#Jamieson Webster

[loneberry]

For a certain kind of person — the person who, usually, strives to be a responsible parent, a sensitive friend, an upright citizen, a person who tries to care about their community — it can be impossible not to succumb to the incessant urge to mimic someone else’s supposed balance and feeling of wellness in life. What do we even know about them really?

I’m increasingly seeing this in my work as a therapist in New York City. So are my colleagues. One said to me recently that he was tired of listening to his patients talk about the impossible advice inhaled on Instagram and TikTok — to say nothing of the self-help industry. “Doesn’t anyone come asking to be more free?” he exclaimed. “They don’t,” I said pessimistically. “Everyone wants to make the right decisions.” The problem is it’s very hard to tell someone that pursuing the abstract question of “right and wrong” ways to live will lead you into a cul-de-sac. It avoids the deeper question of desire, and desire is a compass.

The promised image of goodness skirts pleasures that — for obscure reasons — you aren’t sure you can want. I see patients grow fearful when they can’t tell if what they desire is compulsive — just another rote, maybe addictive, behavior, or a real attempt to test the boundaries they live under. How do you locate free will in a world this compulsory? Unsettling desires challenge our perception of who we are and what life might look like. ...

My patients have spent time on the couch struggling with the joys and pains that come with their wish to take drugs, not to expand consciousness but just because; quit their job, not to re-evaluate life but simply to stop working (along with the bonus pleasure of thumbing their nose at their employers); or give in to an irksome captivation with the wrong person at the absolutely wrong time. ...

These pursuits certainly aren’t what you ought to do — much less post about — and yet I find that it’s when we dwell on our secret enjoyments that we learn the most about ourselves. Sexual and aggressive feelings, veering self-destructive, are finally confronted without the veneer of rationalization.

--Jamieson Webster, "I Don’t Need to Be a ‘Good Person.’ Neither Do You."

[dk-thrive]

What I found, after much work in analysis, is that there is no justification possible, no matter how hard I tried to find it. I want what I want because I want it.

There is no end of advice these days on how to be a good person, how to make good decisions, how to be mindful and compassionate, how to have boundaries, how to be open, how to be assertive, how not to be self-effacing, how to be politically invested, how to live in the now, how to live in a world that demands immediacy, how to think about the future, how not to think too much about the future, how not to think. For a certain kind of person — the person who, usually, strives to be a responsible parent, a sensitive friend, an upright citizen, a person who tries to care about their community — it can be impossible not to succumb to the incessant urge to mimic someone else’s supposed balance and feeling of wellness in life. What do we even know about them really? [...]

Listening to patients, it feels to me like we’ve reached a real pitch of delirium regarding generalized advice, prescriptions, moral codes for behavior and images of some supposedly achievable balance. This infinite pedagogical universe was recently, and aptly, named the shame-industrial complex; poured out from every angle of life on social media, pushed by algorithms. In this vertigo we’ve forgotten that no one knows, or has ever known, what it really means to be an adult. Also that pleasure is hard-won, small, ephemeral; singular to each person. Wishes are historically overdetermined — meaning it really is your pleasure, and your pleasure only...

What I found, after much work in analysis, is that there is no justification possible, no matter how hard I tried to find it. I want what I want because I want it. You have to live with your choices which are more-or-less inexplicable to others...

We are contradictory creatures, wondrously and terrifyingly so.

— Jamieson Webster, from "I Don’t Need to Be a ‘Good Person.’ Neither Do You." (The New York Times · August 25, 2023)

[power-chords]

Hegel asserts that in the portrayal of individual characters Shakespeare stands "at an almost unapproachable height," making his creations "free artists of their own selves." As such, Shakespeare's tragic characters are "real, directly living, extremely varied" and possessing "a sublimity and striking power of expression." Yet – and here comes the dialectical underside of this claim – creatures like Hamlet lack any resolution and capacity for decision. They are dithering figures in the grip of a "two-fold passion which drives them from one decision or one deed to another simultaneously." In other words, as in Schmitt, they are Hamletized, vacillating characters inwardly divided against themselves. Upheld only by the force of their conflicted subjectivity, characters like Hamlet or Lear either plunge blindly onward or allow themselves to be lured to their avenging deed by external circumstances, led along, that is, by contingency.

