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cover of episode Jamieson Webster, "On Breathing: Care in a Time of Catastrophe" (Catapult, 2025)

Jamieson Webster, "On Breathing: Care in a Time of Catastrophe" (Catapult, 2025)

2025/2/20
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Jamieson Webster
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Jamieson Webster: 我写作这本书的动机，源于疫情期间撰写的关于呼吸的思考，以及为人母后对婴儿呼吸的全新理解。从婴儿时期第一次呼吸到成年后，我们对呼吸的意识在逐渐减弱，这本身就是一个值得探讨的“失忆”的现象。这本书的写作过程远超出了我对疫情期间呼吸问题的最初思考，它带我探索了更多关于呼吸的层面，包括呼吸在早期生命中的重要性、呼吸与驱动力的关系、以及呼吸在不同文化和精神传统中的意义。我试图探讨的是在灾难和混沌中如何呼吸，以及语言在其中的作用。我们每个人都必须建立自己独特的呼吸方式，这与我们的性、语言和整体生活经验息息相关。在与焦虑的斗争中，单纯依靠呼吸技巧来缓解焦虑是不够的，我们需要从社会层面去解决焦虑的根源。早期生活中缺乏关爱和接纳感，会对个体的生理和心理健康造成长远的影响。呼吸、性以及语言，都涉及到与“外来元素”的互动，这构成了我们生命体验的核心部分。我计划接下来创作一个日记体作品，以碎片化的形式记录我的生活体验。 Helena Vissing: COVID-19 疫情的普遍性揭示了我们对灾难的应对机制的局限性，以及我们对个人主义的幻想。将空气视为一个需要被保护的对象，而不是理所当然的背景，这促使我们重新审视人类与环境的关系。我们倾向于将普遍存在的危机归咎于个人，而不是去审视其背后的社会结构性问题。将自由视为个人的特权是自私的，忽视了我们对他人和环境的依赖。承认失去与否认失去的呼吸方式之间的区别，是理解人类心理的关键。赖希的理论虽然有其局限性，但他对呼吸的关注为我们理解身心关系提供了新的视角。将呼吸与言语联系起来，有助于我们理解为什么人们容易将呼吸神圣化，以及这种神圣化可能导致的误区。焦虑是一个社会问题，需要从社会层面去解决，而不能仅仅依靠个体自身努力。心理分析是一种需要双方共同参与的治疗过程，它帮助个体与自身的身心体验建立联系。

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Jamieson Webster discusses the inspiration behind her book, "On Breathing," exploring the significance of breath in various life stages, from birth to adulthood. She highlights the psychoanalytic perspective on breath as a key aspect of early life that later becomes largely unconscious.
  • The author's personal experiences, including childbirth, influenced her exploration of the topic.
  • Psychoanalytic perspective on the disappearance of breath awareness from our consciousness.
  • The absence of early life breath experiences from mainstream wellness and meditative practices.

Shownotes Transcript

A few moments after birth we begin to use our lungs for the first time. From then on, we must continue breathing for as long as we are alive. And although this mostly happens unconsciously, in a society plagued by anxiety, climate change, environmental racism, and illness, there are more and more instances that “teach us about the privilege that is breathing.” Why do we so easily forget the air that we breathe in common? What does it mean to breathe when the environment that sustains life now threatens it? And how can life continue to flourish under conditions that are increasingly toxic? 

To approach these questions, Jamieson Webster draws on psychoanalytic theory and reflects on her own experiences as an asthmatic teenager, a deep-sea diver, a palliative psychologist during COVID, a psychoanalyst attentive to the somatic, and a new mother. The result is a compassionate and timely exploration of air and breathing as a way to undo the pervasive myth of the individual by considering our dependence on invisible systems, on one another, and the way we have violently neglected this important aspect of life.

Jamieson Webster is a psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City and faculty at The New School for Social Research. She is the author, most recently, of On Breathing (Peninusula Press, UK; Catapult, US), as well as, Conversion Disorder: Listening to the Body in Psychoanalysis (Columbia, 2018) and, with Simon Critchley, Stay, Illusion! The Hamlet Doctrine (Vintage Random House, 2013). She has written regularly for Artforum, The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, as well as, many psychoanalytic publications.

Helena Vissing), PsyD, SEP, PMH-C is a Licensed Psychologist practicing in California and Associate Professor in the Somatic Psychology program at California Institute of Integral Studies). She can be reached at [email protected]). She is the author of Somatic Maternal Healing: Psychodynamic and Somatic Treatment of Trauma in the Perinatal Period) (Routledge, 2023).

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