Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-04T19:07:17.601Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Imagination and Choice

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 December 2018

Anne C. Dailey
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Individual choice is a central feature of the psychological portrait drawn by nearly every established school of thought in modern American jurisprudence. Legal scholars are increasingly interested in piercing the conceptual surface of choice to inquire into its actual psychological workings. The study of choice in this emerging behavioral legal scholarship draws primarily from cognitive psychology. This article argues that this important inquiry into choice should be broadened to include modern psychoanalytic ideas about imagination. An example of the importance of a psychoanalytic perspective on imagination is provided by the law governing the enforceability of prenuptial agreements. As this discussion illustrates, psychoanalytic psychology, in conjunction with research from the cognitive sciences, provides a valuable framework for examining assumptions about individual choice in law.

Type
Articles
Information
Law & Social Inquiry , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , Winter 2010 , pp. 175 - 216
Copyright
Copyright © American Bar Foundation, 2010 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

References

Abend, Sander M. 1982. Some Observations on Reality Testing as a Clinical Concept. Psychoanalytic Quarterly 51:218–37.Google Scholar
Ackerman, Bruce A. 1974. Law and the Modern Mind by Jerome Frank. Daedalus 103 (1): 119–30.Google Scholar
Adler, Amy. 2005. Girls! Girls! Girls!: The Supreme Court Confronts the G‐String. New York University Law Review 80 (4): 1108–55.Google Scholar
Adolphs, Ralph, and Damasio, Antonio R. 2001. The Interaction of Affect and Cognition: A Neurobiological Perspective. In Handbook of Affect and Social Cognition, ed. Forgas, Joseph P., 27–45. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Anderson, Craig A. 1983. Imagination and Expectation: The Effect of Imagining Behavioral Scripts on Personal Intentions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 45 (2): 293–305.Google Scholar
Arlow, Jacob A. 1969. Fantasy, Memory, and Reality Testing. Psychoanalytic Quarterly 38:2851.Google Scholar
Arlow, Jacob A. 1995. Unconscious Fantasy. In Psychoanalysis: The Major Concepts, ed. Moore, Burness E. and Fine, Bernard D., 155–62. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Baker, Lynn A., and Emery, Robert E. 1993. When Every Relationship Is Above Average: Perceptions and Expectations of Divorce at the Time of Marriage. Law and Human Behavior 17 (4): 439–50.Google Scholar
Bandes, Susan A., ed. 1999. The Passions of Law. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Bix, Brian. 1998. Bargaining in the Shadow of Love: The Enforcement of Premarital Agreements and How We Think About Marriage. William and Mary Law Review 40 (1): 145–207.Google Scholar
Blumenthal, Susanna L. 1998. Law and the Creative Mind. Chicago-Kent Law Review 74 (1): 151–228.Google Scholar
Boring, Edwin G. 1957. A History of Experimental Psychology. New York: Appleton‐Century‐Crofts.Google Scholar
Brakel, Linda A. W., Shevrin, Howard, and Villa, Karen K. 2002. The Priority of Primary Process Categorizing: Experimental Evidence Supporting a Psychoanalytic Developmental Hypothesis. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 50:483–505.Google Scholar
Brooks, Peter. 2001. Troubling Confessions: Speaking Guilt in Law and Literature. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Bruner, Jerome. 1985. Actual Minds, Possible Worlds. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Bucci, Wilma. 1997. Psychoanalysis and Cognitive Science: A Multiple Code Theory. New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Burt, Robert. 2002. Death is That Man Taking Names: American Medicine, Law, and Culture. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Byrne, Ruth M. J. 2005. The Rational Imagination: How People Create Alternatives to Reality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Cortina, Mauricio, and Liotti, Giovanni. 2007. New Approaches to Understanding Unconscious Processes: Implicit and Explicit Memory Systems. International Forum of Psychoanalysis 16 (1): 204–12.Google Scholar
