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Robin Brown opens his book with a synopsis of the development of the concept of the unconscious in Western philosophy, mapping its development from Descartes through Leibniz, Hume, Kant, Schelling, Carus, Schopenhauer and von Hartmann. One issue at stake in these theories is the question of ‘the soul's constant activity’ (p. 5). A variety of forms of dualism and monism are employed to accommodate or account for this activity, which can be discerned in these systems by reference to neurobiology or by inference from experience or observed behaviour. Brown finds these approaches to understanding the unconscious to be unsatisfactory. This book is his argument for a psychoanalysis grounded in direct experience of the unconscious. He takes ‘spirituality’ to mean ‘a relationship to a sense of meaning that is felt to exist beyond ourselves’ (p. 11). He does not explain why ascribing meaning to what is beyond ourselves is best described as ‘spirituality’. It is a complex, slippery and contested notion. I would have appreciated a more complete explanation at the beginning of the book for his choice to run with this term, as opposed to, for example, ‘collective’.
Chapter 2, entitled ‘Where do minds meet?’ explores the relationship with the beyond by examining Jessica Benjamin's concept of thirdness. Brown's comparative analysis of Benjamin's third and Thomas Ogden's third highlights some significant differences between them, as well as detailing complications within each of the