Introduction to the event Breathing and The Unconscious

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?