Our living being, which depends from moment to moment on breathing, is essentially marked by language and this fact gives other dimensions to the act of breathing. In religions and in literature breathing has been accorded a status beyond its physiological essentiality. In Judaism and Christianity, smell and breath play an important role in portraying and making the distinction between heaven and hell and, more generally, between what is pleasant and what is unpleasant.

Breathing is living and claiming life. It is intimate: lovers breathe each other’s air. The language of breathing is sexualised, and yet it is associated with a higher being. Respiration and hence smell are woven into our descriptions of our lived experience to an extent that would often surprise us if pointed out – the words of our descriptions become ‘smelly’. From the bad breath of the devil to the sweet breath of a lover, our speaking being is marked by breathing.

Breath is associated with mortality (the power of life and birth/rebirth) and sexuality (inhaling magical air with fertilizing power) as well as the soul and joy of being in a human subject. Is the first breath not a claim of life? Can we not see the infant’s first breath as the first step to independence from the caregiver, away from the dependence implied by the other essential needs, such as food, touch, warmth.

On this occasion, we will be elaborating the most fundamental aspect of olfaction, which is breathing, through the lens of psychoanalysis. What does breathing really mean for our living being, which is both mortal and sexualised? How are we marked by the language of breathing and vice-versa, how is our breathing marked by the signifier.

Berjanet Jazani is a medical doctor, practising psychoanalyst and author in London. She is the president of the College of Psychoanalysts UK (CP -UK), chef editor of Analytic Agora (the journal of The Academy of Psychoanalysis), analyst member of the Centre for Freudian Analysis and Research (CFAR), and the author of 'Lacanian Psychoanalysis from Clinic to Culture',  'Lacan, Mortality, Life and Language: Clinical and Cultural Explorations'. Her upcoming books include: 'How Does Analysis Work?' & 'The Perfume of Soul from Freud to Lacan: A Critical Reading of Smelling, Breathing and Subjectivity'.

Suggested readings for this talk are the following:

Freud, S. (1915). Drives and Their Vicissitudes. pp. 109-141. In: J. Strachey, ed. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. XIV. London: Vintage, 2001

Jazani, B. (2021). Lacan, Mortality, Life and Language: Clinical and Cultural Explorations. London: Routledge

Jones, E. (1951). Essays In Applied Psychoanalysis, Vol II. London: Hogarth