Dailey, Anne C. 1998. Holmes and the Romantic Mind. Duke Law Journal 48 (3): 429–510.Google Scholar
Dailey, Anne C. 2000a. Striving for Rationality. [Review of Jonathan Lear's Open Minded: Working Out the Logic of the Soul . Virginia Law Review 86 (2): 349–96.Google Scholar
Dailey, Anne C. 2000b. The Hidden Economy of the Unconscious. Chicago-Kent Law Review 74 (4): 1599–623.Google Scholar
Dailey, Anne C. 2006. Developing Citizens. Iowa Law Review 91 (2): 431–503.Google Scholar
Dailey, Anne C. ed. 2007. Legal Analysis: Special Issue on Law and Psychoanalysis. American Imago 64 (3): 291–449.Google Scholar
Damasio, Antonio R. 1994. Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. New York: Putnam Press.Google Scholar
Demorest, Amy P. 1995. The Personal Script as a Unit of Analysis for the Study of Personality. Journal of Personality 63 (3): 569–92.Google Scholar
Didion, Joan. 2005. The Year of Magical Thinking. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.Google Scholar
Duncan, Martha Grace. 2002. “So Young and So Untender”: Remorseless Children and the Expectations of the Law. Columbia Law Review 102 (6): 1469–526.Google Scholar
Eisenberg, Melvin Aron. 1995. The Limits of Cognition and the Limits of Contract. Stanford Law Review 47 (2): 211–59.Google Scholar
Ellenberger, Henri F. 1981. The Discovery of the Unconscious: The History and Evolution of Dynamic Psychiatry. New York: Basic Books.Google Scholar
Emde, Robert N., and Robinson, Joann. 2000. Guiding Principles for a Theory of Early Intervention: A Developmental‐Psychoanalytic Perspective. In Handbook of Early Childhood Intervention, ed. Shonkoff, Jack P. and Meisels, Samuel J., 160–77. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Emens, Elizabeth F. 2006. The Sympathetic Discriminator: Mental Illness, Hedonic Costs, and the ADA. Georgetown Law Journal 94 (2): 399–487.Google Scholar
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 1866. Spirit. In The Complete Works of Ralph Waldo Emerson, vol. 2. London: Bell and Daldy.Google Scholar
Festinger, Leon. 1957. A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Fink, Howard, and Carbone, June. 2003. Between Private Ordering and Public Fiat: A New Paradigm for Family Law Decision‐making. Journal of Law & Family Studies 5 (1): 1–69.Google Scholar
Fonagy, Peter. 2001. Attachment Theory and Psychoanalysis. New York: Other Press.Google Scholar
Fonagy, Peter, Gyorgy Gergely, Elliot Jurist, and Mary, Target. 2002. Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self. New York: Other Press.Google Scholar
Frank, Jerome. 1930. Law and the Modern Mind. New York: Brentano's.Google Scholar
Freshman, Clark, Hayes, Adele, and Feldman, Greg. 2002. The Lawyer‐Negotiator as Mood Scientist: What We Know and Don't Know About How Mood Relates to Successful Negotiation. Journal of Dispute Resolution 2002 (1): 1–79.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. 1959a. The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vols. 4 and 5, trans. and ed. James Strachey. London: Hogarth Press.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. 1959b. Civilization and Its Discontents. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 21, trans. and ed. James Strachey, 57–145. London: Hogarth Press Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. 1959c. Psycho‐Analysis and the Establishment of the Facts in Legal Proceedings. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 9, trans. and ed. James Strachey, 103–04. London: Hogarth Press.Google Scholar
Freud, Sigmund. 1959d. Totem and Taboo. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, vol. 13, trans. and ed. James Strachey, 1–161. London: Hogarth Press.Google Scholar
Gallese, Vittorio, Eagle, Morris N., and Migone, Paolo. 2007. Intentional Attunement: Mirror Neurons and the Neural Underpinnings of Interpersonal Relationships. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 55 (1): 131–75.Google Scholar
