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According to the OED, “crosswise” means, among other things, either “with one crossing another, alternately” or “across, athwart, transversely.” The advantage of reading crosswise (but not athwart) two books that address closely related topics is that either text may thrillingly complement the other in the reader's mind. The disadvantage of reading crosswise, however, is that, like in cross-breeding, the originality and/or self-sufficiency of either entity may partly get blurred in the reader's mind. In what follows, I shall try to take advantage of reviewing crosswise two monographs on neuro-psychoanalysis, without distorting too much the uniqueness of either book considered independently from the other. It is thus fair to indicate first what the books under review are about.
The monograph by Karen Kaplan-Solms and Mark Solms (Clinical Studies, for short) consists of three parts. Part I contains a chapter on the historical origins of psychoanalysis in neuroscience, a chapter on Aleksandr Luria, a chapter on the neuro-psychoanalysis of dreaming, and a chapter on the future of neuro-psychoanalysis. Part II is devoted to clinical observations of cases that illustrate what neuro-psychoanalysis is (among other things): (1) an ensemble of methods that are likely to disclose some emotional and cognitive alterations in one's life caused by brain injuries (alterations that are usually not dealt with in cognitive neuroscience); (2) a means by which some psychoanalytic theorems are put to test; and (3) a set of more or less formal interaction patterns, both observational and therapeutic, adapted to the physical and psychological conditions of brain-injured patients. And part III, which consists of just one chapter, sketches the neuroanatomy of the mental apparatus, thus knotting together the various threads running through the previous chapters.