Psychoanalytic action explanation

Psychoanalysis is concerned with neurotic behaviour that counts as an action if one takes into account “repressed” mental states. Freud's paradigmatic examples are a challenge for philosophical theories of action explanation. The main problem is that such symptomatic behaviour is, in a characteristic way, irrational. In line with standard interpretations, I will recap that psychoanalytic action explanation is not in accordance with Davidson's classical reason-explanation model, and I will recall that Freud's unconsciousness is not a second mind with its own rationality but that it is non-propositional in character. However, I then will argue that this characterization is not discriminating enough to explain the dynamical unconscious and overlooks the crucial role of “counter-cathexis”. With counter-cathexis the relevant desire turns out to be a complex with two inseparable aspects (“double-aspect view”), so that the causing belief–desire pair is still part of the space of reasons, although it cannot rationalize the behaviour. Psychoanalytic action explanation is hence still Davidsonian, albeit in a modified way.