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Mark Solms
Mark Solms
Mark Solms
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Mark Solms (born 17 July 1961) is a South African psychoanalyst and neuropsychologist, who is known for his discovery of the brain mechanisms of dreaming and his use of psychoanalytic methods in contemporary neuroscience.[1] He holds the Chair of Neuropsychology at the University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital (Departments of Psychology and Neurology) and is the President of the South African Psychoanalytical Association. He is also Research Chair of the International Psychoanalytical Association (since 2013).

Key Information

Solms founded the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society in 2000 and he was a Founding Editor (with Ed Nersessian) of the journal Neuropsychoanalysis. He is Director of the Arnold Pfeffer Center for Neuropsychoanalysis at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute.[2] He is also Director of the Neuropsychoanalysis Foundation in New York, a Trustee of the Neuropsychoanalysis Fund in London, and Director of the Neuropsychoanalysis Trust in Cape Town.[3][4][5] He is a trustee of the Loudoun Trust.[6]

Background and education

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Mark Leonard de Gier Solms was born on 17 July 1961 in Lüderitz in present-day Namibia.[7] His ancestor Johann Adam Solms (1792–1854) was born in the winegrowing town of Nackenheim in the Electorate of Mainz, and moved to the Cape Colony from the then-Grand Duchy of Hesse in 1838.

Mark Solms was educated at Pretoria Boys High School in South Africa. He then attended the University of the Witwatersrand, where he graduated with a bachelor's degree in Psychology (1984), an Honours degree in Applied Psychology (1985), a master's degree in Research Psychology (1987) and a PhD in Neuropsychology (1992). He emigrated to London in 1988, where he worked academically at University College London (Psychology Department) and clinically at the Royal London Hospital (Neurosurgery Department), while he trained at the Institute of Psychoanalysis (1989-1994). During this period, he established the first neuropsychoanalytic clinical service at the Anna Freud Centre.

Contribution to neuropsychoanalysis

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Mark Solms is best known for his discovery of the forebrain mechanisms of dreaming,[8] and for his integration of psychoanalytic theories and methods with those of modern neuroscience.[9] He is reportedly the first person to have used the term neuropsychoanalysis.[10]

Solms' work tries to connect the theories and findings of psychoanalysis, a science of the mind (subjective thoughts, feelings, memories, etc.), with modern neuroscientific knowledge of the objective anatomical structure and functions of the brain. The renowned case of Phineas Gage, who had traumatic brain injury caused by a tamping iron, is traditionally used to illustrate these connections. Gage was physically recovered but his mind was radically changed and his friends and acquaintances said that he was 'no longer Gage'.[11] According to Solms, these clinical observations demonstrate that the brain and the personality are inextricable. They make it clear that the object of study in psychoanalysis is somehow intrinsically connected with the object of study of neuroscience. Solms is convinced that the only way to fully understand the brain is by bringing back together psychoanalysis and neuroscience.

The pivotal aim of Solms' work is to provide an empirical method by which psychoanalysis can rejoin neuroscience in a way that is compatible with Freud's basic assumptions. In order to accomplish that, Solms relies on one of the major developments within neuroscience since Freud's death: the work of Alexander Romanovich Luria. Luria's method identifies the neurological organization of any mental function without contradicting the fundamental assumptions of psychoanalysis. Hence, a viable bridge is established between the concepts of psychology, those of anatomy, physiology and all the other branches of neurological science. Solms elaborates and formulates a new approach to investigate the deeper strata of the mind by implementing neuropsychoanalysis thinking: "I am recommending that we chart the neurological organization of the deepest strata of the mind, using a psychoanalytic version of syndrome analysis, by studying the deep structure of the mental changes that can be discerned in neurological patients within a psychoanalytic relationship."[9]

Recognition

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Mark Solms has received numerous awards, notably Honorary Membership of the New York Psychoanalytic Society in 1998, the American College of Psychoanalysts in 2004 and the American College of Psychiatrists in 2015. Other awards include:

  • Harry Oppenheimer Fellowship Award by the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust (2017) [12]
  • Sigmund Freud Award by the American Society of Psychoanalytic Physicians (2013)
  • Eli W. Lane Memorial Award by the Southwest Psychoanalytic Society, University of Arizona [awarded twice] (2012 & 2013)
  • Sigourney Award by the Mary Sigourney Trust (2011)
  • Oscar Sternbach Award for Outstanding Dedication and Contributions to Psychoanalysis (2009)
  • Arnold Pfeffer Prize by the New York Psychoanalytic Institute (2008)
  • Hans W. Loewald Memorial Award by the International Forum for Psychoanalytic Education (2007)
  • Gradiva Award for Best Book (Science Category): 'Clinical Studies in Psychoanalysis' [with K. Kaplan-Solms] by the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis (2001)
  • International Psychiatrist Lecture by the American Psychiatric Association (2001)
  • George Sarton Medal by the Rijksuniversiteit Gent, Belgium (1996).

