The Sixth International Conference on the work of Frances Tustin

On bringing patients to life

Abstract

Frances Tustin (1913-1994) was a British child psychotherapist who trained at the Tavistock Clinic in London and who was an analysand of Wilfred Bion. She is internationally recognised for her work with autistic children and wrote around thirty articles and four books: Autism and Childhood Psychosis (Tustin, 1972), Autistic States in Children (Tustin, 1981), Autistic Barriers in Neurotic Patients (Tustin, 1986), and The Protective Shell in Children and Adults (Tustin, 1990). In 1995, a year after Tustin’s death, the Frances Tustin Memorial Trust was established by Dr Judith Mitrani (see the Frances Tustin Memorial Trust, 2012). The Trust is dedicated to the teaching, expansion and extension of Frances Tustin’s work on the understanding and treatment of autistic spectrum disorders in children, adolescents and adults. This includes the sponsorship of international conferences on Tustin’s work, which have been held in London, UK (2004); Caen, France (2005); Venice, Italy (2006); Berlin, Germany (2007); Tel-Aviv, Israel (2008); and, this year in Sydney, Australia. This Sixth International Conference, entitled On Bringing Patients to Life, was organized by the Trust, in conjunction with the Australian Psychoanalytical Society, the New South Wales Institute of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, The Institute of Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, and the Couples and Family Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Association of Australasia.