The title of this book should give the reader an immediate sense of its complexity. Philosophy and psychoanalysis are vast intellectual communities, and the concept of ‘a-rational mind’ made me nervous from the very beginning.

I was right to be nervous; this is a tough read. Professor Brakel seeks to present psychoanalysis as a theory of mind, using arguments from the general philosophy of mind. Specifically, she seeks to argue that there are two types of thinking described in psychoanalytic theory: what one might think of as ‘everyday’ secondary process thinking and primary process thinking that is found in dreams, ‘slips of the tongue’ and other ‘a-rational’ forms of thought. What Brakel wants to emphasise is that unconscious mentation is not irrational but a-rational, by which she means that it operates, as it were, on a different epistemological footing.

I need to be honest here; I did not understand the book fully. Not that Brakel is not a readable writer; she has a warm and engaging style, which is welcome in such an intellectually challenging work. She is clearly an expert in her field, and her enthusiasm for her subject comes clearly across. Yet I could not help feeling stymied, brought up short against a level of discourse that was inaccessible to me. In the context of the argument, I was surprised not to see some discussion of Matte Bianco's work on different forms of mentation but then I realised that I would probably not understand where his work fits in. The book also requires the reader to engage with basic psychoanalytic tenets a priori, which to my mind gave a hint of something tautological.

I suspect that this is a book by a philosopher of psychoanalysis, written for other philosophers of psychoanalysis; and I am in awe at the level of discussion there must be at their dinner parties. But my mind is not shaped for such ‘sportive tricks’ (as it were), so I came away feeling frustrated. Perhaps Professor Brakel could write an introductory text that would let non-analysts join the discussion.