54th ATPPP Scientific Session

On Breathing and Psychoanalysis

Presenter: Jamieson Webster

Discussant: Lindsay Barton

Saturday, April 1, 2023: 10:00 am to 12:00 pm

Cost: $100

Open to all by registration.

** DISTANCE PARTICIPATION ONLY – This event will be conducted online.

Preregistration is required.
Registration deadline: March 20, 2023

Political struggle seems to break out every time psychoanalysis tries to tackle the question of breathing. Freud, Ferenczi, and Otto Rank fought amongst themselves around the question of birth trauma and the origins of anxiety (which is at the core of breathing issues) which led to the invention of the death drive, arguably the most divisive concept in psychoanalysis. Lacan and Reik were two analysts who both spoke about breathing, and both were the only two Freudians to be expelled from the International Psychoanalytic Association. In this talk we will look at what the psychoanalysis of breathing—in newborn infants, asthmatic children, autistic objects, and adult panic attacks—can tell us about this contentious ground.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of the session participants will be able to:

1. Understand the history of breathing as a theoretical and clinical concept.
2. Think about the politics of breathing in psychoanalysis and the contemporary clinical moment.
3. Think about the relevance of breathing for thinking about anxiety and sexual conflicts.

Jamieson Webster

Jamieson Webster is a psychoanalyst in New York City. She teaches at the New School for Social Research and supervises doctoral students in clinical psychology at the City University of New York, and is a member of the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research. She is the author of The Life and Death of Psychoanalysis (Routledge, 2011), Stay, Illusion! with Simon Critchley (Vintage, 2013), Conversion Disorder (Columbia University Press, 2018), and Disorganisation and Sex (Divided, 2022). She writes regularly for Artforum, The New York Review of Books, The New York Times and Spike Art Quarterly.

Lindsay Barton

Lindsay Barton is a Member of the Toronto Psychoanalytic Society and a Psychoanalyst.

She is a Registered Psychotherapist and Faculty at the Toronto Institute of Psychoanalysis, TPS&I Extension Programs, Advanced Training Program in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy, FundamentalPsychoanalytic Perspectives Program, the Canadian Institute for Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and the University of Guelph Humber in the Early Childhood Studies department.

Her practice includes Infant- Parent work as well as individual work with Children, Adolescents, and Adults. She is a CRPO supervisor as well.