In the vast sweep of an ancient dramatic trilogy, like the Orestia, what is at stake in the agon, or dramatic conflict, is eternal justice shaped by the power of fate, which saves the subject of the ethical life of the city against individuals, like Orestes and Clytemnestra, who were becoming too independent and colliding violently with each other. Hegel insists, and we think he is right, that if a similar justice appears in modern tragedy, then it is more like criminal justice, where – as with Macbeth or with Lear's daughters – a wrong has been committed and the protagonists deserve the nasty demise that's coming to them. Tragic denouement in Shakespearean tragedy is not the rigorous working out of fate, but "purely the effect of unfortunate circumstances and external accidents which might have turned out otherwise and produced a happy ending." Hegel enjoyed a happy ending, as we shall see presently, but the point is that the modern individual must endure the contingency and fragility of "all that is mundane and must endure the fate of finitude."

Here Hegel's remarks on Hamlet begin to cut much deeper – the problem is that we cannot bear this contingency. Hegel argues that:

We feel a pressing demand for a necessary correspondence between the external circumstances and what the inner nature of those fine characters really is.

Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster, The Hamlet Doctrine, 2013.

[endlessandrea]

Interview with Jamieson Webster

Aristotelis: In one of your essays in Disorganisation and Sex you talk about repression as a necessary condition for the opening up of desire. Some of the sexual liberationists of the sixties and seventies wanted to end repression altogether. What did Wilhelm Reich get wrong about sex?

Jamieson: I'm not a Reichian. I mean, look what happened to him: In the end of his life he became paranoid and he tried to control the weather with his masturbatory practices! No, repression is not the enemy. It forces reading and it forces dialogue and it forces creation and it forces something to iterate itself constantly. A wish that you hear sometimes in patients is something like “can’t I just be liberated?” I don't know what a fully open subject is. That doesn't make any sense to me. “In what ways am I and in what ways aren't I and what do I actually like inside of this?”: This is the more interesting question.

We often think of repression as imposed by some oppressive person or group. I’m not a fan of this model. I prefer to think about it as a historical transhistorical force that takes up different guises at different times. Sexual liberation, I’m sorry, was one of these guises. It became something pretty repressive at a certain point, it became its own moral worldview.

One thing my colleagues and I said in a reading group, though, is that we find it alarming how patients more and more rarely come and say “I'd like to be more free”. I don't find patients asking this of me anymore. Instead I find them asking me to tell them what to do. I find them very anxious about their futures, about what's right and what's wrong, or what they can do that the other people do or don't do. It makes me want to go on the side of liberation! Because I don't know what's happening right now and there's not even room to ask this.

[dearorpheus]

it's almost Halloween season* it's also almost Emily Wilson Iliad time (two days to release!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and also this releases two days later:

ALSO Bell Shakespeare (Sydney theatre company) have announced a production "exploring the poetry of violence [across Macbeth, Much Ado About Nothing, Romeo and Juliet, Richard III] with relish and delight"... + Louise Bourgeois exhibit at AGNSW** opening in two months...

*The National Archives are hosting a (free) webinar delving into spooky archival footage !!

**a publication accompanying the exhibition 'features contributions by filmmaker Jane Campion, author Chris Kraus, psychoanalyst Jamieson Webster and curator Justin Paton, and writings by the artist selected by curator Philip Larratt-Smith' shut the fuck

[horsesource]

“Having a child gives rise to a raw, naked fear of the contingency of conceiving, of who the child will grow up to be, of the world it is born into. It is equal perhaps only to the death of a loved one. [..] I accompanied my father in his decision to end his medical treatments, and swiftly—too swiftly for me—depart from this life three months ago. [..] What did he know in those last hours? I could have nurtured all kinds of illusions: that it was terrible and he should have been forced to live, that it was courageous and exactly what he wanted, that he felt serenity and acceptance, or that he felt inordinate pain and regret. The problem is, I don’t know; I have to live with the choice he was able to make at the time he had to make it.

