This is the first collection of papers published in this country which spans work with autistic children and autistic features in adults. The links between the two groups make for fascinating reading and go some way to explain the widespread interest in the enigma of autism. Many of the adult patients described are less ill than autistic children whose development has ground to a halt at an early age, but at the core of their difficulties can be found autistic features remarkably similar to those of the more floridly disturbed children. This leads several writers to conclude that autistic features are to be found in many adults, some would say in all of us. The insights contained in these papers open up access to deep levels of the human psyche and have far-reaching clinical implications.