Irrationality and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis

Sebastian Gardner argues that psychoanalytic theory provides the most satisfactory philosophical explanation of irrationality.

Reconstructing the theories of Freud and Klein, Sebastian Gardner argues that psychoanalytic theory explains the nature of irrationality, and is an extension of everyday psychological explanation. He advances a view of the unconscious as a source of inherently irrational desires seeking expression through wish-fulfilment and phantasy.In a reconstruction of the theories of Freud and Klein, Sebastian Gardner asks: what causes irrationality, what must the mind be like for it to be irrational, to what extent does irrationality involve self-awareness, and what is the point of irrationality? Arguing that psychoanalytic theory provides the most penetrating answers to these questions, he rejects the widespread view of the unconscious as a 'second mind', in favour of a view of it as a source of inherently irrational desires seeking expression through wish-fulfilment and phantasy. He meets scepticism about psychoanalytic explanation by exhibiting its continuity with everyday psychology.