Pragmatic psychoanalysis and the paradox of interpretation

Abstract

Pragmatic Psychoanalysis stands for a linguistic reformulation of the Freudian Metapsychology in terms of Donald Davidson's and Richard Rorty's philosophies of language. This1 philosophical rearrangement of the description of both objects and mental events in psychoanalysis largerly accomplishes to desubstantialize Freudian's theory. Notwithstanding, Pragmatic Psychoanalysis becomes a hostage of its very strategy, since its theory accents much more the rational than the pragmatic aspects in its descriptions: causalism in psychology and an overestimation of the importance of interpretation in intentional actions. As a consequence, Pragmatic Psychoanalysis hampers its own task of reformulation and desubstantialization, in the very pragmatic terms that it aims at doing, and, as it seems, metaphysics is reintroduced by the back door. Keywords: Pragmatic psychoanalysis, Marcia Cavell, Jurandir Freire Costa, Donald Davidson, Richard Rorty, Ludwig Wittgenstein.