Mark Solms Ph.D.

Mark Solms is best known for his discoveries regarding the brain mechanisms of dreaming and for his efforts to integrate psychoanalytic methods and concepts with the neurosciences. He was educated at Pretoria Boys’ School and the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. He left South Africa in 1989 to undertake psychoanalytic training at the Institute of Psychoanalysis in London, while he lectured in the Neurosurgery Department of the Royal London Hospital and in the Psychology Dept of University College London. In 2002, he returned to South Africa, where he is currently Director of Neuropsychology in the Neuroscience Institute of the University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital. He is co-chair (with Cristina Alberini) of the International Neuropsychoanalysis Society.

He is an ‘A1’ rated researcher (National Research Foundation) and a member of the Academy of Sciences of South Africa. He has received numerous honours such as the Sigourney Prize, the Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award of the International Psychoanalytical Association and Honorary Fellowship of the American College of Psychiatrists. He is Training Director of the South African Psychoanalytical Association (of which he was the founding President), Director of the Science Dept of the American Psychoanalytic Association and Research Chair of the International Psychoanalytical Association. He has published 350 neuroscientific and psychoanalytic journal articles and book chapters, and he has authored eight books. The Brain and the Inner World was translated into 13 languages. His collected papers were published as The Feeling Brain. A new book, The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness, will appear in February. He is the editor and translator of the forthcoming Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (24 volumes) and Complete Neuroscientific Works of Sigmund Freud (4 volumes).