The Autism Psychodynamic Evaluation of Changes (APEC) scale: a reliability and validity study on a newly developed standardized psychodynamic assessment for youth with Pervasive Developmental Disorders.

The present study was designed to examine the reliability and validity of the Autism Psychodynamic Evaluation of Changes (APEC) scale, developed to assess the evolution in individuals with autism under treatment. The APEC scale focuses on the key role of impairment in body image construction, which requires cross-modal sensory integration through emotional communication with motor representations. Thus, the body image construction is associated simultaneously with spatial and temporal organization and allows the emergence of self- and others-representations.

Psychodynamic assessment of changes in children with autism under psychoanalytic treatment.

In this article the authors report insights into autism developed through their extensive experience of psychoanalytic therapy with children with autism. The first stages of body psychic development are seriously disrupted by this pathology, resulting in primitive anxieties of falling and of being liquefied. These anxieties are connected to the fragile development of body ego and of its related spatiotemporal organisation.