This lecture updated Freudian views of consciousness and the unconscious, and of affect and the drives, in the light of recent advances in neuroscience. Professor Mark Solms argued that consciousness is not primarily a perceptual function but rather an affective function, that drives are conscious (indeed, that they are the source of consciousness), and that ‘the unconscious’ and ‘the id’ are not the same thing. Freud’s classification of the drives and his understanding of unconscious cognitive processes (including the mechanism of repression) have also been updated in the light of these innovations.

Professor Mark Solms was born in 1961. He was educated at Pretoria Boys’ School and the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. He emigrated to England in 1988. There he worked at University College London (Dept of Psychology) and the Royal London Hospital (Dept of Neurosurgery) while he trained at the Institute of Psychoanalysis. He returned to South Africa in 2002, and now holds the Chair of Neuropsychology at the Neuroscience Institute of the University of Cape Town and Groote Schuur Hospital. His rating by the National Research Foundation is 'A1' and he is a Member of the Academy of Science of South Africa. He has received numerous prizes and honors, such as the Sigourney Prize, the IPA’s Outstanding Scientific Achievement Award and Honorary Fellowship of the American College of Psychiatrists. He is Training Director of the South African Psychoanalytical Association, Director of the Science Dept of the American Psychoanalytic Association and Research Chair of the International Psychoanalytical Association. He has published 350 articles in both neuroscientific and psychoanalytic journals, and he has authored eight books. The Brain and the Inner World was translated into 13 languages. His collected papers were published recently as The Feeling Brain. His latest book, The Hidden Spring, appeared in early 2021. He is the editor and translator of the forthcoming Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (24 vols) and Complete Neuroscientific Works of Sigmund Freud (4 vols).