Publications

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Solms has published widely in both neuroscientific and psychoanalytic journals, including Cortex (journal), Neuropsychologia, Trends in Cognitive Sciences and Behavioral and Brain Sciences. He is also frequently published in general-interest journals, such as Scientific American . He has published more than 250 articles and book chapters, and 6 books. His second book, The Neuropsychology of Dreams (1997), was a landmark contribution to the field. His 2002 book (with Oliver Turnbull), The Brain and the Inner World was a best-seller and has been translated into 13 languages. His latest book, on the hard problem of consciousness, is entitled The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness (2021). He is the authorised editor and translator of the Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (24 vols)[13] and of the forthcoming Complete Neuroscientific Works of Sigmund Freud (4 vols).[14]

He is the lead educator of an online course entitled "What is a Mind?".[15]

Winemaking

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Outside academia, Solms is involved in winemaking. Solms-Delta is a farm located in the Franschhoek Valley, with a rich history and prize-winning wines. Solms took over custodianship of the farm in 2001. Its 325-year history was deeply rooted in slavery, but Solms decided to transform the farm into a cooperative. Now, all 180 inhabitants of the land and previously workers for the farm, along with Solms and British philanthropist Richard Astor, are co-owners. Solms affirms that worker subjectivity is important for the quality of the final product: "Wine is made by hand, and the attitude of the labourers affects what is in the bottle, from the way they tend the vines and select the grapes. If someone is preparing it with resentment and hatred, what will he make?" [16][17][18]

Personal life

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In 1985, Solms married Karen Kaplan-Solms [Wikidata], who is also a psychoanalyst and neuropsychologist. Together they wrote the book Clinical Studies in Neuropsychoanalysis in 2001, which received the Gradiva Award for Best Book (Science Category) by the National Association for the Advancement of Psychoanalysis, USA. They have a son (Leonard, born in 1996) and a daughter (Ella, born in 2000). His current partner is Eliza Kentridge, the artist and poet, who lives in Wivenhoe, England.

References

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Mark Solms

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Mark Solms (born 17 July 1961) is a South African neuropsychologist and psychoanalyst who serves as Chair of Neuropsychology at the University of Cape Town and Director of Neuropsychology in the Neuroscience Institute there. His research integrates empirical neuroscience with psychoanalytic theory, focusing on the neural substrates of mental processes such as dreaming and consciousness. Solms is best known for identifying forebrain mechanisms underlying dreaming, demonstrating through clinical studies of brain-lesioned patients that dreaming persists despite damage to traditional pontine centers, implicating mesopontine and diencephalic activations instead. Solms's work on consciousness advances a theory rooted in affective homeostasis, positing that subjective experience originates from brainstem mechanisms regulating basic needs and emotions, rather than cortical information processing—a view supported by active inference principles and free energy minimization models. In his 2021 book The Hidden Spring, he argues that feelings constitute the fundamental "why" of consciousness, drawing on neurological evidence to reposition emotions as central to mental function over purely cognitive accounts. This neuropsychoanalytic approach, which Solms helped pioneer, bridges Freudian drive theory with modern neuroimaging and lesion studies, challenging reductionist paradigms in cognitive neuroscience by emphasizing causal roles of subcortical structures in generating phenomenal awareness.

Early Life and Education

Family Background and Childhood

Mark Solms was born on 17 July 1961 in the district of , (then under South African administration). His family traces its roots to the , descending from the Solms-Königsberg line of , with longstanding ties to the wine region through the Solms-Delta estate, originally granted as a farm in 1690. Solms spent his formative years in South Africa during the apartheid era, matriculating from the prestigious . A pivotal event in his childhood was his older brother's severe from a fall, which drastically altered the brother's personality while leaving his physical appearance unchanged, profoundly impacting Solms and his family. This incident sparked Solms' early fascination with the mind-brain relationship, prompting him to pursue to understand how physical brain changes could produce such qualitative shifts in subjective experience and behavior. Growing up in this environment, Solms developed an empirical orientation toward causal explanations of mental phenomena, influenced by the tangible effects of neurological damage he witnessed firsthand, at a time when South African intellectual culture retained openness to amid global shifts toward .

