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There are some psychoanalysts who would argue that psychoanalysis possesses an adequate theory of mind. There are other psychoanalysts who might question this assumption, pointing to a snapshot history of psychoanalysis from the id to the ego to the self, and observing that the mind is a relatively new concept to this sequence and trajectory. Knowledge of the mind is currently being transformed by emerging knowledge of the brain and, even if one is skeptical about incorporating knowledge of the brain directly into clinical work, the impact of knowledge of the brain on our understanding of the mind seems undeniable. There is no possible justification for the choice simply to ignore neuroscientific evidence about the brain and its interrelation with the mind. At the same time, it is reasonable to wonder whether only neuroscientific ideas about the mind matter. Philosophers and psychologists offer well-developed and clearly formulated ideas about the mind, and these ideas, like neuroscientific ideas, can be and have started to be imported into psychoanalysis in a fruitful way.
In Philosophy, Psychoanalysis and the A-Rational Mind, Brakel makes a strong plea for an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the mind. She believes that philosophical accounts would benefit from attention to the a-rational mind, particularly the realm of primary process thinking, but she also maintains that psychoanalytic thought can be deepened by the conceptual rigor of philosophy. Brakel carves out an original position that affirms