The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness

by Mark Solms

Overview

A revelatory new theory of consciousness that returns emotions to the center of mental life.

For Mark Solms, one of the boldest thinkers in contemporary neuroscience, discovering how consciousness comes about has been a lifetime’s quest. Scientists consider it the "hard problem" because it seems an impossible task to understand why we feel a subjective sense of self and how it arises in the brain.

Venturing into the elementary physics of life, Solms has now arrived at an astonishing answer. In The Hidden Spring, he brings forward his discovery in accessible language and graspable analogies.

Solms is a frank and fearless guide on an extraordinary voyage from the dawn of neuropsychology and psychoanalysis to the cutting edge of contemporary neuroscience, adhering to the medically provable. But he goes beyond other neuroscientists by paying close attention to the subjective experiences of hundreds of neurological patients, many of whom he treated, whose uncanny conversations expose much about the brain’s obscure reaches.

Most importantly, you will be able to recognize the workings of your own mind for what they really are, including every stray thought, pulse of emotion, and shift of attention. The Hidden Spring will profoundly alter your understanding of your own subjective experience.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780393542028
Publisher:	Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date:	02/16/2021
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	432
Sales rank:	444,279
File size:	5 MB

About the Author

Mark Solms discovered the brain mechanisms of dreaming. He is director of neuropsychology, Neuroscience Institute at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, where he lives. He is also honorary lecturer in neurosurgery, St Bartholomew’s and Royal London Hospital School of Medicine, and honorary Fellow, American College of Psychiatrists.

Table of Contents

List of Figures xi

Introduction 1

1 The Stuff of Dreams 6

2 Before and After Freud 30

3 The Cortical Fallacy 51

4 What Is Experienced? 78

5 Feelings 92

6 The Source 122

7 The Free Energy Principle 148

8 A Predictive Hierarchy 178

9 Why and How Consciousness Arises 190

10 Back to the Cortex 213

11 The Hard Problem 238

12 Making a Mind 270

Postscript 300

Appendix: Arousal and Information 306

Acknowledgements 312

Notes 313

References 365

Index 391

Editorial Reviews

01/25/2021

“The hard problem of consciousness is said to be the biggest unsolved puzzle of contemporary neuroscience,” writes psychoanalyst and neuropsychologist Solms (The Brain and the Inner World) in this wide-ranging survey. Solms answers such questions as how consciousness came to be, what it is, and whether it could be artificially replicated—his theory proposes that consciousness is an evolutionary response to the human organism’s need to minimize the energy it expends to meet its physical and psychological needs. Solms rejects cognitive psychologists’ theories that consciousness is lodged in the brain’s cerebral cortex—it “is far more primitive than that,” he writes. To support his theory, Solms provides case studies (he discusses a patient experiencing confabulations in terms of Freud’s notions of subjectivity), deep technical dives into the makeup of the human brain, and weaves in entropy and thermodynamics. Solms concludes with a somewhat manically written discussion of the ethics of a conscious machine, complete with a plan for what he’d do if he were able to build one: he’ll remove the battery, patent the process, and organize a symposium. His theory is complex, as is his writing (sentences such as “The cholinergic basal forebrain circuits... constrain the reward mechanism of the mesocortal-mesolimbic dopamine circuit in memory retrieval” are common). Still, readers who stay the course will find much to consider. (Feb.)

Publishers Weekly

"Solms’s efforts…have been truly pioneering. This unification is clearly the direction for the future."

Eric Kandel

"Solms’s vital work has never ignored the lived, felt experience of human beings. His ideas look a lot like the future to me."

Siri Hustvedt

"[R]emarkably clear, accommodating and exciting to read…The Hidden Spring provides a necessary reminder that rational thinking isn't all it seems to be."

Jess Keiser

"This is truly a remarkable book. It changes everything."

Brian Eno

"To say this work is encyclopedic is to diminish its poetic, psychological and theoretical achievement. This is required reading."

Susie Orbach

"At last the emperor has found some clothes! For decades, consciousness has been perceived as an epiphenomenon, little more than an illusion that can't really make things happen. Solms takes a thrilling new approach to the problem, grounded in modern neurobiology but finding meaning in older ideas going back to Freud. This is an exciting book."

Nick Lane

"One of the worthiest efforts to come out of neuroscience in recent memory."

Jason Kehe

"Intriguing…There is plenty to provoke and fascinate along the way."

Anil Seth

"Nobody bewitched by these mysteries [of consciousness] can afford to ignore the solution proposed by Mark Solms…Fascinating, wide-ranging and heartfelt."

Oliver Burkeman

"A remarkably bold fusion of ideas from psychoanalysis, psychology, and the frontiers of theoretical neuroscience that takes aim at the biggest question there is. Solms will challenge your most basic beliefs."

Matthew Cobb

"This treatment of consciousness and artificial sentience should be taken very seriously."

Karl Friston

2020-11-18
A densely argued investigation of the origins of consciousness.

In this highly, sometimes overly, detailed narrative, Solms, who teaches at the Neuroscience Institute at the University of Cape Town, takes three paths to a theory of consciousness: “the elementary physics of life, the most recent advances in both computational and affective neuroscience and the subtleties of subjective experience that were traditionally explored by psychoanalysis.” These lines of investigation lead him to reject the long-held view that consciousness arises in the cerebral cortex, the locus of intelligence, but instead is to be found in a far more ancient, even primitive part of the brain, deep in the brainstem “that humans share with fishes.” The author’s insight comes from his research into dreams, phenomena that are also shared by other forms of animal life. He examines the mental behavior of hydrocephalic children, who, lacking the cortex, ought in the older theory to lack consciousness but who in fact do not. Solms’ argument, which is often repetitive, can be daunting. In part, this is because of its language, as when he writes, “accurate memory search and monitoring functions turn out to depend in part upon the cholinergic basal forebrain circuits, which constrain the ‘reward’ mechanisms of the mesocortical-mesolimbic dopamine circuit in memory retrieval.” In part, it is because he alternately takes issue with or builds on the work of other scholars of consciousness, such as Antonio Damasio and Bud Craig, familiarity with whose theories is nearly a prerequisite for readers. Still, Solms makes valuable points: He shows that consciousness is “part of nature” and not of “some parallel universe…beyond the reach of science,” and he gives a fruitful account of how memory processing, “cortical consciousness,” automaticity, and other brain functions operate. He concludes, repetitively, that “consciousness is part of nature and it is mathematically tractable.”

Readers up to date with the scholarly controversy surrounding consciousness will find this a useful addition to it.

Kirkus Reviews