of mind, Face recognition
Subjects:Psychology > Psychobiology
Psychology > Cognitive Psychology
Psychology > Clinical Psychology
ID Code:2593
Deposited By: McDowell, Doctor Maxson J.
Deposited On:23 Nov 2002
Last Modified:11 Mar 2011 08:55

Available Versions of this Item

References in Article

Select the SEEK icon to attempt to find the referenced article. If it does not appear to be in cogprints you will be forwarded to the paracite service. Poorly formated references will probably not work.

ARENS, R. (1954). Beitrage zur Entwicklung des Phsyiognomie und Mimikerkennens. Zeitchrift fur Experimentall e und Angewandte sychologie, 2: 412-54; 599-633.

ALS, H., TRONIC, E. & BRAZELTON, T. B. (1980). Stages of early behavioral organization: the study of a sighted infant and a blind infant in interaction with their mothers. In High-Risk Infants and Children, ed. T. M. Field. New York: Academic Press, pp. 181-204.

BARON-COHEN, S., WHEELWRIGHT, S. & JOLLIFFE, T. (1997). Is there a “language of the eyes”? Evidence from normal adults and adults with autism or Asperger syndrome. Visual Cognition, 4(3): 311-31.

BARON-COHEN, S. (1999). The extreme male-brain theory of autism. In Neurodevelopmental Disorders, ed. H. Tager-Flusberg. Cambridge: MIT Press, pp. 401-29.

BARON-COHEN, S., WHEELWRIGHT, S., HILL, J., RASTE, Y. & PLUMB, I. (2001). The “reading the mind in the eyes” test revised version: a study with normal adults, and adults with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism. J. Child Psychol. Psychiatry, 42(2): 241-51.

BARON-COHEN, S., WHEELWRIGHT, S., SKINNER, R., MARTIN, J., & CLUBLEY, E. (2001). The autism spectrum quotient (AQ): evidence from Asperger syndrome/high-functioning autism, males and females, scientists and mathematicians. J Autism Developmental Disorder, 31(1): 5-17.

BROWN, R., HOBSON, R. P., LEE, A & STEVENSON, J. (1997). Are there “autistic like” features in congenitally blind children? J. Child Psychol. Psychiat., 38(6): 693-703.

BYRD, R. (2002). Report to the legislature on the principle findings from “The epidemiology of autism in California: a comprehensive pilot study.”

CALIFORNIA DEPARTMENT OF DEVELOPMENTAL SERVICES (1999). Changes in the population of persons with autism and pervasive developmental disorders in California’s Developmental Services System: 1987 through 1998.

EASTERBROOK, M. A., KISILEVSKY, B. S., MUIR, D. W. & LAPLANTE, D. P. (1999). Newborns discriminate schematic faces from scrambled faces. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology, 53(3): 231-41.

ELMAN, J. L., BATES, E. A., JOHNSON, M. H., KARMILOFF-SMITH, A., PARISI, D. & PLUNKETT, K. (1998). Rethinking Innateness: A Connectionist Perspective on Development. Cambridge: MIT Press.

EMERY, N. J. (2000). The eyes have it: the neuroethology, function and evolution of social gaze. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, 24: 581-604.

FRAIBERG, S. (1977). Insights from the Blind: Comparative Studies of Blind and Sighted Infants. New York: Basic Books.

FREEDMAN, D. (1964). Smiling in infants and the issue of innate vs. acquired. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 5: 171-84.

GANS, C. & PARSONS, T. S. (1973). Biology of the Reptiles, vol. 4, Morphology D. London: Academic Press.

GRANDIN, T. (1996). Thinking in Pictures and other Reports from my Life with Autism. New York: Vintage.

GILLBERG, C. & WING, L. (1999). Autism: not an extremely rare disorder.

Acta Psychiatry. Scand., 99(6): 399-406.

GREEN, M. J. (1993). Celtic Myths. Austin: University of Texas Press.

HAAF, R. A. & BELL, R. Q. (1967). A facial dimension in visual discrimination by human infants. Child Development, 38: 892-9.

HAITH, M. M. (1966). The response of the human newborn to visual movement. J. Experimental Child Psychology, 3: 235-43.

HOBSON, R. P., LEE, A. & BROWN, R. (1999). Autism and congenital blindness. J. Autism and Developmental Disorders, 29(1): 45-56.

HOLLAND, J. (1998). Emergence from chaos to order. Reading, MA: Perseus.

