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The Psychoanalytic Movement: The Cunning of Unreason

Author(s) : Ernest Gellner

Reviews and Endorsements

This significant work explains how the language of psychoanalysis became the dominant way for the industrialized West to speak about emotion.
Argues that although psychoanalysis offers an incisive picture of human nature, it provides untestable operational definitions and makes unsubstantiated claims concerning its therapeutic efficacy.
Includes new foreword by Jose Brunner that expands on the central argument of the book and argues that Gellner and Freud might be seen as kindred spirits.

'The Psychoanalytic Movement was recognized as a classic upon its publication. José Brunner's new introduction places the argument within the context of "the Freud wars", making it clear that the book was as concerned to explain the fabulous success of psychoanalysis as to debunk its pretensions. This may be Gellner's greatest book, containing as it does a general view of the history of philosophy and the character of modernity.' John A. Hall, McGill University