Academic Training and Early Influences

Mark Solms completed his at in , matriculating in 1979. He then attended the in , where he obtained a degree with distinction in in 1984, a first-class honours in in 1985, a with distinction in in 1987, and a PhD in in 1992. These qualifications provided a foundation in empirical psychological assessment and neurological correlates of , emphasizing measurable deficits from over abstract behavioral conditioning models prevalent in mid-20th-century psychology. From 1985 to 1989, Solms worked as an honorary neuropsychologist in the Division of at the Medical School and affiliated hospitals, specializing in through clinical exposure to patients with brain injuries. This hands-on training involved mapping behavioral changes—such as , , and motivational shifts—to localized lesions, demonstrating causal neural substrates for psychological symptoms and countering environmentalist doctrines that downplayed hereditary or structural brain factors in mental functioning. In 1989, Solms relocated to , commencing clinical training in at the Institute of Psychoanalysis, which spanned 1989 to 1994 and aligned with his concurrent roles at and the Royal London Hospital's neurosurgery department. This phase fostered an integration of psychoanalytic with , drawing on Freud's foundational texts to prioritize verifiable mechanisms of unconscious drives over interpretive ideologies, while engaging in personal analysis within the British Psychoanalytical Society's Freudian framework.

Professional Career

Initial Appointments and Research Beginnings

In the early 1990s, following his relocation to in 1989 for psychoanalytic training at the Institute of Psychoanalysis, Mark Solms assumed clinical and academic roles that facilitated his integration of and . He served as an Honorary Lecturer in at the Royal Hospital, where he engaged in patient care and research involving neurological disorders, and as a in the Department of at from 1990 to 1992. These positions enabled hands-on examination of brain-injured patients, including those with lesions affecting and mentation. Solms' initial empirical investigations centered on clinico-anatomical case studies of patients exhibiting cessation or alteration of following specific injuries. By systematically reviewing historical cases and conducting new assessments, he identified patterns where damage to pontine tegmentum regions—key to REM generation—did not eliminate dream reports, whereas lesions in the mesopontine junction and areas, such as the ventral mesencephalon and paraventricular gray, correlated with dream loss despite preserved REM . This work, conducted in the through London-based hospital evaluations, demonstrated 's independence from REM mechanisms via causal evidence, contrasting with brainstem-centric models like activation-synthesis theory. These studies laid groundwork for bridging empirical with psychoanalytic inquiry by prioritizing verifiable data—such as localization via and behavioral reports—over theoretical conjecture, establishing reproducible correlations between structures and subjective experiences like dreaming prior to the field's formal organization. Solms' approach emphasized from neurological deficits, revealing how mechanisms underpin dream generation independently of sleep-stage physiology.

Leadership in Neuropsychoanalysis

Mark Solms co-founded the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society in July 2000 at a in , establishing it as a primary organizational hub for integrating with through empirical methodologies. As co-chair of the society, Solms has directed its initiatives to prioritize testable psychoanalytic hypotheses, such as those concerning unconscious motivations rooted in affective processes, over purely cognitive information-processing paradigms prevalent in mainstream . This leadership counters longstanding dismissals of by advocating causal explanations grounded in homeostatic imperatives, drawing on studies and to demonstrate the primacy of subcortical drives in mental functions. Solms served as founding editor, alongside Ed Nersessian, of the journal Neuropsychoanalysis, launched to disseminate peer-reviewed research bridging these disciplines and fostering rigorous debate on their compatibility. Under his editorial influence, the journal has published studies validating psychoanalytic constructs via neuroscientific data, including analyses of affect regulation and , while critiquing reductionist models that overlook biological imperatives for mere computational metaphors. His stewardship has sustained the journal's focus on falsifiable predictions, such as those derived from Freudian id concepts mapped to origins, promoting a realist framework over idealized cognitive architectures. Through the society's auspices, Solms has spearheaded global training programs, including clinical workshops titled "A Practical Introduction to Neuropsychoanalysis: Clinical Implications," which equip practitioners with tools to apply neuroscientific evidence—such as from and —in psychoanalytic settings. These efforts, complemented by educational video series on core neuropsychoanalytic principles, have disseminated the approach worldwide via affiliated centers and recognized training pathways, emphasizing empirical scrutiny to refute claims of psychoanalytic unfalsifiability. As director of the Arnold Pfeffer Center for Neuropsychoanalysis at the New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute, Solms further coordinates monthly discussions and research integrating lesion-based data with therapeutic practice, advancing the field's institutional legitimacy.

