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The editor of this journal has asked me to respond to the review of my book by Robert F. Bornstein. I am happy to have the opportunity to express my appreciation for his generous and astute review. I am gratified to know that someone with his knowledge and vision has valued what I have tried to do. That said, I will also say that my immediate response to Reppen's letter was to wince and put it and the review back into their envelope. I gather that other authors have similar feelings in submitting a book (child), to which they have been so close, to the processes of public review. I decided I would put it all away, let the aroused emotion schemas subside, and let my subsymbolic processes go to work on forming my response. The subsymbolic system having now sent up some messages, it is time to put the symbolic processor to work.
I think it would have been easier to respond to a more critical review. There is not much that Bornstein says with which I can disagree; it's not my role to point out the faults of my book. Because there is only one reviewer here, however, and to provide some balance for his kind remarks, I will share several of the more qualified comments that I have received from analyst colleagues and friends, for example: “I can't read your book; it's a new language; it's too unfamiliar; you have to take me through it,” and on the more positive side, but carrying the same message: “I've read your book twice; I think it is very important, but it's difficult.”
As some analysts have pointed out to me, the new theory requires them to reconsider ideas that are deeply embedded in their knowledge schemas—not only cognitive schemas but also emotional, and more precisely, transferential ones; to define familiar concepts in a new frame