Mark Solms

I had a difficult time with this book, despite being a clinical neurologist, and therefore familiar with the neuroanatomy and physiology. The neurological cases were all interesting and helped to loosen the dense and compacted soil of the physiology and philosophy in the book. I was especially struck by the observations of hydranencephalic children. I think the idea of looking at consciousness from the perspective of the being who is conscious produced excellent results for understanding the show more concept. That feelings must be the source of consciousness and cannot exist unless there is a conscious perception is very obvious once it is pointed out. I also completely understood his case against the cortical localization of consciousness. I know from clinical work that a lesion in the midbrain is the usual cause for coma. After several readings of the chapters on self-organizing systems, Markov blankets, Friston free energy and informational entropy, I still do not understand the concepts and do not know why this is so central to the account of consciousness.
I had never heard of familial calcification of the amygdala (Urbach-Wiethe disease) a disorder that is used as an example of the troubles a loss of fear could produce.
Fascinating in places, in other parts intractable. show less

A highly readable and extremely interesting take on how Psychotherapy and counselling work. Obviously the author is a big fan of Sigmund Freud and this comes across. However, he is not entirely biased towards him and raises some very good unbiased criticism. His knowledge of neuroscience and current developments in neuro psychiatry really are quite astounding. I recommended both for the general reader and also those with interest in

Really interesting book about consciousness, by a senior neuroscientist who was also (of all things) trained as a Freudian psychoanalyst. On top of those, he also seems to know a lot about physics and information theory. Needless to say, large chunks of the book were too complex for me, but the remainder was very absorbing and educational.

One of his main points is that the origin and basis of consciousness has more to do with emotions (feelings) and less to do with cognition or perception.

Solms uses "Free Energy Principle" (neurobiology) to argue that consciousness is about feeling, not just thinking. It provides a biological "will to live" that functions like the Buddhist Tanha (craving).