While Freud’s theories foretold aspects of modern neuroscience, psychoanalyst and neuropsychologist, Mark Solms,
elaborates a contemporary formulation positing that, when it comes to the id and ego, Freud
had it backwards in that the id is conscious while the ego is primarily unconscious.
In this seminar, we will discuss Mark Solm’s work The Hidden Spring, also highlighting his longtime
collaborator, neuroscientist, Jack Panksepp, who shone a light on Freud’s insight that feelings should be prioritized
over cognition. Exploring the id as a metaphor for our inherited emotional systems, we will
analyze how memory reconsolidation both drives and revises our actions, influenced by our initial caregivers
and others who endow us with the feedback that shapes and refines who we are, what we find meaningful, and, for better or for
worse, how we live our lives.
*******************************************************************************
