Mark Solms

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Mark Solms (born June 23, 1961 in South Africa ) is a neuroscientist , psychoanalyst , head of the department of neuropsychology at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town and, since 2005, professor of psychiatry at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York , as well as editor and translator of the Complete Neuroscientific Works ( Collected Neuroscientific Works) by Sigmund Freud . Solms strives for a synthesis of neurology and psychoanalysis and was the founding editor of the journal Neuro-Psychoanalysis , whose advisory board includes brain researchers such as Antonio Damasio and Wolf Singer .

life and work

Mark Solms was surprised by the change in character of his little brother after the accident and consequently studied neuropsychology at the Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg . He received his doctorate in 1986 and, based on his research, was convinced that dreams are based on their own control and are therefore not without a biological function and not a "by-product" of the REM sleep phase . He believes that REM sleep is triggered in the brain stem, but dreams only come about through the interaction of several brain areas.

As head of the neurological station at Groote Schuur Hospital , Solms worked primarily with patients who suffer from enormous impaired consciousness. His key experience is the case of a young man in whom the doctors discovered a brain tumor where dreams should normally arise. It is unusual for the patient to talk about a nightmare one morning, because after the procedure he should not have any more dreams at all.

In fact, those people sleep dreamlessly in whom nerve tracts inside the midbrain have been destroyed. Research confirms that dreams arise in the networked structure behind our eyes. The dopamine-driven search system - the neurotransmitter system that is decisive for dream processes in the brain - is always activated in states of appetite, when we want something specific such as food, drink or nicotine. It is the basic instinctual driving system of man. For Solms, therefore, brain regions are active in the dream, which are responsible for instincts, emotions and desires. At the same time, the outer regions of the brain - responsible for ratio and logic - are greatly reduced and can therefore no longer keep the immediate emotions and instincts in check: the bizarre logic of the dream and the unconscious dominates. Solms created a new line of research, neuropsychoanalysis - Freud's theses are once again gaining relevance. At the same time, Solms would like to change the neurosciences and expand them psychoanalytically: to include the instinctual and emotional, the dynamic unconscious and the subjective perspective of human experience and experience. He therefore tries to psychoanalytically supplement or rebalance certain neuroscientific explanations of perceptual disorders (neglect) or fantasy activities (confabulation). He is also working on a neuropsychoanalytic reinterpretation of depression.

Mark Solms has been a professor in New York since 2005. He worked as a specialist in neurophysiology at the Anna Freud Center , professor of neuropsychology at the University of Cape Town , as an honorary lecturer in neurosurgery at St Bartholomew's Hospital and the Royal London School of Medicine , teacher of psychology at University College in London, director of International Neuro -Psychoanalysis Center in London and the Arnold Pfeffer Center for Neuro-Psychoanalysis at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute . Under the name Neuropsychoanalysis , he founded an international specialist society for neuro-psychoanalysis and has published in numerous neuroscientific and psychoanalytic journals and authored several books. In 2007 he was invited to the Sigmund Freud Lecture in Vienna .

At his winery in South Africa he had an exhibition on the slave history of the region set up. “Anyone who grew up white in the apartheid system owes something to this country.” That is why he has given half of his land to a foundation and thus to the employees of the farm. You have a 50 percent share in Solms-Delta’s profits. Mark Solms is married to the psychoanalyst Karen Kaplan-Solms .

Quotes

“There is hardly anything that is more difficult to examine than the subjective experience of people. Psychoanalysis certainly makes more assumptions about mental processes than one can deduce from observation of behavior alone. Worse still, it offers no way of deciding between different, competing theories. Their method, which consists in the interpretation of clinical symptoms, has little in common with scientific hypothesis testing. I know that Freud and most of his successors claimed exactly the opposite. But just look at the multitude of different schools of psychoanalysis - you quickly realize that empirical research can do little here. "

- Mark Solms

Awards

German-language publications

  • The brain and the inner world. Together with Oliver Turnbull. Walter, Düsseldorf 2004; Patmos, Düsseldorf 2007.
  • Neuro-Psychoanalysis - An Introduction with Case Studies. Together with Karen Kaplan-Solms. 2nd Edition. Klett-Cotta, Stuttgart 2005.
  • Hundred years of "Interpretation of Dreams" by Sigmund Freud. Together with Ilse Grubrich-Simitis and Jean Starobinski . Fischer-Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main 2000.

proof

  1. ↑ http://www.3sat.de/3sat.php?http://www.3sat.de/nano/cstuecke/88442/index.html
  2. ↑ //www.psychotherapie-wissenschaft.info/index.php/psy-wis/article/view/27/122
  3. ^ Neuropsychoanalysis. Retrieved May 22, 2018 (English): "The Neuropsychoanalysis Association is an international network of non-profit organizations that support a dialogue between the neurosciences and psychoanalysis."
  4. ↑ http://www.zeit.de/2006/11/P-Solms
  5. ↑ https://www.spektrum.de/pdf/gug-06-01-s050-pdf/833297

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Solms, Mark
BRIEF DESCRIPTION South African neuroscientist and psychoanalyst
DATE OF BIRTH June 23, 1961
PLACE OF BIRTH South Africa