Current Positions and Institutional Roles

Mark Solms holds the Chair of at the and , encompassing the Departments of and , a position he has maintained since 2002. In this capacity, he directs the Neuropsychology unit within the Neuroscience Institute at the , overseeing research laboratories that investigate the neural bases of , particularly emphasizing subcortical mechanisms through empirical and lesion studies. Solms serves as Research Chair of the (IPA), a role he assumed in 2013, where he advocates for integrating empirical into psychoanalytic training and practice to enhance methodological rigor. He is also President of the South African Psychoanalytical Association, guiding its efforts to align clinical with verifiable neuroscientific data. In recent years, Solms has extended his institutional influence through leadership in international forums, including annual lectureships and conferences on , such as the 2025 Dr. Mark Solms Lectureship in Neuropsychoanalysis hosted by the Psychoanalytic Institute, where he addresses critiques of reductionist models by prioritizing affective and homeostatic processes supported by clinical and experimental evidence. His participation in post-2020 podcasts and panels, including discussions with neuroscientists like Karl Friston in 2025, underscores his ongoing role in interdisciplinary debates, consistently grounding arguments in peer-reviewed data over speculative interpretations.

Key Scientific Contributions

Foundations of Neuropsychoanalysis

Neuropsychoanalysis, pioneered by Mark Solms, constitutes an interdisciplinary methodology that empirically validates and refines Freudian through integration with techniques, including brain lesion analysis, , and animal model experiments. This approach prioritizes causal mechanisms of rooted in affective processes over purely associative or computational models, aiming to map psychoanalytic constructs like unconscious drives onto verifiable neural substrates. Solms established the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society in 2000 to institutionalize this synthesis, fostering research that tests hypotheses such as the role of innate instincts in behavior using data from patients with focal brain injuries and comparative . Central to its foundations is the assertion that originates in structures responsible for affect regulation, rather than cortical information processing, a view substantiated by dissociations observed in neurological disorders. In , resulting from ventral pontine lesions that spare dorsal tegmentum, patients retain wakeful awareness and affective responsiveness despite profound cortical deafferentation and motor paralysis, indicating that phenomenal experience depends on subcortical rather than sensory integration. Conversely, mesencephalic or pontine tegmental damage in arousal disorders, such as , eliminates irrespective of intact cortex, underscoring the 's primacy in generating the subjective "feeling" of need states that drive . These findings, derived from over 100 lesion studies, challenge cortical-centric theories by demonstrating that affect—manifest as homeostatic imperatives—forms the bedrock of mindedness. This framework diverges from conventional by insisting on the psychoanalytic inclusion of dynamic unconscious processes, where conflicting drives are resolved through affective valence rather than neutral learning algorithms. It rejects assumptions prevalent in and cognitive therapies, which posit motivations as environmentally inscribed without innate biological priors, instead positing that drives emerge from brainstem-mediated predictions of survival needs, empirically traceable via autonomic responses in animal models and human . By privileging first-person affect as the causal engine of , neuropsychoanalysis provides a unified account of why behaviors persist despite rational overrides, as seen in or persistence post-extinction training.

Discoveries on Dreaming Mechanisms

Mark Solms' research on dreaming challenged the prevailing activation-synthesis model, which posited that dreams are primarily generated by mechanisms during rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, as proposed by J. Allan Hobson. Through clinico-anatomical studies of neurological patients, Solms demonstrated that dreaming is dissociable from REM sleep and is instead driven by structures involved in and . In his 1997 monograph The Neuropsychology of Dreams, Solms analyzed dream reports from over 200 patients with focal brain lesions, identifying that damage to tracts connecting the frontal lobes to the reticular activating system—particularly in the ventromedial quadrant of the —abolished visual mentation (dreaming) despite preserved REM sleep cycles. Conversely, lesions in the pontine , which disrupt REM generation, did not eliminate dreaming, as some patients reported vivid non-REM dreams. These findings localized dream generation to forebrain mechanisms, specifically implicating the mesodiencephalic junction and associated mesocortical-mesolimbic in the regulation of motivated states. Solms observed that lesions interrupting projections from the and correlated with both cessation of dreaming and —a state of profound motivational deficit—indicating a causal link between dreaming and the brain's homeostatic drive systems. Clinical cases verified this: for instance, patients with intact function but damage reported charmless, non-narrative mentation lacking the emotional intensity typical of dreams, while those with preserved circuits exhibited dream-like hallucinations independent of stage. This evidence supported a psychoanalytic reinterpretation, framing dreams as expressions of endogenous rather than random signals, aligning with Freud's concept of wish fulfillment as tied to unmet biological needs. Solms extended these observations to , proposing that hallucinations in and represent dysregulated forebrain drive expression akin to , where unchecked mesolimbic generates vivid, motivationally charged without external sensory input. In patients with mesodiencephalic lesions, the absence of both dreams and hallucinatory tendencies underscored the shared neural substrate, grounded in the brainstem's in integrating affective signals for behavioral rather than mere sensory . These mechanisms, verified through lesion-behavior correlations in over 300 neurological cases, emphasized 's adaptive function in processing emotional conflicts and homeostatic imbalances, independent of REM's pontine origins.

