2019.09.04

DL_Lacanian psychoanalysis versus ABA method for the ASD treatment

The ABA (Applied Behaviour Analysis) method appears repeatedly when talking about autism. Under a banner of scientific rigour, procedures and behavioural techniques for reducing behaviours considered "inadequate" and adopting other behaviours and "appropriate" skills are applied.

What is the point of this methodology? The application of these techniques, isolating behaviour as an observable object, aims to "mold" according to a social statistical normality. And it is in that isolation of the conduct, of that cut with the source that generates subjectivity, that lies the fundamental difference from the point of view of Lacanian psychoanalysis.

While the ABA method assumes a deficit to make up, psychoanalysis presupposes a subject, a subjective position, the emergence of a desire. The ABA method aims to make social link standardized, achieve some items "normalized" such as greeting, thank, absence of stereotypies ...

For Lacanian psychoanalysis, however, treatment of people diagnosed with ASD, begins with a work from the subject, from the first symbolizations: symbolization of the image in the mirror, space, time, etc. And it is on this basis, on which is attached to the subject in the pursuit of his desire and then from it, accompanies him in building a social bond. The social bond therefore would in a second phase and hold on a previous working in symbolizations not in a conduct.

Thus, we see that from the behavioural perspective seek to apply the training methods close to cover the discomforts of behaviour "inappropriate" and generate behaviour standards; while from psychoanalysis these difficulties are taken with the other and the socialization without trying to eradicate them through behaviour but, in a way, certainly slower, on the assumption not of a deficit but of a subject capable of making social link, working for the emergence of a desire holding the existence.

Cristina Andrés

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