“Listening to the Autistic Voice: Contemporary Psychoanalysis of Autism” Presented by Dr. Leon Brenner, Ph.D.

The voice of the mother (i.e. the caretaker) is the vehicle that introduces the infant to language from the very beginning. This voice compels infants to babble and express their instinctual needs using their own voice. However, the voice does not only introduce meaning into speech but also conveys the musicality of language: a nonsensical dimension of language that precedes sense-making. This dimension is at stake in psychoanalysis, a libidinal dimension that ties the body and language together.

In this talk we will discuss the unique autistic relationship with the voice. We will explore the psychoanalytic notion of the voice and its important role in establishing one’s enunciative position in a community of speakers. We will try and understand why many autistic children and adults establish a clear proficiency in using language but do not engage in its enunciation. In doing so, a contemporary psychoanalytic approach to autism will be presented.

-Establish an understanding of the intricacies of autism.
-Acquire a new perspective on autism, as a mode of being rather than a disorder.
-Engage with art and texts made by autistic people and discussing the ethic and politics of the movement
of Neurodiversity.
-Enable a facilitative approach that is sensitive to the uniqueness of autistic life.
-Recognize and utilize the strengths of a psycho-linguistic approach to the care for autistic children and
adults in a clinical, institutional and domestic setting.

Dr. Leon S. Brenner (Ph.D.) is a psychoanalytic theorist and psychological counsellor fromBerlin. Brenner’s work draws from the Freudian and Lacanian traditions of psychoanalysis, and his interest lies in the understanding of the relationship between culture and psychopathology. His book The Autistic Subject: On the Threshold of Language, is a bestseller in psychology in Palgrave/Springer publishing in 2021. He is a founder of Lacanian Affinities Berlin and Unconscious Berlin and is currently a research fellow at the International Psychoanalytic University (IPU) Berlin and the Hans Kilian und Lotte Köhler Centrum (KKC) at the Ruhr Universität Bochum.