An in-person and digital workshop with Leon S. Brenner
Time: NEW DATE!! Friday 23rd of May 2025 – from 10:30 AM to 4:30 PM
Place: Institute for Psychotherapy, Gjerdrums vei 19, 1. etg. Oslo, Norway
Registration to: sekr@instpsyk.no within the 16th of May 2025
Fee: 300 euro / 3500 NOK.
Workshop Overview:
This workshop will offer a deep dive into the psychoanalytic understanding of autism, examining its history in psychoanalysis, its development in Lacanian theory, and its place within the broader context of neurodiversity. The discussions will center around key insights from Dr. Leon S. Brenner’s work, The Autistic Subject: On the Threshold of Language (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). Through an examination of language, empathy, and transference, participants will explore how psychoanalysis offers a fresh perspective on autism, moving beyond cognitive and identitarian approaches.
The workshop will emphasize practical aspects of therapeutic work with autistic individuals, particularly Lacan’s challenge to find ways to work with autistic patients, and the specific mode of listening that psychoanalysis offers.
Workshop Program:
10:30 – 12:00:
Session 1: Autism in Psychoanalysis – Between Psychosis and Language
• Historical review of autism within psychoanalysis.
• Transition from the “cold mother” theory to Lacanian engagement with the (m)Other’s tongue.
• Introduction to autism as a distinct subjective structure in Lacanian theory.
• Positioning autism alongside Freud’s classical structures of psychosis, neurosis, and perversion.
12:00 – 13:00:
Lunch Break
13:00 – 14:30:
Session 2: Autistic Language – Signs, Signifiers, and Concepts
• Exploration of autistic language through a psychoanalytic lens.
• Challenging the lack of empathy hypothesis with an emphasis on language use.
• Investigating how autistic individuals engage with signs and signifiers.
• Introduction to Dr. Brenner’s psychoanalytic framework of autistic symptomatology.
14:30 – 15:00:
Coffee Break
15:00 – 16:30:
Session 3: Modalities of Transference in Work with Autistic Patients
• Exploration of the psychoanalytic approach to transference in autism.
• The role of specialized listening in clinical practice with autistic individuals.
• Practical examples of therapeutic engagement with autistic patients.
This workshop is designed for psychotherapists, psychoanalysts, and clinicians interested in deepening their understanding of autism through a psychoanalytic framework. Participants will leave with enriched insights into the unique subjectivity of autistic individuals and the nuances of engaging with them therapeutically.
Dr. Leon S. Brenner (Ph.D.) is a psychoanalyst and psychoanalytic theorist based in Berlin, specializing in the intersection of culture and psychopathology within the Freudian and Lacanian traditions. His research spans psychoanalytic theory, subjectivity, mental health—including autism and depression—and philosophical inquiries into knowledge and identity. Brenner is the author of the bestselling book The Autistic Subject: On the Threshold of Language (Palgrave/Springer, 2021 and 2023), which offers a Lacanian perspective on autism. He is also the founder of Lacanian Affinities Berlin (laLAB) and Unconscious Berlin, organizations that foster psychoanalytic thought and practice.