Goldstein, Joseph, Anna, Freud, and Albert J., Solnit. 1973. Beyond the Best Interest of the Child. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Goodrich, Peter. 1995. Oedipus Lex: Psychoanalysis, History, Law. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Greenwald, Anthony G., and Banaji, Mahzarin R. 1995. Implicit Social Cognition: Attitudes, Self‐Esteem, and Stereotypes. Psychological Review 102 (1): 4–27.Google Scholar
Haberlandt, Karl. 1994. Cognitive Psychology. Boston: Allyn & Bacon.Google Scholar
Hanson, Jon D., and Kysar, Douglas A. 1999a. Taking Behavioralism Seriously: Some Evidence of Market Manipulation. Harvard Law Review 112 (7): 1420–1572.Google Scholar
Hanson, Jon D., and Kysar, Douglas A. 1999b. Taking Behavioralism Seriously: The Problem of Market Manipulation. New York University Law Review 74 (3): 630–749.Google Scholar
Harris, Paul L. 2001. The Work of the Imagination. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.Google Scholar
Heller, Kevin Jon. 2006. The Cognitive Psychology of Circumstantial Evidence. Michigan Law Review 105 (2): 241–306.Google Scholar
Holmes, Oliver Wendell Jr. 1881. The Common Law. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Holmes, Oliver Wendell Jr. 1897. The Path of the Law. Harvard Law Review 10 (8): 457–78.Google Scholar
Ickes, William, ed. 1997. Empathic Accuracy. New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Jamison, Kay Redfield. 1995. Touched With Fire: Manic‐Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Jolls, Christine, and Sunstein, Cass R. 2006a. Debiasing through Law. Journal of Legal Studies 35:199–241.Google Scholar
Jolls, Christine, and Sunstein, Cass R. 2006b. The Law of Implicit Bias. California Law Review 94 (4): 969–996.Google Scholar
Jolls, Christine, Sunstein, Cass R., and Thaler, Richard. 1998. A Behavioral Approach to Law and Economics. Stanford Law Review 50 (5): 1471–550.Google Scholar
Kahan, Dan A. 1999. The Progressive Appropriation of Disgust. In The Passions of Law, ed. Bandes, Susan A., 63–79. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Kahneman, Daniel. 2002. Maps of Bounded Rationality: A Perspective on Intuitive Judgment and Choice. http://nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economics/laureates/2002/kahnemann‐lecture.pdf (accessed February 9, 2009).Google Scholar
Kahneman, Daniel, Slovic, Paul, and Tversky, Amos, eds. 1982. Judgment under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kandel, Eric R. 1999. Biology and the Future of Psychoanalysis: A New Intellectual Framework for Psychiatry Revisited. American Journal of Psychiatry 156:505–24.Google Scholar
Kandel, Eric R., Schwartz, James H., and Jessell, Thomas M., eds. 1995. Essentials of Neural Science and Behavior. New York: McGraw‐Hill.Google Scholar
Kihlstrom, John. 1987. The Cognitive Unconscious. Science 237 (4821): 1445–52.Google Scholar
Kihlstrom, John. 1990. The Psychological Unconscious. In Handbook of Personality: Theory and Research, ed. Pervin, Lawrence A., 583–602. New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Kirschner, Suzanne R. 1996. The Religious and Romantic Origins of Psychoanalysis: Individual and Integration in Post‐Freudian Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Klein, Melanie. 1987. The Selected Melanie Klein, ed. Mitchell, Juliet. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Kosslyn, Stephen M., and Koenig, Olivier. 1995. Wet Mind: The New Cognitive Neuroscience. New York: Simon and Schuster.Google Scholar
Krieger, Linda Hamilton. 1995. The Content of Our Categories: A Cognitive Bias Approach to Discrimination and Equal Employment Opportunity. Stanford Law Review 47 (6): 1161–1248.Google Scholar
Kris, Ernst. 1952. Psychoanalytic Explorations in Art. New York: International Universities Press.Google Scholar
