AimThis article examines the failure of the processes of access to intersubjectivity and to primary subjectivation in the treatment of young children presenting autism, and the consequences thereof for the development of parenthood. The psychotherapeutic nature of certain narrative and testimonial processes used during parent-child consultations appears as a critical element in the restarting of narrative identity and of the capacity for parental reverie. MethodsThe author first outlines a number of clinical and psychopathological features of the development of early mechanisms in young children. Clinical practice with childhood autism explores failures in the formation of pre-narrative envelopes and the failure to establish intersubjective psychical work, both of which are necessary for the emergence of the processes of primary subjectivation and for the formation of an intrapsychical world during the period of primitive psychical conflict. This clinical approach provides access to the early psychical mechanisms. Secondly, the author lists several elements with which to analyze the situation of parents confronted with their child's psychopathological disorder, which can in itself constitute a traumatic experience for parents. A therapist's diagnosis can cause a disruption of the parent's fantasies about his or her child, with the real of the diagnosis shutting down the imaginary work that is an integral part of parenthood, hence the traumatic nature of the announcement. Finally, the author examines ways of restarting “frozen” parental functions, through the use of therapeutic functions that allow for an elaboration of the trauma. ResultsThe underlying psychotherapeutic principle involves rehabilitating the early environment, an environment in which the encounter with the affective sphere initially failed to meet the child's needs for narcissistic cohesion. The therapist must support the maternal psyche's capacity for hosting, gathering an unsymbolized parental psychical experience in his or her own psyche in order to encourage its elaboration. DiscussionAll psychical growth depends upon an encounter with otherness, with intersubjectivity; and a failure in the interpersonal register can hinder the passage to the intrapsychical register. Childhood autism can be considered as a major failure of the processes leading to intersubjectivity, which, in turn, prevents the processes of subjectivation from taking hold. Confronted with the breakdown of the parent's projective identifications and of the conditions of making the child thinkable, the discussion focuses on restarting the processes of regressive identification that allow parents to maintain an active link with their own childish aspects. The author emphasizes the link between restoring the parents’ narrative function and restructuring the parent-child bond as a “story space”. ConclusionDysfunctional affect attunement – whether non-language-based (primary symbolization) or language-based (secondary symbolization) – and disruptions in the formation of pre-narrative envelopes affect the processes of access to subjectivity and to intersubjectivity. Childhood autism can be a traumatic experience that interrupts fantasy and the imaginary investments of parenthood. The imagined parent-child relationship can be damaged by the encounter with the real, which impacts both the capacity for maternal reverie and its associated narrative space. For parents whose narrative function has been “fractured”, the restarting of the processes of refiguration that allow for the passage from history to its narration has the power to restore the parental narrative space, transforming it into a site of reverie and play between parent and child. The testimonial function mobilized by the therapeutic process can thus enable a re-elaboration of the problems that affected the child and its early environment.