Breathing and The Unconscious

As a last meeting of the Reading group on Žižek’s Lacrimae Rerum on the “littoral” between psychoanalysis and cinema, the ERC project “FILM AND DEATH – Film-Philosophy as a Meditation on Death” invites Jamieson Webster for a lecture on “Breathing and the Unconscious”. The lecture will take place exclusively online on November 20th, at 5 PM (WET). To join the session via Zoom, use this link.

Abstract

Derrida famously said that philosophy always unites speech and breath making it pneumatological instead of grammatology — a whole world of privileging spirit over matter, trace, and writing. This question becomes more fascinating when looking at the history of psychoanalysis. Breuer, Fliess, Jung, Rank, Reich, and Ferenczi all touched on a question of breath, a moment that was identified by Freud as heretical, leading him to break violently from each of these figures. The choice was between breathing or Oedipus as the center of psychoanalytic work, between anxiety and symptom formation. What can breathing tell us about the unconscious and the talking cure?

Bio

Jamieson Webster is a psychoanalyst in New York City and a professor at The New School for Social Research. Her most recent book is Disorganization and Sex (Divided, 2022).