The Neuropsychology of Dreams

Neuropsychoanalysis: Where Dreams Come From (Freud Was Right)

At a first glance, neuroscience and psychoanalysis seem to be an odd pair — just not if you ask Mark Solms, who is a neuroscientist and psychoanalyst.

He might argue that the combination of the two, which called Neuropsychoanalysis, can help answer age old questions, such as What is the meaning of dreams? or Why does consciousness exist? which Solms lays out in his book “The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness”.

From Neuroscience to Psychoanalysis

In fact, the combination of neuroscience and psychoanalysis is as old as psychoanalysis itself. Sigmund Freud was himself a neurologist. Solms refers back to an old forgotten paper Freud wrote in 1895 his “Project for a scientific psychology” in which Freud tried “to place his early insights about the mind on a neuroscientific footing.” (p. 30).

But the scientific methods of his time were just not sufficient, which, as Solms writes, led Freud to develop the method of psychoanalysis to gain insight into the mind through the psychological rather than the neuroscientific route.