The paper focuses on Richard Moran's account (in Authority and Estrangement) of the distinction between attitudes that meet, and alternatively fail to meet, his transparency criterion for what he calls rational health, and compare this with the psychoanalytic distinction between contained and uncontained states of mind. On the face of it, Moran's distinction appears to be a useful theoretical deepening of the psychoanalytic distinction. On closer examination, however, it appears that (a) rational health is a more demanding standard than containment, (...) so the rationally unhealthy contains much that is mentally (quite) healthy; and (b) more seriously, some states that meet the “transparency” condition are manifestly mentally unhealthy. So transparency needs to be supplemented by an independently understood notion of containment to approach a realistic norm of mental health/ill health. (shrink)

To illustrate one way in which philosophy may be helpful rather than merely critical in the present state of psychoanalytic theorizing, an attempt is made to disentangle issues in controversies about the unconscious. Eleven questions are distinguished and discussed. Logical, linguistic, methodological, metaphysical, empirical, and pragmatic components are set apart. It is found that there are no logical barriers to a construct of the unconscious, that it is linguistically feasible, need violate no methodological concepts, nor foreclose a metaphysical issue, nor (...) have deleterious pragmatic effect. Feasibility and desirability of the construct in all these respects will depend on the character and extent of the scientific findings. Some issues are also raised concerning desirable types of models in the explanation of conduct, and concerning the relevance of recent studies of consciousness. (shrink)

Introduction: This paper explores the vulnerability of practice-like activities to institutional domination. Methods: This paper oers an ethnographic case study of a UK-based engineering company in the aftermath of its acquisition, focusing in particular on its R&D unit. Results: The Lab struggled to maintain its practice-based work in an institutional environment that emphasized the pursuit of external goods. Discussion: We use this case to develop two arguments. Firstly, we illustrate the concept of “practice-like” activities and explore their vulnerability to institutional (...) domination. Secondly, in light of the style of management on display after the takeover, we oer further support to MacIntyre’s critique of management. Finally, based on the empirical data we reflect on the importance of organizational culture, as well as friendship and the achievement of a common good in business organizations for these kinds of activities. (shrink)

Freud (and later commentators) have failed to explain how the origins of psychoanalytical theory began with a positivist investment without recognizing a dual epistemological commitment: simply, Freud engaged positivism because he believed it generally equated with empiricism, which he valued, and he rejected ‘philosophy’, and, more specifically, Kantianism, because of the associated transcendental qualities of its epistemology. But this simple dismissal belies a deep investment in Kant’s formulation of human reason, in which rationality escapes natural cause and thereby bestows humans (...) with cognitive and moral autonomy. Freud also segregated human rationality: he divided the mind between (1) an unconscious grounded in the biological and thus subject to its own laws, and (2) a faculty of autonomous reason, lodged in consciousness and free of natural forces to become the repository of interpretation and free will. Psychoanalysis thus rests upon a basic Kantian construction, whereby reason, through the aid of analytic techniques, provides a detached scrutiny of the natural world, i.e. the unconscious mental domain. Further, sovereign reason becomes the instrument of self-knowing in the pursuit of human perfection. Herein lies the philosophical foundation of psychoanalytic theory, a beguiling paradox in which natural cause and autonomous reason — determinism and freedom — are conjoined despite their apparent logical exclusion. (shrink)