Abstract By means of a written questionnaire sent to 37 parent-couples and interviews with 14 parents, 4 health care workers and 4 male autistic persons an effort was made to obtain insight into the sexual development of autistic persons between the ages of 12 and 30 and the consequences of this development for all parties involved. Many sexual and related problems were reported as a consequence of the disturbed social fimctioning of the autistic persons, the language and speech disorders and abnormal rigidity ("anxious desire for sameness"). The main problems were: socially unacceptable sexual behaviour (for example masturbation in public), obsessive preoccupation with sex, not being able to have intimate relationships, sexual abuse of autistic persons by others, difficulty in realising sex education and the painful awareness as reported by the non-retarded autistic persons of being different from their peers.
Son-Schoones et al. (Mon,) studied this question.