The justification of the unconscious and Pascal’s wager
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5380/psi.v17i3.28960Keywords:
unconscious, psychoanalysis, Pascal’s wager, metapsychology.Abstract
The present article seeks to apprehend the importance of Freud’s justification of the unconscious for defining the status of psychoanalysis. Examining subject, motivation and argumentative steps of this justification, reveals that the intended proof of the existence of the unconscious doesn’t conform itself to the model of empirical demonstration pursued by Freud. His proceeding is rather a pragmatic demonstration, similar to the one used by Pascal in his wager in favour of God’s existence. However, this similarity doesn’t mean that psychoanalysis is equal to speculative knowledge: the admission of the unconscious, although empirically not entirely justifiable, reveals itself as the condition of analytical experience.
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