Description
Book SynopsisReconstructing 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.
Trade Review'It has been a commonplace for many decades that Freud changed our conception of the human mind. Few writers and very few philosophers have tried to to tell us what this change amounts to. Sebastian Gardner's book is the most remarkable attempt I know to put this right.' Richard Wollheim
Table of ContentsAcknowledgements; Note on the text; Introduction; Part I: Dividing Persons: 1. Ordinary irrationality; 2. Persons in parts; 3. Persons and sub-systems; Part II: Psychoanalytic Concepts: 4. Unconscious motives and Freudian concepts; 5. Wish; 6. Phantasy and Kleinian explanation; Part III: Psychoanalytic Conception of Mind: 7. Metapsychology and psychoanalytic personality; 8. Consciousness, theory and epistemology; Appendices; Notes; Works of Freud cited; Bibliography; Index.
