How did psychoanalysis become so accepted by the public? This provocative book reconstructs the system of ideas upon which the theory and practice of psychoanalysis rests, describing a modern culture that has created a psychic or a spiritual void that psychoanalysis seems custom-made to fill. Gellner approaches the question as a sociologist and attains a broad perspective on the ideas of the psychoanalytic movement as a system of cultural beliefs.

Since the 17th century, Western society has had a turbulent relationship with Reason. Descartes set out to reorganize all his opinions in the light of Reason, allowing, as Pascal bitterly reproached him, nothing else. In the course of the centuries which followed, the relationship with Reason became the object of a vigorous, often passionate debate. David Hume declared Reason to be impotent; Immanuel Kant observed that men suffered from 'misology' as the result of their disappointed expectations from Reason; G.W.F. Hegel declared that the main insight of philosophy consisted of the realization that Reason masterminded and guided all history. The debate has not remained restricted to philosophy. Max Weber, the most influential modern sociologist, was obsessed with the distinctive role of Reason in Western society, and the part it played in engendering industrialism. Social anthropologists have been preoccupied both with the universality and the diversity of conceptual thought. Emile Durkheim taught them to ask why all men were rational, whilst Max Weber taught sociologists to ask why some men were more rational than others. This book brings together the philosophical, historical and sociological discussions of rationality and strives to make clear the underlying issues and the continuity of the debate in the various disciplines.

This volume of essays deals with the problem of relativism, in particular cultural relativism. If our society knows better than other societies, how do we know that it knows better? There is a profound irony in the fact that this self-doubt has become most acute in the one civilisation that has persuaded the rest of the world to emulate it. The claim to cognitive superiority is often restricted, of course, to the limited sphere of natural science and technology; and that immediately raises the second main theme of this volume - the differences between the human and natural sciences. These essays reach towards a new style and mode of enquiry - a mixture of philosophy, history and anthropology - that promises to prove more revealing and fruitful.