Theories of Consciousness and Affect

Mark Solms proposes that fundamentally arises from affective processes rooted in the , rather than from higher cognitive functions in the . In his model, feeling—defined as the subjective valuation of states relative to homeostatic needs—precedes and enables knowing, positioning affect as the origin of mental life. This view challenges dominant neuroscientific paradigms that prioritize cortical information processing, arguing instead that serves the organism's imperative to minimize free energy, or prediction error, through actions that maintain physiological balance. Solms formalizes this in terms of the , where affective states represent the felt cost of deviating from expected sensory inputs, driving unconsciously before entering awareness. Empirical support for this brainstem-centric theory draws from observations of decorticate animals and anencephalic children, who exhibit wakefulness, alertness, and a range of emotional behaviors despite lacking functional cortices. These cases demonstrate that basic phenomenal awareness persists without cortical representations, contradicting claims that consciousness emerges solely from integrated sensory data in neocortical networks. Solms cites historical and contemporary lesion studies showing heightened emotional responsiveness in such preparations, attributing this to intact upper brainstem mechanisms that regulate arousal and valence without perceptual content. This evidence underscores his assertion that affect constitutes the elemental form of consciousness, as these entities display goal-directed actions tied to bodily needs, not abstract cognition. Solms critiques information-processing metaphors in neuroscience for overlooking the causal primacy of unconscious affects, which propel behavior via homeostatic imperatives rather than detached computation. Mainstream models, he argues, treat the brain as a passive Bayesian inference engine, but fail to account for why prediction errors are felt—a process he links to midbrain structures valuing outcomes against survival priors. Neuroimaging data, including functional MRI studies of predictive coding, reveal affective signals modulating free energy minimization in subcortical hubs before cortical elaboration, providing mechanistic evidence that valenced feelings, not neutral data flows, generate subjective experience. His framework thus offers falsifiable predictions, such as preserved affective consciousness in cortical-damaged states, countering reductive materialist dismissals of qualia as epiphenomenal or illusory by grounding them in quantifiable physiological functions.

Publications

Major Books

The Neuropsychology of Dreams: A Clinico-Anatomical Study (1997) examines dreaming through analysis of data from 359 neurological cases, establishing that dream generation requires mechanisms rather than isolated activation, thus challenging prior models and redefining the anatomical basis of dream . This work synthesizes clinico-anatomical evidence to argue for a motivational rather than perceptual essence of dreams, grounded in empirical observations of dream loss and preservation post-injury. Clinical Studies in Neuro-Psychoanalysis: Introduction to a Depth Neuropsychology (2000), co-authored with Karen Kaplan-Solms, draws on case studies of brain-injured patients to demonstrate correlations between localized neural damage and disruptions in psychoanalytic constructs such as repression and , providing evidence for integrating with neurological assessment. The book uses specific clinical examples, including patients with lesions exhibiting impaired affect regulation, to illustrate how findings validate and refine Freudian mechanisms. The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness (2021) posits that subjective emerges from affective, homeostatic imperatives in the upper , supported by and studies that dissociate feeling from cortical processing, thereby countering computational theories emphasizing integration in higher regions. Solms employs data from decorticate patients retaining basic awareness to argue for an evolutionary primacy of need-based drives over representational in generating conscious .

