The Brain and the Inner World: An Introduction to the Neuroscience of the Subjective Experience

I prefer clarity even more than brevity. So I am forcing myself to be brief. The book is perfect for me and I am utterly in love with studying human behavior. And I mean deeply studying it involving neuroscience and how the brain works. Other reviews have said much the same as I am trying to say. It is super clear and explanatory in a near perfect way for me bearing in mind that I have been studying neuroscience for about six years and that purely as a hobby that I love. I’ve read many books on neuroscience now and I understand it VASTLY better than I did six years ago but now with this book I feel like some of the mysteries of the brain/mind are close to solved. I WILL NOT say they are totally solved but close. Don’t discount that comment. You may likely agree. It also deserves multiple rereading (at least for me) to have it deeply soak in. After all it’s brain science. Doesn’t just roll off the tongue in casual conversation. I actually think this book would help many many people just starting in neuroscience (they would have to study it deeply though but it is not in a super technical style) and in the mental health profession and doctors of all kinds. I must say it is certainly in my top two or three favorite books of all time. I would consider it a tragedy if I were stranded on a deserted island and I did not have this book. OK there I’m done.

i thought solms was a bad guy -- hobson in his dream literature kind of racks him over the coals and his real target of course is freud. being an old-style humanities liberal the discontent of civilization kind of person, i was half ashamed of my past, and have been studiously reading the Right stuff to meet hobson's criteria, and lo and behold, solms is not at all a bad guy. i think he's one of the best writers on current neuroscience. a lot of what he has done here i read first in affective neuroscience, but i had a hard time putting the pieces in place although i understood the pieces themselves reasonably ok. i do computer science, so i'm not intimated by complex systems, even ones with multiple inscrutable names for the same thing -- after all, i helped invent c++. but solms understands to my understanding how it all fits together, and i would not have probably reached that level of integration, if ever, on my own, for a number of years. for that, i am truly in his debt. i mean, i don't think these people write these books just for money. they are in some bizarre way in my opinion giving their best for civilization and civility. to me, in the shadow of the human slaughter going on, this material is crucial to a discussion of any national policy. if we don't understand why we do the awful things we are capable of, as well as the good things, how can we ever hope to tilt the balance. what solms has done is given modern neuroscience a story that someone like myself can understand -- for me, i can appreciate his binding freud to neuroscience, with hardly a flinch. i need to understand as a person what it means to be a sexual person, to be a parent, to be a child -- solms grounds my understanding in both neuro-science and the world i narrate to myself to understand adversity. i bought a copy for my 16 year old daughter. i don't know if she will read it, but that's how important a contribution to understanding this book is -- but one should never end a sentence with "is" -- so, i tacked this on for a better form :-)

Okay, it's presented as an introduction, but still I find it a inexcusable oversight to not include the work and findings on neuroscience by Michael Gazzaniga and especially Iain McGilchrist.Chapter Six shows how the latest neurological discoveries about dreams and REM strongly corroborate the theories of Sigmund Freud. However, it would have served the author better to have studied the profoundly relevant ideas on dreams of Freud's secretary, the great Otto Rank. This is especially so given that the new science corroborates his theories 100 percent. Rank, the forgotten genius, published his ideas on dreams decades ago. Science hasn't caught up yet. He has no citation in this book.I highly recommend this book despite these few oversights. It's written for the lay person and covers a lot of important ground. It is vitally important for readers who want to know more about the surreptitious move toward Idealism, among certain scientists rightly disenchanted with Materialism and reductionism. With consummate sleight of hand the author obliquely concedes how wrong Materialists have been in their understanding of consciousness.The author reaches out a hand to the Freudians, calling for a new rapport between neuroscience and psychoanalysis. It might never have broken had behaviorism, neuromythology (aka neuroscience) and Materialism not arrogantly closed the doors and lorded it over the sciences years ago. Solms fails to mention that small detail. Now suddenly, due to new uncomfortable discoveries about the brain, there's a brand new window display. Newbies donning their white lab coats won't even guess what happened in the past, and the wholesale suppression of open-minded, non-Materialist thinkers by the Establishment. Oh well, haven't we learned that tyranny is always better organized that freedom, and that when dealing with tyrants one always finds both hands tied behind one's back.I recommend Sleepwalkers, Ghost in the Machine, and Act of Creation by Arthur Koestler, Nature's Mind and Tales from Both Sides of the Brain, by Michael Gazzaniga, and The Master and His Emissary, by Iain McGilchrist.Visit my article "Light, Magic, Masonry," for more info and recommendations.* * * *

Awesome, the book gives a lot of knowledge in the inner mind, and some insights indo the hard problem of cosnciousness

So interesting and fascinating

Mark Solms is an excellent writer and educator. He takes his reader with him in a gentle and careful manner. I appreciated this as I am not a neurologist.PRINTING quality:The bookblock of this book was wobbly in all directions!I assume it was a printed on demand copy. I regret this.What made it wors is that the book was insufficiently protected. It ended with a damaged frontcover in my mailbox.

6 stelle per il contenuto del libro, la neoropsicologia spiegata benissimo. 2 stelle per il formato Kindle, le illustrazioni (essenziali per capire il funzionamento del cervello) sono minuscole.

A highly readable book bridging the gap between psychoanalysis and neuropsychology, two domains seemingly so far apart and yet so close. This book translates psychoanalytic wisdom into the words of science, thus making it believable and understandable to a wider audience. A must read for the psychoanalytic sceptic and the laboratory snowed-in neuroscientist.