Darian Leader Psychotherapy CPD Online
CPD Credits
3
Event Type
Live Online Event
Location
Zoom & Recording
Time (UK)
2:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Standard
£80.00
Trainee/NHS
£68
Darian Leader Psychotherapy CPD Online
Saturday, October 3, 2026

Neurodiversity and Psychoanalysis

With Darian Leader & Zack Eleftheriadou (Chair)

This seminar will focus on the history and theory of psychoanalytic approaches to neurodiversity, with a special focus on autism. Freud worked with neurodiverse children for over a decade, and his publications on child neurology allude at times to some of the issues and questions that would become central to later debates. These focused first of all on the expression of emotion, and how atypical forms of expression could be misread by adults, creating cycles of misunderstanding and confusion. Although Freud did not devote later work to this question, clinicians would discuss autism from the 1930s onwards, and it became popularised as a diagnosis by Kanner in the early 1940s. Analysts were very active in formulating models of autism and suggestions for treatment, and their ideas are still topical today. They initially used Freudian ideas to think about work with autistic children, but would later follow different directions. The emphasis was less on interpreting than creating attunements, and a safe space where the child could follow and elaborate their interests, however idiosyncratic these might have seemed.

How are the early theories and therapies for autism helpful today? As well as offering a revised roadmap of technique, they bring into focus some of the key issues in the life of autistic subjects: presence and absence, containment, registering difference, the creation of bodily and psychical boundaries, sensory processing, and the use of distance to feel safe. All of these features of autism are easy to misread, and what looks like withdrawal or pathology may be simply a strategy for relatedness. Well-intentioned efforts to offer help may be felt as intrusions which generate their own kind of defences, and differences in sensory processing are also crucial to acknowledge here. Engaging with these issues can foster more sensitive clinical approaches to autism.

This seminar will include clinical examples and citations from the work of autistic individuals, as well as commentary on current debates about the apparent overdiagnosis of neurodiversity.

Programme

14.00 Introductions and Housekeeping

14.05 Autism in Psychoanalytic Thought: From Freud to Kanner

The first session sketches out the history of autism from Freud to Kanner, and the main questions in the subsequent debate: diagnosis, treatment and prognosis. How was autism to be diagnosed and what could treatment aim at? Freud's idea of a protective sensory barrier was important here, as was his discussion of how children register presence and absence. This was different from the neurotypical picture, as was the apparent absence of symbolic play and the focus on the sensory aspects of toys and repetitive habits and practices known as 'stims'. We discuss how Margaret Mahler and others formulated models of early autism, and how their notion of circular causality is still pertinent today, with both the infant and the parents' behaviour influencing each other in cycles where entrainments and attunements are desynchronised.

15.05 Q&A

15.20 Break

15.40 From Interpretation to Attunement: Rethinking Technique with Autistic Children

How did the early analytic researchers rethink therapy with autistic children? Innovations in technique are discussed and their rationale explained. Contemporary analytic approaches are compared with the earlier work, and commonalities and differences discussed. What impact does the age of the child have here? What kind of tools does the therapist need? And what outcomes might be expected or aimed at? Will there be significant technical differences between work with a child who has been diagnosed with autism in the first year of life and with one who seems to meet developmental milestones till three or four, and then seemingly 'regresses', losing language and affective contact with those around them? Are we dealing here with two different kinds of autism, and were early signs simply not picked up in these latter cases?

16.40 Q&A

17.00 End

Darian Leader

Darian Leader is a psychoanalyst working in London and a member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research and of The College of Psychoanalysts-UK. He is the author of several books including: 'Why do women write more letters than they post?'; 'Freud's Footnotes'; 'Stealing the Mona Lisa: What Art Stops Us From Seeing';  'The New Black: Mourning, Melancholia and Depression’, ‘What is Madness?' , ‘Strictly Bipolar’, 'Hands', ‘Why Can’t We Sleep? (2019), and 'Is It Ever Just Sex?' (2023).  His new book 'Autisms' is published by Penguin in September. He writes frequently about contemporary art . 

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