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Irrationality and the Philosophy of Psychoanalysis
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.
320 pages, Paperback
First published April 30, 1993
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June 10, 2023
I found the chapters of the second part of this book (chapters 4-6) very helpful. There, Gardner explicates the principles underlying the psychoanalytic theory, in a way that has more depth and aim at systematic rigor than other introductions to Freud that I've read (e.g., Wollheim's and Lear's). Most of the remaining chapters, however, were uninteresting or excessive. In part 1, Gardner focuses on presenting other approaches for accounting for human irrationality, as to stage set for psychoanalysis's being more explanatorily powerful (I found these too scare-crowy). In part 3, Gardner focuses on defending psychoanalysis from objections (I was left unconvinced, and much involved repeating ideas presented in part 2). Also, I didn't like his writing style. Let me complain about this a bit, before I go into summarizing what I found to be the interesting chapters of this book.
Gardner has a penchant for avoiding the active construction at all costs, which leads to awkward sentences and lack of clarity. Moreover, he likes giving noun phrases to describe the psychological entities he's treating that are overly complicated; he stuffs in those phrases details about these entities that have no relevance to the overall subject matter at hand, in a sentence. This is one of his noun phrases, for example: “the experiential registration of satisfaction, which puts the feeling of need in abeyance, and terminates the subject’s action-disposition to fulfill the goal set by its motivational state...” Instead, the idea communicated here could be expressed some sentence along the lines of: “we are consciously satisfied, which terminates our impulse to satisfy that need.” I guess this is helpful, as an example for me of how not to write, when I write philosophy. Moreover, I found part 2 so helpful that it was worth getting used to this style.
In the introduction, Gardner sets out his approach for making sense of Freud: Human irrationality (e.g., failing to do that which one knows is most desirable; having contradictory beliefs; undertaking actions that are inconsistent with belief) is basic to everyday life. It is difficult to make sense of this by the lights of ordinary folk psychology. Psychoanalytic theory may be understood as aiming to reveal the conditions that must be true of the mind in order for such irrationality to be possible. In chapter 4 "Unconscious motives and Freudian concepts," Gardner expounds upon Freud's concept of motivational states (which I'll call "motivations" for simplicity here), which may be understood as the primal matter of which the unconscious consists. They are essentially personally inaccessible; we cannot become aware of them. But nevertheless, they aren't merely causal; they also have intentional content and are purposive, but in a special way that diverges from our person-level or conscious sense of purposiveness. Moreover, they are tied to biological needs, like hunger and sex. Gardner illustrates motivations through Freud's clinical study of the "Ratman." The Ratman simultaneously wanted his father to be killed, and loved and idealized him, where only the latter state was consciously accessible to him; the former is a motivation. This inner conflict led to many strange behaviors and symptoms according to Freud, like distressing obsessional mental imagery and fear of women.
Gardner helpfully distinguishes between conscious desires and motivations. Conscious desires are "rational"; they involve identification of a particular outcome or object and determinate conditions of satisfaction. Motivations are unlike this. There is no particular outcome it aims for, and so there are no conditions of satisfaction. Desire is supposed to arise from the force of motivations, shaped by conscious belief. Because the two are ontologically different, we often can have conflicting sets of them. In repression, we do not repress motivations themselves, but various conscious "traces" of them. The motivation remains untouched and will continue to "seek relief," which is part of its nature. (Freud had a mechanistic view of the psyche, on which "energy" is entered and released, where the alleviation of tension, as a build-up of such energy, is an automated and essential process). The content of a motivation is non-propositional but nevertheless intentional (I really wished Gardner could expand upon this claim — I'll return to it below).
Psychoanalytic explanation consists in showing that an individual has misrepresented their motivations. This isn't self-deception, for they do not do this intentionally, and it's not influenced by their preferences. This misrepresentation rather comes about from the combination of the psyche's own propulsion towards relieving the tension built up by a motivation, and the individual's various conscious beliefs and desires, among other factors. While we shouldn't ascribe particular goals out desired outcomes to a motivation, we may ascribe to it an "aim," which lacks any particular conditions of satisfaction.
