Mark Solms’s Neuropsychoanalytic Meta-Neuropsychology

This chapter outlines Mark Solms’s meta-neuropsychology. I synthesize his arguments for dynamically localizing the ego to the neocortex and the id to subcortical, upper brainstem regions. By integrating Jaak Panksepp’s affective neuroscience, Solms makes the profound argument that the id is affectively consciousness. One can then dynamically localize Freud’s systems conscious, preconscious, and unconscious to functional neuroanatomy. I additionally discuss how Solms integrates Friston’s Free Energy Principle into his meta-neuropsychology of a predictive ego seeking to minimize uncertainty rendered salient by the affective id.