Individuation
The three phases of the Davis Autism Approach are:
- Individuation
- Identity Development
- Social Integration
Individuation is the first of these phases. It is the normal process that neurotypical children go through to become aware of themselves. This process is incomplete or missing in the autistic person. The programme uses a combination of focussing techniques and modelling to establish the concept of self.
Ronald Davis has described his own childhood experiences as follows:
Way before I started working with autism or had any understanding of it, I referred to myself as having come from a void. My sense of the void was not as existing as an individual, but as existing as both nothing and everything at the same time. There was no sense of being an individual, so there was no “me”. There was nothing to have a sense of identity. Without a “me”, there was no basis for memory or knowledge.
