dualism vs. idealism

Those of us who agree that both the qualitative and intentional character of consciousness is irreducible to so-called matter have a choice, we can be either dualists or idealists. Dualism is more popular than idealism (though their numbers are smaller than the hordes of materialists), but is this really the best approach to take if we want to affirm the reality of the mental? Dualists have a problem of reconciling the mind with the assumed pre-existence of dead matter. Dualists therefore feel dialectical pressure to make the mind into some sort of appendage to the body. For dualists, the problem of how mind and matter interact is a real problem--if we take materialist causation as our paradigm, then it *is* hard to see how the non-material mind fits in. This is why so many contemporary dualists feel driven to weird ass epiphenomenalism.but if mind is really essential to reality, then there is no mind/matter gap. We get all the advantages of materialist monism without its obvious drawbacks