Leon Brenner : Navigating Transference in Psychosis

Leon Brenner will be speaking on "Navigating Transference in Psychosis"

Abstract:

This lecture explores how to navigate transference in cases of psychosis. It approaches psychotic transference not as a deficient version of neurotic transference, but as a distinct clinical configuration with its own logic, risks, and clinical demands. From a Freudian and Lacanian perspective, transference in psychosis is marked by a particular certainty and a fragile relation to the Other, which can easily destabilize analytic work if the analyst’s position is not handled with care.

The lecture shifts the focus away from interpretation and insight toward the analyst’s positioning within the transference. It outlines practical coordinates for sustaining analytic work without intensifying invasive or overwhelming relational dynamics. These include avoiding the position of the loving or enjoying Other, maintaining a stance of not-knowing, limiting interpretive authority, introducing forms of triangulation, pluralizing sites of care, and supporting pragmatic inventions that allow the subject to manage intrusive experiences.

Transference in psychosis is presented as a balance between two risks: excessive attachment and disengagement. When handled with restraint and precision, it can function as a workable space in which the subject externalizes and negotiates what would otherwise appear as a direct intrusion of the Other. The lecture offers a clinically grounded framework for maintaining this balance and for keeping analytic work possible in situations where it is often assumed to fail.

Bio:

Leon S. Brenner, Ph.D., is a psychoanalytic practitioner, lecturer, and researcher working within the Freudian and Lacanian traditions. He teaches at the Psychoanalytic University of Berlin (IPU) and has published extensively on autism, psychosis, embodiment, and the limits of contemporary diagnostic frameworks. His work focuses on language, transference, and the clinical and epistemic questions raised by non-neurotic structures, with particular attention to autism and psychosis as sites where standard analytic assumptions break down. He works in private practice in Berlin and regularly lectures internationally on psychoanalysis, critical theory, and clinical practice.

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This is an in-person event only.

It will be recorded, but the price of a ticket does NOT include a recording.

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NO REFUNDS AVAILABLE