Willem de Kooning, The Wave. 1942-44
Workshop on Child Analysis
The Autistic Signature — Isabelle Orrado and Jean-Michel Vives
Saturday, June 7, 2025
10:00 AM – 2:00 PM (ET)
Autistic subjects live in the grip of the real, facing an invasive jouissance and a threatening Other not yet symbolized. Yet in their bricolage, or tinkering, they devise a way to relate to that real, a singular style for inscribing themselves in the world. If Freud conceived psychotic delusion as an attempt at healing, or the neurotic symptom as a compromise formation, we can identify in the autistic difference a solution found by the subject. Clinical examples will be discussed, and we will learn to read this subject’s signature, strange as it may appear.
Suggested readings: Lacan: Seminar XXIII, 1975-6, The Sinthome . Maleval, J.-C.: L’autiste et sa voix (Paris: Seuil, 2009); La différence autistique (Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, 2021). Laurent, É.: La bataille de l'autisme: De la clinique à la politique (Paris : Navarin, 2012). Orrado, I. and J-M Vives: Autisme et médiation: Bricoler une solution pour chacun (Paris: Arkhê, 2020).
Location: In-person in NYC and online via Zoom.
Fee: $40. For students with ID: $20. Registration details to follow.
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Isabelle Orrado practices psychoanalysis in Nice, France. A doctor of psychology, she teaches at Université Côte d’Azur. She has treated young autistic subjects in a children’s hospital and is co-author with Jean-Michel Vives of Autisme et médiation: Bricoler une solution pour chacun. She is a member of the École de la Cause freudienne and of AMP (Association Mondiale de Psychanalyse).
Jean-Michel Vives is a professor of clinical psychopathology at Université Nice, Sophia Antipolis and practices psychoanalysis in Toulon, France. He is the author of many essays on the invocatory drives, autism, music therapy, and clinical approaches to psychosis, and his books include La voix sur le divan and La médiation par le théâtre: Freud et Dionysos sur la scène thérapeutique . He has also directed several theater and opera performances.