Motivational disturbances and free will

Irving Thalberg

pp. 201-220

in: Tristram Engelhardt, Stuart Spicker (eds), Mental health: philosophical perspectives, Berlin, Springer, 1978

Abstract

I plan to struggle with a conceptual knot which should be both intelligible and challenging to mental health theoreticians as well as to philosophers of action. This may help us achieve additional clarity about what it is for a person to act more or less autonomously, to exercise a greater or lesser degree of command over her or his own behavior. Regarding mental health, I shall inquire: Must a person be of relatively 'sound mind" in order to act freely? Do some (not all) forms of so-called mental illness,¹ including alcoholism and drug addiction, decrease his mastery over what he is doing? These broad questions originate from a fairly definite paradox about motivation and freedom — to which I have heard three promising philosophical answers. The replies show notable affinities with, and stark dissimilarties from, a standard psychoanalytical account of how neuroses and psychoses diminish one's authority over his behavior and moods, and of how therapy might restore it.