Response to commentaries

This paper emerged from ideas that I presented in Amsterdam at the Congress of the International Neuropsychoanalytic Society (2015). When Kenneth Yuen and I wrote it, we thought there was something novel in the case of Professor F, giving rise to some clinical observations that were interesting and, perhaps, could make a contribution to the field of depth neuropsychology. We were thus surprised and delighted to be invited to make it a target article, but slightly apprehensive as well. By re-visiting some of the ideas from Clinical Studies in Neuro-Psychoanalysis (Kaplan-Solms & Solms, 2000), we were entering the territory of a book that had been foundational in the way we think today; a book that became more than a book to us, a mental place where we could return over and over for inspiration and company. This had been a risky undertaking in itself; however, a target article now implied a discussion with leading experts in the field, including Mark Solms, who has done so much to establish this entire endeavor. The real Mark Solms is a nice guy, but believe me, you don't want to have a theoretical match against the imaginary Mark Solms I carry around.

Kenneth and I really appreciate that the journal views this article as a potential contribution to the field of neuropsychoanalysis. But we do not take this accomplishment just as individuals; we would like to think that we represent a small but growing community of psychoanalytic psychotherapists, and psychoanalytically minded neuropsychologists, who still believe that case studies of brain-injured patients are a powerful tool to explore the mind–brain relationship (for a review of this topic see Salas, Casassus, & Turnbull, 2016). To us, having a case study as a target article means an acknowledgement by the neuropsychoanalytic community of the relevance of this methodology, and also a call to other clinicians and neuropsychologists to embark in similar enterprises. This is not a minor accomplishment, particularly in t