The article gives proof of the opinion concerning an inadequacy of ABA therapy as a basic method of infantile autism correction. There is discussed the disparity in the behavioral methods to the aim of the child development. The emphasis is laid on the necessity of gaming lessons with preschool autistic children and of creating of special conditions for their conscious learning social and everyday skills.

The article describes disorders of different sides of psychical development in autism, which have been presented in the researches in the last 50 years. There are noted basal energy insufficiency, activity disorders and extraordinary sensitivity of autistic children to the environment al irritants. Disorders in the cognitive sphere and in the social development, regulatory dysfunctions in autism, their relations with basal deficiency are analysed in detail.

The article contains the important information which allows domestic specialists, using play in traditional for Russian special pedagogy forms of special correctional help for different categories of children with psychical development disorders, to compare them with the most significant approaches to playing therapy that have been developed in other traditions, such as: psychoanalytic, humanistic, and behavioral ones.