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From his first to his last works, Freud strove to defend the concept of the unconscious against the attacks by philosophers and psychologists. This concept, together with the concept of repression, is indispensable for anyone who wishes to be called a psychoanalyst (Freud, 1914). Donald Levy therefore must be given credit for his very enlightening discussion of an issue that is a classic as it is important for the consistency of psychoanalysis.
The philosophers that Levy examines are Ludwig Wittgenstein, William James, A. C. MacIntyre, and Adolf Grünbaum, all of whom share an interest in epistemological questions and each of whom expounds his own emblematic kind of critique of the Freudian unconscious. Levy's analysis of Wittgenstein's thinking is comprehensive and original—naturally, he deals with the later Wittgenstein, the one who proposed a new conception of language and of meaning in his lectures at Cambridge University and in The Blue and Brown Books (1933-1935). Not surprisingly,