The Unconscious: A Conceptual Analysis by Alasdair Macintyre - Feb 2004

Routledge, Feb 2004. 2. Paperback. Unlike so many intellectual posers on the question of psychoanalysis, Alasdair MacIntyre here takes his subject seriously, treats it with subtlety and insight, and thinks both with and beyond Freud. Therapy and theory are usefully distinguished, and the tensions between determinism and the possibility of rationality, self-healing and responsibility in Freudian thought clearly rendered. The new preface, which takes up a third of the book, extends and improves considerably on the analysis. MacIntyre is a pleasure to read throughout and excellent at setting out the conceptual stakes.\r\n\r\nLarge sections of 'The Unconscious' are directed to supporting the possibility of talking of the unconscious and clarifying the relationship between motives, intentions and reasons. The ultimate conclusion - that it is descriptively useful to talk of repression and the unconscious but not to posit them as explanations for behaviour - is a stimulating one, although I am not entirely sure that MacIntyre succeeds in showing that these concepts are not useful in explanatory terms. Nevertheless, an excellent, stimulating and short work highly recommended for anyone interested in psychoanalysis, the philosophy of mind or the ways in which humans can be opaque to themselves.