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Is it an attack upon reason?

Quite the opposite. Aristotelian/Thomistic realism provides a rock-solid foundation for truth. If you've read Rand, you probably know that she claims to admire Aristotle. But she either rejected Aristotle's epistemology or ignored it. Aquinas' epistemology is based on Aristotle's epistemology.

Aristotelian/Thomistic realism solves the problem of the knower/thing known. Both Aristotle and Aquinas taught that in the act of knowing a thing, the form (see "Formal Cause" on linked page) of the thing becomes one with the mind, without the destruction of the form of the thing known.

A background in Aristotelian/Thomist terms is essential to coming to an understanding of this explanation.

If you've read Rand, you probably know that she claims to admire Aristotle. But she either rejected Aristotle's epistemology or ignored it.

Statements like this need to be proven before they can be taken seriously, not just asserted.

Actually, Rand took Aristotle's basis for epistemology and created something that far surpassed it, that answered the questions that he had raised yet was, at that time, unable to answer. She didn't reject it, she surpassed and outdated it.

Both Aristotle and Aquinas taught that in the act of knowing a thing, the form (see "Formal Cause" on linked page) of the thing becomes one with the mind, without the destruction of the form of the thing known.

Can you say, reification? "Form" is a rather high level abstract concept, not a 'thing' that can 'become one' with the mind. (I feel the tugs of Daoism returning, I am one with all, I am one with the form, I am one with the Dao - I'm so happy now!) [and who said Christianity was different from Daoism?]

This was one of Aristotle's ideas that Rand corrected and surpassed. This is akin to the problem of universals that Rand's conceptual development epistemology answered once and for all. The problem here is mistaking the way our minds work, and projecting as actual 'existence' those mental processes into the external world. There is no 'essence' of cat, no 'platonic forms' no 'causal forms' that represent a metaphysical template for the physical existence of all cats. This is simply reifying the 'concept' as a 'platonic form' or a 'causal form.'

This is the most common error that is almost universally committed in these discussions and elsewhere. Failing to make the distinction between a concept, especially an abstract, and a physically existent object - or even a universal principle. Renders the whole argument meaningless.