Influential Articles and Edited Works

Solms has published over 300 peer-reviewed articles in , , and related fields, many of which integrate empirical with to propose falsifiable hypotheses about mental processes. A foundational contribution is the 2012 article co-authored with , "What is neuropsychoanalysis? Clinically relevant studies of the minded brain," which defines the field as an empirical endeavor using clinical and neuroscientific data to test psychoanalytic constructs, emphasizing brain-lesion studies and affective over purely interpretive methods.00238-5) This paper argues for methodological rigor by prioritizing observable behavioral and physiological correlates, such as disrupted in brainstem lesions, to validate claims about unconscious drives rather than relying on untestable alone.00238-5) Collaborative works with Panksepp further advanced testable neuropsychoanalytic models by mapping Freud's id to subcortical "primal" emotion systems identified in animal research. In "The 'id' knows more than the 'ego' admits: neuropsychoanalytic and primal consciousness perspectives on the interface between affective and " (2012), they used decorticate animal data showing preserved SEEKING, FEAR, and other affective behaviors to empirically ground the id as a brainstem-mediated system of innate needs, distinct from cortical , thereby providing causal evidence for affective primacy in over learned associations. These studies cite deep-brain experiments eliciting raw in mammals, offering replicable metrics to assess psychoanalytic against reductionist cognitive models. More recent articles address debates by incorporating data. In " coherence, , and : an active inference account" (2024), Solms and colleagues analyze alignment between subjective feelings and autonomic states, proposing that mechanisms—evidenced by EEG and pupillometry in sleep-wake transitions—underpin conscious experience, countering higher-order theories with variational free-energy principles derived from in dysregulation disorders. This work integrates empirical findings from mesodiencephalic lesions, where affect persists without , to argue for affect as the origin of , testable via precision interventions. Solms has also edited special issues and volumes synthesizing these themes, such as contributions to Neuropsychoanalysis (e.g., Volume 22, 2020), where he curated peer-reviewed discussions on 's implications for Freudian revisionism, ensuring interdisciplinary scrutiny of claims like the "conscious id."

Recognition and Awards

Scientific Honors

Mark Solms received the Sigourney Prize in 2011 from the Mary Sigourney Trust, an international award recognizing advancements in , specifically for his discovery of mechanisms underlying and efforts to integrate psychoanalytic methods with . He was awarded the Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award by the in 2017, honoring empirical contributions to bridging and brain science. Solms earned the Harry Oppenheimer Fellowship Award in 2018 from the Oppenheimer Memorial Trust, South Africa's premier research accolade, for interdisciplinary work on and affect regulation grounded in neurological data. In recognition of his impacts on models of consciousness, he holds Honorary Fellowship in the American College of Psychiatrists, awarded in 2016. Solms secured a $150,000 grant from the Chapman Family Foundation between 2002 and 2004 to support the Arnold Pfeffer Center for Neuropsychoanalysis, enabling data-driven empirical studies at the intersection of and .

International Lectures and Influence

Solms has engaged in international debates and delivered keynote addresses that have advanced the dialogue between psychoanalysis and neuroscience, particularly in defending empirical foundations for dream theory and consciousness. In 2006, he participated in a prominent debate with J. Allan Hobson at a conference in Tucson, Arizona, challenging Hobson's activation-synthesis model by presenting lesion evidence and pharmacological data indicating that dreaming depends on mesolimbic dopamine activation for motivational content rather than mere brainstem random signaling, thereby supporting psychoanalytic interpretations of dreams as wish-fulfillments linked to forebrain mechanisms. His lectures at global forums, including the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society meetings and events like the 2019 Robert S. Wallerstein Lecture, have emphasized neuropsychoanalytic bridges to affective neuroscience, influencing interdisciplinary research on emotional processing and the brain basis of mental states. Solms' contributions are reflected in his profile, which records over 20,000 citations across works reconciling cognitive and affective neuroscience perspectives on emotional experience, underscoring his impact on fields integrating with neurobiological data. In recent years, Solms has extended his influence through podcasts and interviews, such as a 2023 discussion with , , and Donald Hoffman on mechanisms, and 2024 appearances addressing the origins of subjective experience over higher cortical models. These platforms have facilitated broader dissemination of his arguments for deriving theories from affective drives and , drawing on cross-species to prioritize causal mechanisms grounded in empirical functions.

Winemaking and Broader Initiatives

Establishment of Solms-Delta

Mark Solms purchased the historic Delta farm in the Valley in 2001, initiating the establishment of Solms-Delta by integrating it with his family's longstanding Solms property to form a unified wine estate spanning approximately 78 hectares of historical land grants dating back to 1690. The acquisition occurred amid South Africa's post-apartheid economic transitions, where many legacy farms faced decline due to shifting labor dynamics and market pressures, prompting Solms to pursue a revival focused on commercial viability through quality rather than . Under Solms's management, the estate emphasized sustainable to rehabilitate neglected vineyards, prioritizing grape varietals suited to the region's for consistent production of premium wines, including the Cape Jazz Shiraz—a low-alcohol sparkling characterized by effervescent strawberry and cherry notes, which earned an 86-point rating from Wine Enthusiast for its refreshing profile. This approach relied on self-financed investments without external subsidies, leveraging the farm's inherent advantages in and to achieve critical recognition and market success by 2007, when the business had matured into a thriving operation. Solms's commitment reflected a deliberate of long-term causal , applying disciplined planning to counteract the uncertainties of the era's and economic reforms, thereby restoring the estate's and positioning it as a model of resilient agricultural enterprise in the Cape Winelands.

