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As Marcia Cavell, a philosopher, explains in her preface, this book is “not meant to be a systematic account of principal psychoanalytic themes, but rather an exploration of those themes bordering philosophy and psychoanalysis” (p. 3). In an engagingly conversational tone, she draws upon analytic philosophy, developmental psychology, and psychoanalysis to offer a broad-ranging reconsideration of the underestimated role of external reality in the constitution of psychic reality. Her proposals are interesting, but, because of certain difficulties in correlating the methods and interests of these disciplines, they vary in plausibility.
Cavell begins with a critical summary of Cartesian philosophy. While her discussion draws out familiar themes, the overall emphasis is novel, for she is more interested in similarities between psychoanalysis and Cartesian thought than in the often-stressed differences. Thus psychoanalysis' challenge to Cartesian mind—body dualism and the assumption of transparent mentation holds less import for her than ideas that incorporate “internalist” elements, and it is the critique of such ideas that form the principal leitmotif of her book. Cavell's exemplar of internalism is clear: Descartes axiomatically proceeds to a point where he regards as certain only his awareness of himself as a thinker and his awareness of his thoughts. The reality of the external world is only divinely insured, and his entire system reflects the doubt that lingers after this provisional resolution. Cavell then points to resonant ideas within psychoanalysis, for example, Freud's (1900) early definition of consciousness as “a sense organ for the apprehension of psychical qualities” (p. 615), Rapaport's recognition of Freud's problem reconciling the pleasure principle with external reality, and the strong parallels between the skepticism of such writers as