In chapter 5 "Wish," Gardner explains Freud's concept of "wish-fulfillment." Wishes are essentially the same as motivations; the difference seems to be that when we refer to a motivation that an individual has after they've grown up and gotten encultured, so that it's no longer immediately tied to biological need, we should call this more properly a wish. Wish-fulfillment operates differently from the satisfaction of desire. In the latter, we undertake action as to bring about the worldly changes that allow us to get what we want. In contrast, wish-fulfillment happens in the absence of any action. Freud's paradigm cases of this are "infantile hallucination" and dreaming. The infant desires the mother's breast, but it is absent; so, according to Freud, the infant imagines forth her breast, where this imagining should be called a "hallucination" (which connotes that the infant confuses this with reality). (I'll criticize this idea below). So in wish-fulfillment, mental imagery takes up a functional role analogous to that of a worldly object in the case of desire; the wish is fulfilled just by imagining its fulfillment.
In chapter 6 "Phantasy and Kleinian explanation," Gardner goes into Klein's elaboration on Freud's concept of phantasy. Phantasy sits between the unconscious and consciousness; it is consciously experienced, but it itself has a nature unlike many other denizens of conscious experience (e.g., desires, beliefs, language). For example, the Ratman cowered before Freud and moved away; Freud's explanation of this is that the Ratman "phantasized" that Freud was his father, about to beat him. Phantasy is the result of the expression of wishes under the constraints of one's beliefs and perceptual experience. Like motivations/wishes, phantasies are at the outset not purposive, as desires are, but may gain specific purpose, by coming to shape our desires. Like wish-fulfillment, phantasy does not stir up action; like wish-fulfillment, it involves transformations in one's consciousness, like the presentation of certain mental images, or alteration in to what one perceptually attends most. Motivations and wish-fulfillment may be understood as providing the starting materials with which phantasy works. A key example of phantasy is "psychic defense" — one will come to see a situation differently, as to lower one's anxiety (e.g., to defend oneself against envy, one will elevate oneself in one's imagination). (There were a lot of weird details of Klein's theory that I found both absurd and even harmful to society, related to reducing everything to the desire to have sex with or do violence to one's parents; they aren't worth mentioning).
Okie dokie, with this summary in place, I want to now mention what I see are the principles of psychoanalytic thought which I believe are downright wrong, which leads to all the various mistakes I see in ways of describing and explaining our psychological lives. I have Gardner to thank for having illustrated Freud's thought so well, that I can now see where I diverge from Freud with more clarity. First, consider that Freud understands wish-fulfillment (and thereby also phantasy, which seems to be identical to wish-fulfillment with respect to their overall structures) on the model of the infant's hallucinating their mother's breast in order to relieve themself of need. I see that taking this case as the paradigm, and describing the case in this particular way, is Freud's original sin, which gives rise to so many other problems in his theory.
To understand this, let me first mention the other key principle of his theory that I take issue with: Implicitly, Freud assumes that motivations and wishes, even if they're non-propositional, involve determinate content. For example, he explains the infant as having the motivation/wish for the mother's breast; and it is precisely this that is satisfied, by imagining the breast. But here's an alternative explanation: in light of the fact that the infant cannot satisfy the desire to drink mother's milk right now, the infant will continue wanting this, which leads them to imagine the breast. In imagining this breast vividly, it can produce some sort of pleasure, which is simply not the pleasure of drinking milk. Because this is pleasurable, the infant now changes their desire, or at least focuses upon a new desire: no longer are they focused on getting milk, but they're focused on the sort of pleasure they get from imagining this (which is perhaps analogous to the pleasure we get from music, movies, and artwork or make-believe more generally).
So if we are to attribute to the infant a motivation, which underlies both desires, pre- and post-change, we should grant that this motivation isn't self-identical over this process of the infant's negotiating with their desire, but rather changes over this process. We may call the content of this motivation "indeterminate" in the sense that it admits of such changes and is able to be shared across distinct desires. This is closely related to the functional role of "affect," something I've been thinking about of late. The same affect can underlay totally different mental states (e.g., arousal in fear v. delight; that same arousal in watching a scary motive), but it itself doesn't carry with it specific content; rather, it, as a causal factor, contributes to the overall conscious experience in which it is incorporated. But it is not totally "contentless" either; it seems that affect is still consciously experienced, in spite of being usefully cited as a causal factor. So perhaps it may be useful to understand it as having "indeterminate" content (and maybe this isn't useful, but we should understand it, and motivation alike, as purely causal).
(Sartre's criticism of Freud, interestingly, is subject to this same mistake. He assumes that all that we are conscious of must be determinate in character. So he believes that if anyone seems to be unconscious of some motivation, where in fact they have that motivation, they are conscious of it, and are self-deceived. But we can carve out a middle road: we are conscious of our motivations, but they are indeterminate in this way, readily amenable to our "sculpting" or "interpreting" them into particular, determinate desires. So we shouldn't accuse everyone of self-deception; we can rather accuse them of not taking the reigns to interpret a motivation in a way that is more ethical towards themself and the world.)
