[Ethological methods exemplified by early childhood autism].

When humans are primarily impaired or overtaxed in their more elaborate abilities of coping with the social environment they seem to fall back on more primitive coping behaviours known from other mammals in severe conflict situations. This seems true for some behaviours in early childhood autism. Ethology has specialized in analyzing such non-verbal behaviour. Ethological motivation analysis, the study of context dependence and of the development of such behaviours in the individual patient should be exploited for their interpretation. Mere description of behaviour is not likely to contribute much. Psychiatric thinking on the interaction of genetic and environmental factors does not fully agree with ethological and biological views.