Irrationality and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis, by Sebastian Gardner
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Sebastianβs thesis is more or less straightforward: psychoanalysis is an extension of ordinary psychology necessitated by ordinary psychologyβs inability to explain certain types of irrational phenomenon; furthermore, that psychoanalytic positing of the unconscious β along with unconscious entities like wishes and phantasies, as well as unconscious mechanisms like repression and sublimation β is both parsimonious and additive, despite the fact that the implications of these theoretical constructs overturn many ordinary psychological concepts, or at the very least throw them into an altogether new light. Lastly, one of his primary goals in this work is to defeat Sartreβs argument that psychoanalysis is paradoxical or logically incoherent, by making clear that Sartreβs argument, by claiming that the psychoanalytic theory of unconscious amounts to a βSecond Mindβ theory (in either a sub-systemic or part/whole mode), in fact engages a strawman: for psychoanalytic theory does not posit the unconscious as a second mind at all.
So much for the straightforward. For in truth, this work is deeply complicated. It is full of incredible arguments that are tightly yet intricately constructed, with references that reach across both the philosophical and psychoanalytic literature β from Humean and Lockean philosophies of self to Kleinian and Lacanian accounts of irrationality β and that turn back around and in and out again, inexorably weaving a tighter and deeper spiral of argumentation that is constantly threatening g to more or less swallow you whole. This work is worth reading. But only for those who are willing to read and read and reread and reread again and again.