I call this Freud's original sin because this paradigm of the infant's hallucinating the breast has led to a lot of thinkers to assume that we can confuse that which we register as merely imagined with reality. I don't think the infant can actually hallucinate that something they have merely brought to mind currently exists, standing outside of them. The infant keeps track of the inner realm, of what's imagined, from the external world.
Gardner has a penchant for avoiding the active construction at all costs, which leads to awkward sentences and lack of clarity. Moreover, he likes giving noun phrases to describe the psychological entities he's treating that are overly complicated; he stuffs in those phrases details about these entities that have no relevance to the overall subject matter at hand, in a sentence. This is one of his noun phrases, for example: “the experiential registration of satisfaction, which puts the feeling of need in abeyance, and terminates the subject’s action-disposition to fulfill the goal set by its motivational state...” Instead, the idea communicated here could be expressed some sentence along the lines of: “we are consciously satisfied, which terminates our impulse to satisfy that need.” I guess this is helpful, as an example for me of how not to write, when I write philosophy. Moreover, I found part 2 so helpful that it was worth getting used to this style.
In the introduction, Gardner sets out his approach for making sense of Freud: Human irrationality (e.g., failing to do that which one knows is most desirable; having contradictory beliefs; undertaking actions that are inconsistent with belief) is basic to everyday life. It is difficult to make sense of this by the lights of ordinary folk psychology. Psychoanalytic theory may be understood as aiming to reveal the conditions that must be true of the mind in order for such irrationality to be possible. In chapter 4 "Unconscious motives and Freudian concepts," Gardner expounds upon Freud's concept of motivational states (which I'll call "motivations" for simplicity here), which may be understood as the primal matter of which the unconscious consists. They are essentially personally inaccessible; we cannot become aware of them. But nevertheless, they aren't merely causal; they also have intentional content and are purposive, but in a special way that diverges from our person-level or conscious sense of purposiveness. Moreover, they are tied to biological needs, like hunger and sex. Gardner illustrates motivations through Freud's clinical study of the "Ratman." The Ratman simultaneously wanted his father to be killed, and loved and idealized him, where only the latter state was consciously accessible to him; the former is a motivation. This inner conflict led to many strange behaviors and symptoms according to Freud, like distressing obsessional mental imagery and fear of women.
Gardner helpfully distinguishes between conscious desires and motivations. Conscious desires are "rational"; they involve identification of a particular outcome or object and determinate conditions of satisfaction. Motivations are unlike this. There is no particular outcome it aims for, and so there are no conditions of satisfaction. Desire is supposed to arise from the force of motivations, shaped by conscious belief. Because the two are ontologically different, we often can have conflicting sets of them. In repression, we do not repress motivations themselves, but various conscious "traces" of them. The motivation remains untouched and will continue to "seek relief," which is part of its nature. (Freud had a mechanistic view of the psyche, on which "energy" is entered and released, where the alleviation of tension, as a build-up of such energy, is an automated and essential process). The content of a motivation is non-propositional but nevertheless intentional (I really wished Gardner could expand upon this claim — I'll return to it below).
Psychoanalytic explanation consists in showing that an individual has misrepresented their motivations. This isn't self-deception, for they do not do this intentionally, and it's not influenced by their preferences. This misrepresentation rather comes about from the combination of the psyche's own propulsion towards relieving the tension built up by a motivation, and the individual's various conscious beliefs and desires, among other factors. While we shouldn't ascribe particular goals out desired outcomes to a motivation, we may ascribe to it an "aim," which lacks any particular conditions of satisfaction.
In chapter 5 "Wish," Gardner explains Freud's concept of "wish-fulfillment." Wishes are essentially the same as motivations; the difference seems to be that when we refer to a motivation that an individual has after they've grown up and gotten encultured, so that it's no longer immediately tied to biological need, we should call this more properly a wish. Wish-fulfillment operates differently from the satisfaction of desire. In the latter, we undertake action as to bring about the worldly changes that allow us to get what we want. In contrast, wish-fulfillment happens in the absence of any action. Freud's paradigm cases of this are "infantile hallucination" and dreaming. The infant desires the mother's breast, but it is absent; so, according to Freud, the infant imagines forth her breast, where this imagining should be called a "hallucination" (which connotes that the infant confuses this with reality). (I'll criticize this idea below). So in wish-fulfillment, mental imagery takes up a functional role analogous to that of a worldly object in the case of desire; the wish is fulfilled just by imagining its fulfillment.
