[Psychic discrepancies between animals and humans. A new light on the "autistic monad"]

Beyond obvious contrasts, cognitivist and psychoanalytical conceptions according to which austistic subjects suffer from cognitive deficiencies or from "lack of access to symbolic order", appear to meet at two points. First, they characterize autists by their lack rather than by their structure or modalities of psychological functioning. Secondly, the deficiencies they reveal--"lack of theory of mind", "absence of second order representation" or "failure of access to symbolic order"--bear witness of a particular kind of relationship the autists establish with members of their family are in relation. Comparisons between animal and human relationships allow us to specify their own characteristics: those which distinguish between "the attachment bond" (on a dyadic level) among animals and the "love bond" between humans (on a triadic level). Moreover, these comparisons allow us to specify the "autistic monad" or the kind of avoidance of all relationships autistic subjects show.