Autistic Disturbances in Skin Containment

Esther Bick is known as a pioneer in the elaboration of the psychoanalytic concept of the skin. Bick theorizes that the “primal skin function” is fundamental in the early formation and integration of the human psyche and suggests that it should determine most interpretations of psychopathology. This article investigates the particular association of disturbances in the skin function with the onset of autism. A new approach to the skin function is put in motion using terms borrowed from the mathematical field of topology developed by Bernard Burgoyne. Through this interpretation, autism is postulated as originating in disturbances in a particular modality of the skin function that cause psychic representations to operate according to a mode of separation characterizing specific topological spaces. This mathematical perspective explains the complexity and diversity of autistic symptoms in terms of linguistic functionality. Finally, the skin is put forward as a modality of the Freudian drive (Trieb)—the dermic drive—and the hypothesis of the psychic foreclosure of its rim is offered as a defining characteristic of the autistic psychic structure.