In chapter 6 "Phantasy and Kleinian explanation," Gardner goes into Klein's elaboration on Freud's concept of phantasy. Phantasy sits between the unconscious and consciousness; it is consciously experienced, but it itself has a nature unlike many other denizens of conscious experience (e.g., desires, beliefs, language). For example, the Ratman cowered before Freud and moved away; Freud's explanation of this is that the Ratman "phantasized" that Freud was his father, about to beat him. Phantasy is the result of the expression of wishes under the constraints of one's beliefs and perceptual experience. Like motivations/wishes, phantasies are at the outset not purposive, as desires are, but may gain specific purpose, by coming to shape our desires. Like wish-fulfillment, phantasy does not stir up action; like wish-fulfillment, it involves transformations in one's consciousness, like the presentation of certain mental images, or alteration in to what one perceptually attends most. Motivations and wish-fulfillment may be understood as providing the starting materials with which phantasy works. A key example of phantasy is "psychic defense" — one will come to see a situation differently, as to lower one's anxiety (e.g., to defend oneself against envy, one will elevate oneself in one's imagination). (There were a lot of weird details of Klein's theory that I found both absurd and even harmful to society, related to reducing everything to the desire to have sex with or do violence to one's parents; they aren't worth mentioning).
Okie dokie, with this summary in place, I want to now mention what I see are the principles of psychoanalytic thought which I believe are downright wrong, which leads to all the various mistakes I see in ways of describing and explaining our psychological lives. I have Gardner to thank for having illustrated Freud's thought so well, that I can now see where I diverge from Freud with more clarity. First, consider that Freud understands wish-fulfillment (and thereby also phantasy, which seems to be identical to wish-fulfillment with respect to their overall structures) on the model of the infant's hallucinating their mother's breast in order to relieve themself of need. I see that taking this case as the paradigm, and describing the case in this particular way, is Freud's original sin, which gives rise to so many other problems in his theory.
To understand this, let me first mention the other key principle of his theory that I take issue with: Implicitly, Freud assumes that motivations and wishes, even if they're non-propositional, involve determinate content. For example, he explains the infant as having the motivation/wish for the mother's breast; and it is precisely this that is satisfied, by imagining the breast. But here's an alternative explanation: in light of the fact that the infant cannot satisfy the desire to drink mother's milk right now, the infant will continue wanting this, which leads them to imagine the breast. In imagining this breast vividly, it can produce some sort of pleasure, which is simply not the pleasure of drinking milk. Because this is pleasurable, the infant now changes their desire, or at least focuses upon a new desire: no longer are they focused on getting milk, but they're focused on the sort of pleasure they get from imagining this (which is perhaps analogous to the pleasure we get from music, movies, and artwork or make-believe more generally).
So if we are to attribute to the infant a motivation, which underlies both desires, pre- and post-change, we should grant that this motivation isn't self-identical over this process of the infant's negotiating with their desire, but rather changes over this process. We may call the content of this motivation "indeterminate" in the sense that it admits of such changes and is able to be shared across distinct desires. This is closely related to the functional role of "affect," something I've been thinking about of late. The same affect can underlay totally different mental states (e.g., arousal in fear v. delight; that same arousal in watching a scary motive), but it itself doesn't carry with it specific content; rather, it, as a causal factor, contributes to the overall conscious experience in which it is incorporated. But it is not totally "contentless" either; it seems that affect is still consciously experienced, in spite of being usefully cited as a causal factor. So perhaps it may be useful to understand it as having "indeterminate" content (and maybe this isn't useful, but we should understand it, and motivation alike, as purely causal).
(Sartre's criticism of Freud, interestingly, is subject to this same mistake. He assumes that all that we are conscious of must be determinate in character. So he believes that if anyone seems to be unconscious of some motivation, where in fact they have that motivation, they are conscious of it, and are self-deceived. But we can carve out a middle road: we are conscious of our motivations, but they are indeterminate in this way, readily amenable to our "sculpting" or "interpreting" them into particular, determinate desires. So we shouldn't accuse everyone of self-deception; we can rather accuse them of not taking the reigns to interpret a motivation in a way that is more ethical towards themself and the world.)
I call this Freud's original sin because this paradigm of the infant's hallucinating the breast has led to a lot of thinkers to assume that we can confuse that which we register as merely imagined with reality. I don't think the infant can actually hallucinate that something they have merely brought to mind currently exists, standing outside of them. The infant keeps track of the inner realm, of what's imagined, from the external world.
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