Farewell, Diagnosis examines the material urgencies of autism diagnosis alongside the conceptual and clinical problems that diagnosis can produce. Taking psychoanalysis as both a method and object of critique, Benjamin Morsa interrogates what happens when a discipline defined by curiosity, uncertainty, and attention to psychic life encounters autism. Morsa’s clinical experience includes both psychoanalysis and psychological assessment and it was through this experience that he encountered a paradox at the heart of neurodiversity: a framework whose critique of diagnosis was necessary, and which now requires a critique of its own dead angles.

About the author:

Ben Morsa is a licensed clinical psychologist trained in psychoanalysis and psychological assessment, and the founder of Tide Pools, a group psychology practice in Oakland, California. He has spent nearly fifteen years working at the intersection of psychoanalysis, psychological assessment, and the clinical care of neurodivergent, queer, and transgender patients. His work has been shaped by the persistent questions: what does assessment owe the person receiving it; and what comes after diagnosis? His debut book, Farewell Diagnosis: Diffracting Psychoanalysis, Autism, and Assessment (Bloomsbury, 2026) pursues those questions across psychoanalytic theory, feminist science studies, and the lived reality of clinical practice.