"Solms and his colleagues are making a brilliant, determined, scrupulous, and (one wants to say) tactful endeavor to approach, in a new way, the oldest question of all-the mysterious relation of body and mind."
-From the Foreword by Oliver Sacks "There is much to admire in this text. The authors display an uncanny ability to translate the obliquity of brain science into a user-friendly package. Solms' and Turnbull's skill in gathering and distilling the vast information of current neuroscience, presenting it so as to be understood by the simplest neophyte and connecting it to psychoanalytic theory is a near miracle. In fact, the authors' ability to simplify extends to psychoanalytic theory itself. Freud can be no less complicated than neuroscience and both are made bite sized by Solms and Turnbull. Furthermore, their opening thesis, that advances in the field of neuroscience beg to be melded with psychoanalytic tried and true, is so eloquently presented and supported, even the most jaded critic must take notice."-Metapsychology Traditionally, neuroscientists did not consider subjective mental states like consciousness, emotion, and dreaming to be serious topics for brain research. The "inner world" of the mind was viewed as the preserve of psychoanalysis and related disciplines. Following the demise of behaviorism, the advent of functional brain imaging technology, and the emergence of a molecular neurobiology, however, these topics have suddenly assumed center stage in leading neuroscientific laboratories around the world. This shift in perspective has produced an explosion of new insights into the natural laws that govern our inner life. THE BRAIN AND THE INNER WORLD is an eagerly awaited account of this momentous and ongoing revolution. Written for the general reader by two pioneers of the field, it is a guide through these exciting new discoveries, highlighting how the old psychodynamic concepts are being forged into a new scientific framework for understanding subjective experience. "This is erudite and fascinating. The authors show us that modern neuroscience allows us to find neurological correlates of some basic psychoanalytic concepts, but in doing so, and this is important, they do not fall into the reductionist explanations so dominant in neuroscience today. Their approach is refreshing and their arguments are well-reasoned."
-Lesley Rogers |