Kuran, Timur, and Sunstein, Cass R. 2000. Controlling Availability Cascades. In Behavioral Law & Economics, ed. Sunstein, Cass R., 374–95. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lakoff, George, and Mark, Johnson. 1980. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Langevoort, Donald C. 1997. Organized Illusions: A Behavioral Theory of Why Corporations Mislead Stock Market Investors (and Cause Other Social Harms). University of Pennsylvania Law Review 146 (1): 101–72.Google Scholar
Lasswell, Harold D. 1930. Self‐Analysis and Judicial Thinking. International Journal of Ethics 40 (3): 354–62.Google Scholar
Lear, Jonathan. 1998. Open Minded: Working Out the Logic of the Soul. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Lerner, Jennifer S., and Larissa Z., Tiedens. 2006. Portrait of an Angry Decision Maker: How Appraisal Tendencies Shape Anger's Influence on Cognition. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making 19 (2): 115–37.Google Scholar
Levit, Nancy. 2006. Confronting Conventional Thinking: The Heuristics Problem in Feminist Legal Theory. Cardozo Law Review 28 (1): 391–440.Google Scholar
Loewald, Hans W. 1980. Papers on Psychoanalysis. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Loewald, Hans W. 1988. Sublimation: Inquiries into Theoretical Psychoanalysis. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Loewenstein, George, and Lerner, Jennifer S. 2003. The Role of Affect in Decision Making. In Handbook of Affective Sciences, ed. Davidson, Richard J., Scherer, Klaus R., and Goldsmith, H. Hill, 619–42. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Mahar, Heather. 2003. Why Are There So Few Prenuptial Agreements? Discussion Paper No. 436 (9/2003). http://www.law.harvard.edu/programs/olin_center/papers/436_mahar.php (accessed August 3, 2009).Google Scholar
Marans, Steven, and Cohen, Donald J. 1991. Psychoanalytic Theories of Development. In Child and Adolescent Psychiatry: A Comprehensive Textbook, ed. Lewis, Melvin, 196–211. Baltimore, MD: Williams and Wilkins.Google Scholar
Maroney, Terry A. 2006. Law and Emotion: A Proposed Taxonomy of an Emerging Field. Law and Human Behavior 30 (2): 119–42.Google Scholar
Mayes, Linda C., and Cohen, Donald J. 1992. The Development of a Capacity for Imagination in Early Childhood. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 47:23–47.Google Scholar
Mayes, Linda C., and Cohen, Donald J. 1994. Experiencing Self and Others: Contributions from Studies of Autism to the Psychoanalytic Theory of Social Development. Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association 42:191–218.Google Scholar
Mayes, Linda C., and Cohen, Donald J. 1996. Anna Freud and Developmental Psychoanalytic Psychology. Psychoanalytic Study of the Child 51:117–41.Google Scholar
McCaffery, Edward J., Kahneman, Daniel J., and Spitzer, Matthew L. 1995. Framing the Jury: Cognitive Perspectives on Pain and Suffering Awards. Virginia Law Review 81 (5): 1341–420.Google Scholar
McEwen, Bruce S., and Sapolsky, Robert M. 1995. Stress and Cognitive Function. Current Opinion in Neurobiology 5 (2): 205–16.Google Scholar
Moore, Underhill, and Callahan, Charles C. 1943. Law and Learning Theory: A Study in Legal Control. Yale Law Journal 53 (1): 1–136.Google Scholar
Nussbaum, Martha C. 1997. Poetic Justice: The Literary Imagination and Public Life. Boston: Beacon Press.Google Scholar
Posner, Richard A. 1999. Emotion versus Emotionalism in Law. In The Passions of Law, ed. Bandes, Susan A., 309–29. New York: New York University Press.Google Scholar
Purcell, Edward A. 1973. The Crisis of Democratic Theory. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky.Google Scholar
Rasmusen, Eric. 1989. Games and Information: An Introduction to Game Theory. New York: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
Roese, Neal J. 1997. Counterfactual Thinking. Psychological Bulletin 121 (1): 133–48.Google Scholar
Rorty, Richard. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rubenfeld, Jed. 2002. The Freedom of Imagination: Copyright's Constitutionality. Yale Law Journal 112 (1): 1–60.Google Scholar
Saks, Elyn R. 1999. Interpreting Interpretation: The Limits of Hermeneutic Psychoanalysis. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Saks, Elyn R. 2001. Psychoanalysis: Past, Present, and Future Contributions to the Law. In The Evolution of Mental Health Law, ed. Frost, Lynda E. and Bonnie, Richard J., 227–44. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association.Google Scholar
