This ticket is for IN-HOUSE access to this event. Doors open at 6:30pm.
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As part of our programme of events to celebrate our exhibition ‘Women & Freud: Patients, Pioneers, Artists‘, join us at the Freud Museum for a dialogue between psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster and scholar Lili Owen Rowlands as they discuss the ambivalent position of mothers in culture. In Webster’s recent book, On Breathing, she uncovers a whole history of disavowed thoughts on breath, especially in psychoanalytic speculations on birth trauma, ones that radically neglects the experience of mothers and center them as a site of regressive desire, trauma, and the efflorescence of anxiety. Why is this terrain so fraught, or, to follow Jacqueline Rose, why is motherhood “the place in our culture where we lodge, or rather bury, the reality of our own conflicts”? In this conversation Webster and Rowlands will consider the ways in which femininity and maternity pull against one another, as well as the ambivalence directed towards mothers in psychoanalysis, feminism, and literature.
In addition to the discussion, you will also have the opportunity to see our exhibition outside of visiting hours, as well as enjoy a complimentary glass of wine.
Please click here if you would like to purchase an online ticket.
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Speakers:
Jamieson Webster is a psychoanalyst in New York City. She is the author of On Breathing (Peninsula, 2025), Disorganisation & Sex (Divided, 2022), and Conversion Disorder (Columbia University Press, 2018); she also co-wrote, with Simon Critchley, The Hamlet Doctrine (Verso, 2013). She contributes regularly to Artforum, The New York Times and the New York Review of Books.
Lili Owen Rowlands is a Leverhulme Early Career Research Fellow in French and Sexuality Studies at Royal Holloway, University of London. She is working on her first book, Self-centred: Sexual Dissidence and Self-theorizing in Contemporary France and is co-editor of Rage: Affect and Resistance in French and Francophone Culture and Thought (Peter Lang, 2024). She writes regularly for the London Review of Books and the New Yorker.
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Tickets: £25
Freud Museum Members and Patrons receive 20% off the standard ticket price on all events, courses, conferences and On Demand programming.
A limited number of £10 bursary tickets are available for those under financial hardship. Priority will be given to UK unemployed and PIP/ESA claimants. Please email [email protected] to apply for a bursary.
The purpose of this event is to raise funds for the Freud Museum London, which receives no regular Government income. We are grateful to you for supporting our independent museum as generously as possible.
The event will be held on the first floor of the Museum during regular opening hours. Unfortunately the Freud Museum does not have step-free access at this time. Advance booking is highly recommended as capacity is limited.
Buy the Book
On Breathing – by Jamieson Webster is available for pre-order at a special launch price here.
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