‘What are the necessary conditions for mind? Such a question will not be settled by empirical research’ (p. 3). With this question and forthright assertion, Marcia Cavell begins her exploration of Freud's central psychoanalytic concepts as an adherent of the contemporary ‘anti-subjectivist’ movement in the philosophy of mind. A Visiting Professor of Philosophy at New York University, she describes herself as ‘a philosopher with some psychoanalytic training and considerable acquaintance with the analytic couch’ (p. 6).

The thesis of her book is that ‘we cannot divorce the activities of thinking and speaking’ (p. 20). In opposition to the subjectivist, internalist view that thought originates internally and that this world of subjective experience is then provided with linguistic labels, she follows the noted philosopher Davidson in arguing that mind and the mental are social phenomena and that ‘language is the condition for the mental in general, whether conscious or unconscious’ (pp. 38-9). Thus, true thought can only arise within a matrix of interpersonal