Leon Brenner Freud's three paradigms of Psychosis

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Freud had never provided a fully comprehensive account of psychosis. However, several consistent perspectives of its elaboration can be traced in different papers along the progression of his work. In this talk, Leon Brenner will present three major perspectives through which the psychosis has been elaborated by Freud. The first, presented in his papers “The Neuro-Psychoses of Defense” (1894) and “Further Remarks on the Neurosis-Psychoses of Defense” (1896), describes psychosis as the outcome of the “rejection” of reality. The second, presented in his papers “Psycho-Analytic Notes of an Autobiographical Account of a Case of Paranoia” (1911), “On Narcissism: An Introduction” (1914), and “Repression” (1915), analyzes psychosis in the terms of Freud’s theory of the drive and libido. The third, presented in Freud’s papers “Neurosis and Psychosis” (1924) and “The Loss of Reality in Neurosis and Psychosis” (1924), adapts psychosis to Freud’s second topology.


Dr. Leon S. Brenner is a psychoanalytic theorist and psychological counselor from Berlin. 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 was published with the Palgrave Lacan Series in 2020. He is a founder of Lacanian Affinities Berlin and Unconscious Berlin and is currently a research fellow at the International Psychoanalytic University Berlin and the Hans Kilian und Lotte Köhler Centrum (KKC).