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Research Associate

• Affiliation(s)

  • Adjunct Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry, Medical School

• Fields of Study

  • Psychoanalytic Theory, Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Action, Epistemology

• About

  Dr. Brakel is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the UM Department of Psychiatry, where she has been Co-Associate Director of the Hunt Memorial Laboratory for research on Subliminal Processes, and she is a Psychoanalyst. As such she has had close acquaintance with psychoanalytic data-- data revealing mental phenomena best described as unconscious and a-rational or irrational. These non-rational and non-conscious mental phenomena call out for empirical investigations and a serious philosophical account. Brakel has done empirical and philosophical studies both on unconscious processes and on "primary process" mentation, a form of thinking different from our ordinary rational thought. Her philosophical work on these topics features two recent Oxford University Press books: Philosophy, Psychoanalysis, and the A-Rational Mind (2009) and Unconscious Knowing and Other Essays in Psycho-Philosophical Analysis (2010).