Pragmatism and Psychoanalysis – C.S. Peirce as a Mediating Figure

Abstract

The author explores the curious fact that, while roughly contemporaneous intellectual movements with overlapping concerns and critiques, pragmatism and psychoanalysis hardly took account of one another. Indeed, they still hold each other at arm’s length: rarely do representatives of one movement engage the texts, theories, or hypotheses of the other, indeed, rarely do they exhibit even an informed familiarity with the other movement. The author argues that this is to the mutual disadvantage of each movement. Moreover, he recounts a critical historical event (Sigmund Freud’s encounter with William James) as both a missed opportunity and an illuminating metaphor for the continuing aloofness of the two movements from one another. Finally, he indicates how C. S. Peirce can be seen as a mediating figure, one whose understanding of mind allows for a fruitful exchange between these two “upstart” traditions.