Schank, Roger C., and Abelson, Robert P. 1977. Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding: An Inquiry into Human Knowledge Structures. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Schlegel, John Henry. 1995. American Legal Realism and Empirical Social Science. Durham: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Schmeiser, Susan R. 2004. Forces of Consent. Studies in Law, Politics and Society 32:3–38.Google Scholar
Schmeiser, Susan R. 2006. “No Truth Machine”: Law, Psychoanalysis, Uncertainty. Law, Culture and the Humanities 2 (2): 179–200.Google Scholar
Scott, Elizabeth S. 1990. Rational Decisionmaking in Marriage and Divorce. Virginia Law Review 76 (1): 9–94.Google Scholar
Shevrin, Howard, Williams, William, Marshall, Robert, Hertel, Richard, Bond, James, and Linda, Brakel. 1992. Event‐Related Potential Indicators of the Dynamic Unconscious. Consciousness and Cognition 1 (3): 340–66.Google Scholar
Shevrin, Howard, Bond, James A., Brakel, Linda A. W., Hertel, Richard C., and Williams, William J. 1996. Conscious and Unconscious Processes: Psychodynamic, Cognitive, and Neurophysiological Convergences. New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Siegel, Paul F., Sammons, Mark, and Dahl, Hartvig. 2002. FRAMES: The Method in Action and the Assessment of Its Reliability. Psychotherapy Research 12 (1): 59–77.Google Scholar
Simon, Herbert A. 1985. Human Nature in Politics: The Dialogue of Psychology with Political Science. American Political Science Review 79 (2): 293–304.Google Scholar
Spence, Michael. 1973. Job Market Signaling. Quarterly Journal of Economics 87 (3): 355–74.Google Scholar
Stone, Geoffrey R. 2003. Civil Liberties in Wartime. Journal of Supreme Court History 28 (3): 215–51.Google Scholar
Suess, Gerhard J., and Sroufe, June. 2005. Clinical Implications of the Development of the Person. Attachment & Human Development 7 (4): 381–92.Google Scholar
Sunstein, Cass R. 1997. Behavioral Analysis of Law. University of Chicago Law Review 64 (4): 1175–95.Google Scholar
Tompkins, Silvan S. 1987. Script Theory. In The Emergency of Personality, ed. Aronoff, Joel, Rabin, Albert I., and Zucker, Robert A. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Tversky, Amos, and Kahneman, Daniel. 1973. Availability: A Heuristic for Judging Frequency and Probability. Cognitive Psychology 5:207–32.Google Scholar
Tyson, Phyllis, and Tyson, Robert L. 1990. Psychoanalytic Theories of Development: An Integration. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Vaughan, Susan C. 1997. The Talking Cure: The Science Behind Psychotherapy. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons.Google Scholar
Wessells, Michael G. 1982. Cognitive Psychology. New York: Harper and Row.Google Scholar
Weston, Drew. 1998. The Scientific Legacy of Sigmund Freud: Toward a Psychodynamically Informed Psychological Science. Psychological Bulletin 124:333–71.Google Scholar
White, James Boyd. 1973. The Legal Imagination: Studies in the Nature of Legal Thought and Expression. Boston: Little, Brown.Google Scholar
Wilson, Timothy D. 2002. Strangers to Ourselves: Discovering the Adaptive Unconscious. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Winnicott, D. W. 1953. Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena—A Study of the First Not‐Me Possession. International Journal of Psycho-Analysis 34:89–97.Google Scholar
Winnicott, D. W. 1965. The Maturational Process and the Facilitating Environment. New York: International Universities Press.Google Scholar
Winnicott, D. W. 1971. Playing and Reality. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Winter, Steven L. 2001. A Clearing in the Forest: Law, Life, and Mind. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar

Cases Cited

In Re Shanks, 758 N.W.2d 506 (Iowa 2008).Google Scholar
Simeone v. Simeone, 581 A.2d 162 (Pa. 1990).Google Scholar

Statute Cited

Uniform Premarital Agreement Act, 9C U.L.A. 35 (2001).Google Scholar