在《莊子•達生》中，齊桓公見鬼本是「因心病而產生幻覺」，卻被歷代詮釋者誤讀為「因幻覺而產生心病」，故未能闡明「桓公因何得病」「告敖為何能猜中鬼的樣子」以及「告敖如何治愈桓公」這三個關鍵問題。通過對先秦鬼怪敘事的研究，以及將該文與見於《風俗通義》的另一版本進行異文分析，可看出作者虛構此故事的意指。故事中桓公長期擔心被他殺死的公子糾變為鬼向自己復仇，他對公子糾之死的複雜情緒長期被壓抑（即所謂「忿滀之氣」），引發了精神疾病。告敖作為「聽之以氣」的典範人物，聽出了桓公之氣的「不上不下」，基於公子糾死前形象猜中鬼的樣子，贏得桓公信任後再以「談話療法」加以療愈。基於此新解，告敖的行動具有政治上的明確批判性，且其目標、條件與方法皆與氣論密切相關。賴錫三、鍾振宇等主張的「批判的氣論」在此新解中可充分體現。

In Chapter 19 of the Zhuangzi there is a story about Duke Huan of Qi seeing a ghost, in which the ghost is often interpreted as a fantasy that caused the duke’s mental disease, while it was in fact because of pre-existing mental disease that the duke fantasized the ghost. Because of this mistake, existing interpretations are not able to explain three key questions: why the duke caught the disease, why did Gao’ao know the ghost’s appearance and how did he treated the duke. Through a survey on ghost stories in the pre-Qin era, and an analysis between this story and a different version of it in the Fengsu Tongyi, the meaning of this fictional story can be interpreted as follows. In the story, Duke Huan had been worrying for a long time about a possible revenge from the ghost of Prince Jiu, who was killed by the duke. The duke’s complex feelings about Prince Jiu’s death (called fen chu zhi qi) and his attempt to repress these feelings caused his mental disease. Gao’ao, who was a model of “listening with qi”, was able to hear the dilemmatic situation of the duke’s qi, so he treated the duke with some kind of talk therapy after gaining the duke’s trust by correctly guessing the ghost’s appearance (which he figured out according to Prince Jiu’s appearance). Based on this new interpretation, Gao’ao’s action is clearly critical in the political sense, and depends heavily on qi theory in terms of its objective, conditions and approach. A critical qi theory proposed by scholars like Lai Hsi-San and Chung Chen-yu can be identified in this new interpretation.