Social Transformation and Heritage Projects

In 2005, Mark Solms and his family established the Wijn de Caab Trust at Solms-Delta, granting historically disadvantaged workers and residents—numbering approximately 200—a 33% equity stake in the estate, with overall worker ownership reaching 50% through combined trusts. This structure facilitated profit-sharing from wine sales, funding housing refurbishments, healthcare, education, and skills training programs, which contrasted with slower government-led land reforms by prioritizing direct economic participation and measurable improvements in living standards over expropriation. Complementing these efforts, the Music van de Caab project, launched in the early under the Delta Trust, created a and community initiative dedicated to preserving rural music traditions rooted in Khoi, San, slave, and indigenous influences. This evidence-informed arts program employed music as a therapeutic tool for addressing intergenerational trauma among communities, fostering cultural reconnection to the estate's slave-era history through interactive exhibitions and performances, rather than abstract reparative gestures. In 2024, Solms reflected on the vineyard's 327-year slave legacy through a psychoanalytic lens, advocating "working through" historical grievances via individual psychological processing to promote agency and resolution, distinct from collective victimhood frameworks that risk perpetuating dependency. These initiatives yielded tangible outcomes, including sustained worker retention and community cohesion, as evidenced by the estate's operational continuity and profit reinvestment into social infrastructure.

Controversies and Criticisms

Debates on Neuropsychoanalysis Validity

Neuropsychoanalysis, as advanced by Mark Solms, has encountered skepticism from cognitive neuroscientists who argue that it inherits ' historical unfalsifiability, rendering it akin to by prioritizing interpretive narratives over testable predictions. Critics contend that integrating Freudian concepts with biologizes subjective experience, potentially sidelining the role of and meaning-making in mental processes. For instance, Rachel Blass and Zvi Carmeli (2007) critiqued neuropsychoanalysis for adopting a reductionist biologism that limits understanding of psychic meanings to neural correlates, arguing it fails to address ' non-empirical strengths. Solms counters these dismissals by emphasizing empirical validations through studies, which demonstrate the causal primacy of affective mechanisms rooted in the over higher cortical . In analyses of patients with mesodiencephalic s, persists only when upper structures regulating homeostatic feelings (pleasure-displeasure axes tied to survival needs) remain intact, even if areas are damaged; conversely, isolated cortical s do not abolish , challenging purely computational models of mind. These findings support neuropsychoanalysis' core claim of innate emotional drives as foundational to subjectivity, with reproducible evidence from over 300 neurological cases linking dreaming cessation to ventromedial quadrantic s rather than REM sleep disruption alone, thus fulfilling Popperian via disprovable predictions. Debates have highlighted psychoanalysis' testability, as in the May 3, 2019, NYU event where Solms, alongside Cristina Alberini, affirmed its relevance to against opponents and Robert Stickgold, who questioned empirical utility. Solms defended predictive successes, such as brainstem-targeted interventions aiding arousal in patients by prioritizing affective reactivation over environmental stimuli, aligning with neuropsychoanalytic models of the "conscious id." Within , internal disagreements focus on neuropsychoanalysis' alleged over-reliance on pleasure-pain , which some view as diluting Freud's concept of drive as a paradoxical beyond mere biological . Rafael Holmberg (2024), in a Lacanian-inflected , argues Solms conflates drive with evolutionary survival mechanisms, neglecting its inherent failure and subjective contingency, thus compromising ' ontological depth. Solms responds with lesion-derived data affirming affect's evolutionary and causal precedence, evidenced by conserved circuitry where hedonic hotspots generate valenced feelings independently of learning, thereby grounding therapeutic change in biological realism rather than indeterminate prevalent in some psychoanalytic traditions.

