Historian and philosopher John Forrester argues that psychoanalysis is characterised by a style of scientific thinking and reasoning, which he coins as thinking in cases. Since Freud, case studies are used as a medium for sharing, demonstrating, discovering, expanding, consolidating and “thinking” psychoanalytic knowledge. In this paper, we seek to clarify and enrich Forrester's idea of thinking in cases. We first attend to issues around the lack of definition for thinking styles and propose a more detailed description for what might constitute a scientific thinking style. Secondly, we outline how thinking in cases differs from other kinds of thinking styles. In doing so, we argue that some of the criticisms directed at case studies are a result of confusion between statistical and experimental thinking styles and thinking in cases. Finally, we propose that there is more than one way of thinking in cases: that we can think not only in cases as exemplar representatives (Forrester's original point), but also in cases as examples and cases as part of a population. By making these implicit thinking styles explicit, we seek to demonstrate the importance of case studies at all levels of psychoanalysis: clinical, research, training, and teaching.