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This paper tackles current debates on the treatment of autism spectrum disorders. Reviewing the historical aspects of the evolution of conceptions of the “impaired child,” it shows how the “atelier-classe [classroom-workshop]” approach, situated between cognition and subjectivation, is a framework capable of reproducing the inaugural situation of the entry into primordial alienation, but in a way that takes into account the child’s specific characteristics and cognitive deficits in responding to it. This is probably the strength of this approach, one that certainly seeks to develop cognitive skills, but also takes into account what psychoanalytical theory has to teach us about the emergence of the subject.