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It is surprising to nobody today to find the Irrational as the main theme of a psychotherapeutic congress. The times are past in which Freud could state that the psychic life is as fully and strongly determined as the physical world. Of course, we must distinguish between rationality and causality. The idea of causality can be questioned by means of rationality. But the philosophy of positivism, in which we have grown up, has so linked both concepts, that one usually understand the Irrational as that area where causality cannot be grasped.
Since the pioneer work of Gödell, scientists, particularly mathematicians, have, in this century, pointed out the limits of logical determination. We now know that a logical system can contain no algorithms, which define its whole structure. In order to be free of contradictions, every logical system must contain one or more areas of nondeterminability, that is, words which cannot be derived from preceding axioms by means of the algorithms of the system. Within every undeterminable area, the number of possible words is endless, so that discrimination is impossible. Today one must take it that “free structures” appear in every causal context. Mathematicians modestly speak of an insight into the limited power of knowledge within logic itself, and therewith, for the first time, suggest, in science itself, a concept of freedom related to the same structure of logics.
Certainly, one must be most careful in applying the insights