The title of this book was probably inspired by Pascal (Pensées 4, 267): "Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point" ("The heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing").

In 1784, Lavoisier dismissed hypnosis because it did not meet his criteria for science. The thesis presented by Chertok and Stengers is that Freud's wish for scientific respectability led him to create the psychoanalytic situation. With its emphasis on abstinence, neutrality, and the transference neurosis, psychoanalysis gave priority to reason over the dictates of the heart.

The result, according to the authors, had limited therapeutic effectiveness, as first noticed by Ferenczi, who believed that analysts