[West's syndrome and/or early autistic manifestations]

The authors report observing three children showing symptoms both of West's syndrome and autism. For them, the relational aspect was highlighted during hospitalization on an out-patient basis in a child psychiatry center instead of taking medication (for one of the children, no medication for epilepsy was taken; for the other two, medication was stopped shortly after, during their stay in the hospital). The positive outcome for these children (after four years for one of them) leads to the following question: Mightn't hypsarrhythmia be an early sign of relational problems, a symptom seen in child autism? The authors try to show that this is possible, placing more importance on the sick person than on his symptoms, and concentrating more on listening both to the parents and their suffering child.