Challenges in Winemaking and Land Reform

In 2018, Solms-Delta encountered severe operational and governance challenges stemming from its equity-sharing model, which allocated up to 50% ownership to a workers' trust under South Africa's 50/50 policy. Beneficiary disputes arose as workers were initially misled about their stakes—believing they held a third or half share—while the Wijn de Caab Trust, established in 2006, represented broader community interests rather than farm-specific workers, leading to confusion over representation. Management tensions escalated due to overlapping roles, with trustees including Mark Solms and partner Richard Astor also serving as company directors, which undermined independent oversight; workers only gained an elected committee for representation in January 2018 after external advice. These issues compounded chronic losses of R1–3 million monthly, totaling around R30 million annually by late 2015, despite government investments of R65–83.3 million between 2016 and 2018 for land, assets, and . The Department of Rural Development and abruptly withdrew funding on May 31, 2018, citing unresolved challenges, which pushed the estate toward and highlighted frictions in implementing top-down equity transfers without aligned incentives or skills. Resolution came through legal mechanisms, including business proceedings initiated in July 2017 and High Court interventions; was postponed indefinitely in September 2018 after negotiations, with Solms and Astor offering to transfer their shares to workers pending government approval, preserving the trust structure amid ongoing debt of R46 million from prior loans. However, persistent mismanagement during the six-year business —such as unpaid bills, unsold wine, and unharvested grapes—exacerbated failures, leading to worker complaints over basic services like and eventual government lease cancellation. Criticisms of in Solms-Delta's heritage and projects, such as the Wijn de Caab Trust and education initiatives, portray them as neopaternalistic, where white ownership retained de facto control despite formal stakes, potentially perpetuating dependency rather than true autonomy. These efforts did yield measurable worker benefits, including 50% ownership stakes via the trust (up from an initial 33% split) and literacy improvements through on-site teachers and placements in Model C schools, enhancing access to historically denied under apartheid-era farm labor systems. Yet, outcomes were uneven, with later deteriorations in living conditions underscoring limits when business viability faltered, as in trusts and lack of commercial expertise eroded gains. In the broader South African land reform context, Solms-Delta's partnership approach—retaining private expertise while granting shares—empirically outperformed statist interventions like restitution farms, where 70–90% of transfers failed due to skills gaps, poor incentives, and production collapse post-expropriation. Expropriation alternatives, as seen in , often led to agricultural output drops exceeding 60% without property rights or market signals, whereas models emphasizing co-ownership preserved yields longer by aligning interests, though Solms-Delta's case illustrates persistent risks from governance frictions and over-reliance on subsidies. This underscores causal realism in reform: top-down equity without bottom-up capacities frequently yields underperformance compared to incentive-based property mechanisms.

Personal Life

Family and Relationships

Mark Solms descends from the South African branch of the , tracing its lineage to the in , with historical involvement in dating back centuries. The family's ownership of the Delta farm in , granted in 1690, provided the foundation for Solms' acquisition and transformation of the Solms-Delta estate in 2001, intertwining familial heritage with his agricultural endeavors alongside his academic career in neuropsychoanalysis. This estate connection reflects a deliberate extension of family legacy into professional dualities, balancing scientific pursuits with land stewardship in post-apartheid . Solms married Karen Kaplan, a psychoanalyst and neuropsychologist, in 1985; the couple collaborated extensively on neuro-psychoanalytic research, including co-authoring works on clinical studies in the field. They have two children: a son, Leonard Julian de Gier Solms, and a , Ella. Public details on his family remain limited, underscoring Solms' emphasis on despite his prominence in academia and . This familial support structure has underpinned Solms' ability to maintain transcontinental commitments, commuting between , , and other international centers while managing the Solms-Delta operations. The family's role in sustaining these pursuits is evident in Solms' references to shared analytical interests and the estate's communal projects, which foster a network enabling his interdisciplinary work without overt personal disclosures.

Hobbies and Philosophical Views

Solms maintains an interest in that transcends professional endeavors, deriving personal enjoyment from the sensory qualities of wine and its historical traditions, including the preservation of mementos such as aged bottles from social evenings at his Solms-Delta estate. This pursuit aligns with his broader curiosity about affective experiences, informed by his research on and , though he frames it as a activity rooted in rather than empirical investigation. Philosophically, Solms prioritizes empirical truth-seeking and causal analysis over ideological narratives, applying psychoanalytic principles to question cultural assumptions and emphasize personal agency in historical reckonings. He critiques the post-apartheid "" idealism as overly optimistic, arguing in a 2023 interview that it overlooks deep unresolved traumas from centuries of , , and apartheid-era injustices, which manifest in ongoing social mistrust and clinical presentations of collective wounds. Solms' 2001 initiative to redistribute farm resources as reparative action, he later reflected, exemplified a "manic" overcompensation that failed due to these entrenched psychic barriers, underscoring the need for gradual over hasty . This commitment to unvarnished realism extends to his staunch defense of Freud against modern cancellations, asserting that empirically corroborates foundational concepts like the unconscious—once dismissed as an —while refining outdated specifics through evidence-based revisions. Solms maintains that Freud's neurological origins and prefigure affective models of mind, rejecting politicized repudiations in favor of testable hypotheses that withstand scrutiny.

References

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