The Non-Understandable World of Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Therapist's Implicit Understanding and Subsequent Deepened Understanding1

Abstract

This paper examines the concept of non-understandable in psychotherapy, based on the author's own play therapy with a boy with mild ASD (autism spectrum disorder). ASD is considered to belong to an area beyond comprehension, as psychotherapy is often deemed ineffective for it. In this case too, the client's play shifted constantly, scattering sand on the floor, and was highly incomprehensible. However, by the therapist not merely pursuing differentiation or growth, but acknowledging the necessity of chaos and destruction and striving to meet the client at his level, he began to construct himself from a deeper level. Furthermore, the therapist's understanding at the time was that entering the client's world meant the therapist must also enter the realm of the dead where the client resided. More than 20 years later, after ASD became more widely recognized, it became clear that this therapy actually produced a “unity of unity and difference” (Jung/Giegerich, 1998, p.120). This understanding later aided the comprehension of ASD psychotherapy in supervision. Furthermore, the theme of female death and its redemption, present from the very first session of this therapy, was thought to have been realized through the therapist's dreams—an understanding that emerged over 40 years later.