Echolalia and music: the language in autism

Abstract

This work aims to approach echolalia in autism as a manifestation of resistance offered by the body of the child to sound loss, i.e., the implementation of the signifier, based on the psychoanalytic view according to which, in order to become a speaker, the child needs to lose / forget / repress the sound dimension of his or her voice, as well as to maintain sense, which, however, only occurs if that dimension remains in the subject as a signifier inscription. In this sense, we adopt the proposal that the sound dimension of the other's voice could imprison the child, constituting an obstacle to his or her linguistic trajectory, but at the same time, by means of this dimension, there would be a release from such an imprisonment. For the sake of illustration, discussions were made about some episodes containing utterances of a boy with a hypothetical diagnosis of autism. We assume, then, that musical expressions, such as songs, in the child with autism, could bring about a return of the musicality of the mother's voice, with its dimensions of continuity and discontinuity. On the other hand, such a return could perhaps provide some break in the sound continuity incorporated by this child, confronting resistance from his or her body to the implementation of the signifier.