The sound of his death rattle is unforgettable, as unforgettable as the feeling of my children moving inside me for the first time, and as unforgettable as the sound of the machine used to give me an abortion. This is life.

And it is so far from where we generally live, inside our minds, thinking, in a muddle of feelings, fantasies, and memories, being with others, and getting away from them. [Freud] says that for humans, life and death are an uncanny, unthinkable excess, something we tend to screen out and don’t really know how to manage, no less encounter—except perhaps in our dreams and in those difficult experiences that shatter us.” 

“A Child Is Being Aborted”, Jamieson Webster 

[sandpebblesband]

A dynamic trip through Sand Pebbles album art extravaganza!

#4: Atlantis Regrets Nothing, released on Sensory Projects, 2006

What a photo. Taken by artist Ambyr Wood at the Rob Roy Hotel, Fitzroy (now the Workers Club), where we had a residency. Inspired by the pics taken by Astrid Kirchherr, Gered Mankowitz, Joel Brodsky, Robert Whittaker, Guy Webster etc. Close up and shadowy. Murray Ono Jamieson taking on the Brian Jones role.

The neon font comes from an Electric Flag record I had called An American Music Band. I wish we had tripled the effect as they did.

The alt wet baby cover comes from award-winning political cartoonist for The Age, Megan Herbert.

This is the first album artwork put together by Dan Milne, who has subsequently overseen each of our releases – a phenomenal contribution.

[joyffree]

🧐 This Week’s Spotlight Reads & Book Recommendations

➱ The Heart of Smoke a Dark Age Gap MM Romance by Author K Webster He’s a mysterious recluse with an unhealthy obsession with his therapist. He doesn’t want help… He just wants him.

➱ Game On Vancouver Orcas, #3 a MM Hockey Romance by Amy Aislin Hotshot hockey player Jamie Jamieson swore he’d never get involved with anyone at work — but his new team’s social media coordinator is proving downright irresistible.

➱ Love in Kentbury (Kentbury Tales Book 3) by Claudia Y. Burgoa a brand new Kentbury novella where the grumpy recluse might meet his match. Except, that’s his best friend’s little sister who’s way out of his league.

➱ Wilder Presley Says He Loves Me a Romantic Comedy by Winter Travers a small-town romantic comedy that will have you laughing and swooning all at the same time.

[antonio-velardo]

Antonio Velardo shares: Why You Should Listen to Your Worst Instincts by Jamieson Webster

By Jamieson Webster You want what you want because you want it. Published: August 25, 2023 at 05:02AM from NYT Opinion https://ift.tt/xZAMnw1 via IFTTT

[artbookdap]

Some very good news on the book front. Lars Müller's 'The Spirit of Chairs' is here!⁠ ⁠ Presenting the renowned chair collection of ⁠ @thierrybarbiermueller — currently on view at @mudaclausanne — this 384-page feast for the eyes presents the humble chair as sculptural object. A surprising and delightful parade of seating that’s not always for sitting, it features work by Ron Arad, Arca, Alexey Brodovitch, Choi Byung-Hun, Sandro Chia, Niki de Saint Phalle, Tom Dixon, Front Design, Frank Gehry, Godspeed, Michael Graves, Gruppe B.R.A.N.D., Mary Heilmann, Steven Holl, Richard Hutten, Franco Joly, Donald Judd, Shiro Kuramata, Daniel Libeskind, Xavier Lust, Javier Mariscal, Jasper Morrison, Bruno Munari, Marc Newson, Isamu Noguchi, Objects of Common Interest, Werner Panton, Maria Pergay, Tejo Remy, Ettore Sottsass, Philippe Starck, Richard Tuttle, Maria Uys, Franz West and Zoom Design.⁠ ⁠ Edited with foreword by Marie Barbier-Mueller. Text by Thierry Barbier-Mueller, Lorette Coen, Chantal Prod'Hom, Charlotte Savolainen-Mailler, Jamieson Webster, Robert Wilson.⁠ ⁠ Read more via linkinbio.⁠ ⁠ #chairdesign #barbiermueller #thespiritofchairs #spiritofchairs ⁠ https://www.instagram.com/p/Cn4p61xunBp/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[webionaire]

This comprehensive volume documents Roe Ethridge’s work from 1999 to 2022, focusing on two interlocking threads of his celebrated photographic practice. Images produced for exhibition are arranged chronologically, from oldest to most recent, while commercial and editorial photographs appear in the opposite order. Together, these form a vibrant sequence of harmonies and dissonance, hits and B-sides.

