Each week, the Gaggle Book Club recommends a book for Gagglers to read and—most important—uploads a pdf version of it.

Our practice is that we do not vouch for the reliability or accuracy of any book we recommend. Still less, do we necessarily agree with a recommended book's central arguments. However, any book we recommend will be of undoubted interest and intellectual importance.

Today's book club selection is Ernest Gellner's "The Psychoanalytic Movement: Or the Cunning of Unreason." Published in 1985, Gellner's essay is one of the most incisive and controversial critiques of Freudian psychoanalysis ever published.

Ernest Gellner (1925–1995) was a Czech-born British philosopher, anthropologist and historian of ideas. He taught at the London School of Economics, Cambridge, and later at the Central European University in Prague. His work spanned a wide array of fields: the philosophy of social science, nationalism, Islam, modernity and epistemology. He shot to fame during the 1950s with "Words and Things," a scornful critique of Wittgenstein's philosophy.

Gellner’s book is not merely a criticism of Freud’s theories; it is a sociological and philosophical analysis of how and why psychoanalysis became a movement with profound cultural and institutional authority in the 20th century. According to Gellner, psychoanalysis was not a science but a pseudo-religion cloaked in scientific rhetoric—a modern secular faith, complete with a founding prophet (Freud), disciples, heretics, a doctrine of sin (neurosis), redemption (analysis) and an orthodoxy that resists empirical refutation.

Gellner argues that Freud created a closed, self-sufficient system—a way of interpreting human behavior—that is not falsifiable and is hence impervious to disproof. Every denial of an interpretation can be explained away as repression or resistance—thus making the theory immune to refutation. Psychoanalysis, in other words, belongs to the realm of ideology or theology, not empirical science. Gellner sees Freud as a charismatic religious leader rather than a scientist. He claims Freud’s authority was rooted in personal charisma and the power of narrative, rather than in data or replicable methods.

Psychoanalysis, according to Gellner, offered intellectuals a substitute religion at a time when traditional religion was in decline. It allowed for personal transformation without requiring belief in the supernatural. The process of analysis provided ritual, confession and redemption, analogous to religious practice.

The subtitle of Gellner's book refers to Hegel's famous dictum about the “cunning of reason,” according to which reason always triumphs, no matter how much historical actors may be driven by unreason. Psychoanalysis, according to Gellner, played a historical role the reverse of that of Hegel's Reason. Psychoanalysis appears rational but it in fact enables and institutionalizes irrationalism. Freud's doctrine appears to champion reason and enlightenment; instead, it replaces rational inquiry with a dogmatic system. Freud claimed to be fighting illusion and superstition; in reality, Freud simply repackaged religious ideas in pseudo-scientific language.

In writing this book, Gellner sought to challenge not only the intellectual legitimacy of Freud and his methods but also Freud's moral and cultural standing. Psychoanalysis damaged not only individuals; it damaged reason and science.

Gellner's book is not without its flaws. While Gellner's skepticism about the intellectual foundations of psychoanalysis is beyond reproach, he seems remarkably uncritical though about the intellectual foundations of the system of thought that he would have take the place of psychoanalysis. Gellner tends to rely heavily on the sociology of knowledge--a body of thought that reduces intellectual movements to social, psychological or will-to-power desires.

There is unquestionably a reductionist quality to Gellner's method. Any worldview is to be judged not by its truth claims but by what needs it serves in society. Taken to its logical conclusion, Gellner's method undercuts his own argument: If all belief systems are socially constructed, then isn't that also the case with Gellner’s own rationalism and commitment to science? In which case, why prefer them to the doctrines of the psychoanalysts? Indeed, some critics pointed out that Gellner doesn’t so much refute psychoanalysis as explain it away through sociology—and in doing so, he substitutes one explanatory totalism (Freud’s) for another (his own).

Criticisms aside, Ernest Gellner’s "The Psychoanalytic Movement" is a great read. It is witty, sarcastic, erudite and superbly written--a perfect exemplar of readable intellectual history. The book is not simply a critique of Freud’s theories—it is a devastating takedown of the shallow intellectualism that so uncritically embraced psychoanalysis in the 20th century.