Though autism is one of the best documented and validated childhood psychiatric syndromes, there remains an enormous chasm between theoretical understanding of autism and understanding of it in the practice of daily life. The book attempts to go some way towards bridging that gap. Put in the simplest of terms, people with autism find it difficult to deal with symbols. Since the whole of human society depends on symbols - language being the prime example, people with autism consequently live in a world that they barely understand and in which they have difficulty in making themselves understood. In common with visual or auditory impairments, the cause of autism is physical, biological and organic, and people with autism require specialist education and support matched to their particular difficulties. This book, aimed at the medical community and the teaching profession, introduces the medical background to autism and discusses current educational approaches to helping those diagnosed as autistic.