The Skin Function

Join us for a talk on the skin in Lacanian psychoanalysis. 7th of August, 19:30 Berlin time.

Physical and psychological disturbances of the skin have been addressed in the past as a causal factor in the onset of various psychopathologies. In this talk, Leon Brenner will disclose a different take on the skin containment function. Instead of describing skin containment in figurative terms, a psychoanalytic theory of the will be presented in structural and linguistic terms. Drawing from Lacan, the discussion of the skin’s psychic function is transposed from the arena of ego construction to that of Freudian drive theory. Particularly, a theory of the dermic drive is presented: a particular drive that establishes a specific relationship between the subject and the Other. This relationship manifests in the use of signifiers in the spatial demarcation of the psyche. In support of this argument, examples from the clinic of psychosis and autism will be presented.

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, 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 Berlin and the Hans Kilian und Lotte Köhler Centrum (KKC) at the Ruhr Universität Bochum.