JAFFE, J., BEEBE, B., FELDSTEIN, S., CROWN, C. L. & JASNOW, M. D., 2001.

Rhythms of dialogue in infancy: coordinated timing in development. Monogr. Soc. Res. Child Dev.,66(2): i-viii, 1-132.

JOHNSON, M. H.,DZIURAWIEC, S, ELLIS, H. & MORTON, J. (1991). Newborns’ preferential tracking of face-like stimuli and its subsequent decline. Cognition,40: 1-19.

KARMEL, B. Z., HOFFMANN, R. F. & FEGY, M. J. (1974). Processing of contour information by human infants evidenced by pattern-dependent evoked potentials. Child Development,45: 39-48.

KLIN, A., JONES, W., SCHULTZ, R., VOLKMAR, F., & COHEN, D. (2002). Visual fixation patterns during viewing of naturalistic social situations as predictors of social competence in individuals with autism. Archives of General Psychiatry, 59(9): 809-16.

KOHUT, H. (1971) The Analysis of the Self. Madison: International U. Press.

_____ 1978. The Search for the Self. Madison: International U. Press, Vol 1.

_____(1984). How Does Analysis Cure? Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

LORENZ, K. (1970). Studies in Animal and Human Behavior, trans. R. Martin, 1:245-246. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

MAESTRO, S., MURATORI, F., BARBIERI, F., CASELLA, C., CATTANEO, V., CAVALLARO, M. C., CESARI, A., MILONE, A., RIZZO, L., VIGLIONE, V., STERN, D. D. & PALACIO-ESPA SA, F. (2001). Early behavioral development in autistic children: the first 2 years of life through home movies. Psychopathology, 34(3): 147-52.

MCDOWELL, M. J.(2001). Principle of organization: a dynamic systems view of the archetype-as-such. J. Analytical Psychol., 46(4): 637-54.

(Also available online as ‘The three gorillas: an archetype organizes a dynamic system’ in Cogprints).

MICHAEL, C. R. (1969). Retinal processing of visual images. Scientific American, May: 104-15.

MORTON, J. & JOHNSON, M. H. (1991). Conspec and conlern: a two-process theory of infant face recognition. Psychological Review, 98(2): 164-81.

RAPIN, I. (1997). Autism. New England Journal of Medicine, 337(2): 97-104.

RODIER, P. M. (2000). The early origins of autism. Scientific American, February: 56-63.

RUTTER, M. L., KREPPNER, J. M. & O’CONNOR, T. G. (2001). Specificity and heterogeneity in children’s responses to profound institutional privation. British Journal of Psychiatry, 179: 97-103.

SALAPATEK, P. (1975). Pattern perception in early infancy. In Infant Perception: from Sensation to Cognition, I: Basic Visual Processes, eds. L. B. Cohen & P. Salapatek. New York: Academic Press, pp. 144-248.

SIGMAN, M. & CAPPS, L. (1997). Children with Autism: a Developmental Perspective. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, pp. 147-74.

SPITZ, R. A. & WOLF, K. M. (1946). The smiling response: a contribution to the ontogenesis of social relations. Genet. Psychol. Monogr., 34: 57-125.

STERN, D. N. (1977). The First Relationship. Cambridge: Harvard Univ. Press.

_____(1985). The Interpersonal World of the Infant. New York: Basic Books.

STERN, D. N., SANDER, L. W., NAHUM, J. P., HARRISON, A. M., HARRISON, LYONS-RUTH, K., MORGAN, A. C., BRUSCHWEILER-STERN, N. & TRONIC, E. Z. (1998). Non-interpretive methods in psychoanalytic therapy: the ‘something more’ than interpretation. Int. J. Psycho-Anal., 79: 903-31.

TREVARTHEN, C. & AITKEN, K. J. (2001). Infant intersubjectivity: research, theory, and clinical applications. J Child Psychol Psychiatry, 42(1): 3-48.

UNGERER, J. A. (1989). The early development of autistic children: implications for defining primary deficits. In Autism: Nature, Diagnosis and Treatment, ed. G. Dawson. New York: Guildford Press, pp. 75-91.

WIMPORY, D. C., HOBSON, R. P., WILLIAMS, J. M. G. & NASH, N. (2000). Are infants with autism socially engaged? A study of recent retrospective parental reports. Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders, 30(6): 525-36.

Metadata

Repository Staff Only: item control page

Cogprints is powered by EPrints 3 which is developed by the School of Electronics and Computer Science at the University of Southampton. More information and software credits.