Mark Solms
Mark Solms ( born June 23, 1961 in South Africa) is a neuroscientist, psychoanalyst, head of the Department of Neuropsychology at the Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town and since 2005 professor of psychiatry at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, as well as an editor and translator of the Complete Neuroscientific Works ( Collected works of Neuroscience ) by Sigmund Freud. Solms aims at a synthesis of neuroscience and psychoanalysis and was a founding editor of the journal Neuro- Psychoanalysis, whose advisory board members neuroscientist Antonio Damasio or as Wolf Singer.
Life and work
Mark Solms was surprised by the accident of his little brother of whose character change and consequently studied neuropsychology at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He received his doctorate in 1986 and was convinced because of his investigations that dreams are based on its own control, therefore not " by-product " are the REM sleep without biological function and no. He thinks of REM sleep will indeed triggered in the brain stem, but dreams would arise only through the interaction of several brain areas.
Solms worked as the head of the neurological ward at Groote Schuur Hospital, especially with patients who suffer from enormous disturbances of consciousness. His key experience is the case of a young man at the doctors discovered a brain tumor where normally dreams should arise. It is unusual that the patient one morning tells of a nightmare, because after the procedure it should have no more dreams.
In fact, those people sleep without dreams, in which nerves inside the midbrain have been destroyed. Studies confirm that dreams in the crosslinked structure arise behind our eyes. Activates the dopamine- driven search system - the brain crucial for dreaming processes messenger system - always with Appetenzzuständen if we want something in particular such as eating, drinking, or nicotine. It is the basic instinctual drive system of man. For Solms therefore brain regions are active in a dream, who are responsible for instincts, emotions and desires. At the same time, outer regions of the brain - responsible for reason and logic - is greatly reduced and therefore can no longer hold in check the immediate emotions and instincts dominated the bizarre logic of dreams and the unconscious. Solms created a new research direction that neuropsychoanalysis - the theories of Freud win again topical. At the same time wants to change the neurosciences and psychoanalysis expand Solms: to the instinctual - emotional, the dynamic unconscious, and the subjective experience and perspective of the human experience. He tries, therefore, certain neuroscientific psychoanalytically supplement explanations of perceptual disturbances ( neglect ) or fancy activities ( confabulation ) or to rebalance. He is also working on a neuro- psychoanalytic reinterpretation of depression.
Since 2005, Mark Solms is professor in New York. He looked and acts as a specialist in neurophysiology at the Anna Freud Centre, Professor of Neuropsychology at the University of Cape Town, an honorary lecturer of neurosurgery at St Bartholomew's Hospital and the Royal London School of Medicine, teacher of psychology at University College London, director of the International Neuro- - psychoanalysis Centre in London and the Arnold Pfeffer Center for Neuro- psychoanalysis at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute. He founded the International Society for Neuro- Psychoanalysis and has published in numerous neuroscientific and psychoanalytic journals, and authored several books. In 2007 he was invited to Sigmund Freud lecture to Vienna.
On his winery in South Africa, he has had to build an exhibition on the slave history of the region. "Who has grown up as white in the apartheid system, owes this country a bit. " That's why he has overwritten half his country a foundation and thus the employees of the farm. They account for 50 percent of the profits from Solms- Delta. Mark Solms is the psychoanalyst Karen Kaplan- Solms married.
Quotes
"There is hardly anything that is more difficult to investigate than the subjective experience of people. Psychoanalysis makes certainly more assumptions about mental processes, as can be deduced from the observation of behavior alone. Worse: it offers no possibility to choose between different, competing theories. Their method, which consists in the interpretation of clinical symptoms has, in common with scientific hypothesis testing not much. I know that Freud and most of his followers claimed exactly the opposite. But look at only the variety of psychoanalytic schools - because it becomes evident that the empirical research can do little here. "
Awards
- 2001 Psychiatrist of the Year
- 2007 Sigmund Freud lecture in Vienna
German -language publications
- The brain and the inner world. Together with Oliver Turnbull. Walter, Dusseldorf 2004; Patmos, Dusseldorf 2007.
- Neuro- Psychoanalysis - An introduction with case studies. Together with Karen Kaplan- Solms. 2nd edition. Klett- Cotta, Stuttgart 2005.
- A century of " Interpretation of Dreams" by Sigmund Freud. Together with Ilse Grubrich - Simitis and Jean Starobinski. Fischer -Taschenbuch, Frankfurt am Main, 2000.