[loneberry]

A riveting interview with Jamieson Webster on Freud’s legacy, adolescence, the birth of psychoanalysis, the shittiness of the current medical paradigm, hysteria, sublimation, desire, the need for an interpretive frame, etc etc. Strange, I happened to listen to this on the 128th anniversary of Freud’s dream of Irma’s injection, the dream that launched the field of psychoanalysis….

Webster seems like she’d be a great psychoanalyst tho it might be distracting to have such a hot analyst?? It’d definitely help with the transference.

[fuojbe-beowgi]

"Teenagers Are Telling Us That Something Is Wrong With America" by Jamieson Webster via NYT Opinion https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/11/opinion/teenagers-mental-health-america.html?partner=IFTTT

[power-chords]

Hey Marisa!

I recently recommended that someone watch The Leftovers and they're hooked. Did you ever write an analysis of the themes? I'm particularly interested in the theme of shame-guilt, as that's something very present in my field of work.

Hi Gwenny! Nothing that isn't my my tagged/the+leftovers, I don't think! I really need to watch that series again — the single greatest television show since The Sopranos, tbh — and write something about it. The problem is that it's so unbelievably hard to sit through in so many ways, LOL. I mean there is so much there in the very intersection you describe, of shame and guilt, the former being the agony of the disjunction between recognition of who or what one is/how one desires to be seen (or desires to be desired); the latter being the precursor to an honest external appeal, to looking outward, looking up. (Shame is inward, narcissistic, solitary; guilt is the first spark of hope for connection, repair, doing what needs be done. One wallows, and the other does the work. The Leftovers is, in a sense, about moving from one to the other.)

I don't have much to offer right now besides that pre-coffee rambling, but I'll leave you, and your friend, a quote from Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster, which I hope you'll both enjoy and find relevant:

As Hegel writes somewhere in a note, love is the most monstrous contradiction. It defies understanding. To love is to give what one does not have and to receive that over which one has no power. To love is to freely negate the stubbornness that is the self and to live in loyalty to an affirmation that can dissolve like morning mist with the first experience of betrayal. To be or not to be — is that the question? Perhaps not. Perhaps love is a negation of the being of my selfish self that binds itself to naught, to little nothings in the hope of receiving back something that exceeds my power, my ability, my willful control, even my finitude. Love is an admission of the power of powerlessness that cuts through the binary opposition of being and not being.

[altcomics]

Either you’re successful or you’re trash. This brutality in America has always been there. But I think that brutality is appearing as success at all costs in a way that weighs on people’s lives, because if you’re not in the public eye, you’re nothing. Maybe this is part of this new reality where the only real export that America has at this point, because we don’t make anything, is culture.

Jamieson Webster 

[yr-bed]

Hamlet’s world is a globe defined by the omnipresence of espionage. Hamlet is arguably the drama of surveillance in a police state, rather like the Elizabethan police state of England in the late sixteenth century or the multitude of surveillance cameras that track citizens as they cross London in the current second late-Elizabethan age. Indeed, during the time of the Cold War, in countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia, Hamlet was not seen as some existential drama of indecision in a world of bourgeois anomie but as an allegory of life in a totalitarian regime. The First Quarto version of Hamlet was famously performed as something between tragedy and absurdist farce in 1978 at the Theatre on the Balustrade in Prague, where Václav Havel started as a stagehand. In this interpretation, Polonius has the key role as spymaster general.

From The Hamlet Doctrine by Simon Critchley and Jamieson Webster