Is there a cure? Rethinking Freud with Mark Solms
Andrea Hiott and Mark Solms (Conversation 3), Summer 2026
chemical imbalances, the power of love and embodied participation
Mark Solms began translating Freud’s neuroscientific writings in the late 1980s, then gave twenty-nine years to revising the translation of Freud’s psychological works. In this episode, Solms joins Andrea Hiott to talk about his new book, The Only Cure: Freud and the Neuroscience of Mental Healing — and to make a surprising case: that far from being the discredited figure many take him for, Freud built a model of the mind, from the inside, that modern neuroscience is now confirming from the outside.
Together they explore multiple memory systems and the unconscious as things we repeat rather than remember; why transference is a far bigger phenomenon than its jargon suggests; the damage done by the “chemical imbalance” story of depression; the stubborn role of time in real change; and, in the end, care — the idea that psychoanalysis is ultimately a cure by love. Throughout, they return to the show’s animating theme: holding paradox, and refusing the false choice between the subjective and the objective, feeling and fact.
They discuss dual-aspect monism, subjective and objective perspectives, multiple memory systems, unconscious processing, state-dependent memory, and transference as the enactment of non-declarative “action policies” that therapy makes visible and revisable through repeated working-through over time. Solms links these ideas to care, politics, and mortality, ending with Freud’s “cure by love,” followed by Andrea reading Seamus Heaney’s “From The Cure at Troy.”
About the guest: Mark Solms is a neuropsychologist, psychoanalyst, and world-leading pioneer of neuropsychoanalysis. He discovered the brain mechanisms of dreaming, serves as science director of the American Psychoanalytic Association, and is the translator and editor of the Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud. His previous book was The Hidden Spring (2021).
00:00 Welcome and Guest Intro
03:50 Freud Translator Journey
05:20 Why Call It Cure
07:00 Reframing Freud Today
11:41 Freud as Neuroscientist
19:57 Memory Systems and Unconscious
31:41 Subjective Meets Objective
39:08 Chemical Imbalance Myth
43:23 Needs Feelings and Therapy
51:03 Pills Versus Talking
52:09 Limits Of Medication
53:31 When Pills Help
54:41 What Is Transference
56:04 Infantile Amnesia
57:17 Interpreting Patterns
01:01:25 Why Therapy Takes Time
01:04:46 Cost Versus Care
01:10:59 Teddy And Polypharmacy
01:19:20 Short Termism Trap
01:23:13 Cure By Love
01:25:37 AI Therapy Limits
01:31:25 Mortality And Meaning
01:34:55 Closing Thanks
01:36:09 Heaney Poem Easter Egg
KEY THEMES
Freud was a neuroscientist first. Over 23 years he contributed to neuron theory, neuroanatomy, and clinical neurology. His 1891 work on aphasia reframed language as a psychological function — the seed of psychoanalysis. Because his neuroscientific writings were never translated into English, this side of Freud stayed invisible.
Two perspectives on one thing. Solms argues for dual-aspect monism: the subjective and objective are two views of a single reality, not rival teams. Feelings can only be empirically observed through introspection — leave them out and you lose half the causal picture.
Memory, the unconscious, and transference. Freud anticipated the modern model of multiple memory systems decades early. Unconscious memories aren’t recalled as images; they’re repeated as “motor policies.” Transference is that repetition made visible — and naming it gives the patient the freedom to revise it (”free won’t”).
Against the “chemical imbalance” myth. The claim that depression is a serotonin deficiency is, for Solms, both conceptually incoherent and empirically disproven. Bad feelings are signals of unmet needs. Medication has a real but limited role — it changes your state, not who you are.
Time, care, and cure by love. Real change is slow because procedural memories are “hard to learn and hard to forget.” Therapy works partly as re-parenting, drawing on the mammalian capacity for care. Cure and care share the Latin root cura — and Solms ends on Freud’s phrase that psychoanalysis is “a cure by love.”
NOTABLE MOMENTS
“One doesn’t cure symptomatically. One cures causally.” “They’re not remembered, they’re repeated.” “It’s called not free will, it’s called free won’t.” “Computers don’t give a damn.” “Reality always wins.”
MENTIONED & FURTHER READING
(fun fact: both Karl and Andrea’s books are blurbed by Karl Friston)
The Only Cure: Freud and the Neuroscience of Mental Healing — Mark Solms
The Hidden Spring (2021) — Mark Solms
The Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (2024) — translated/edited by Solms
Holding Paradox: The Navigational Approach to Mind and Consciousness — Andrea Hiott
Referenced thinkers & ideas: Sigmund Freud, Baruch Spinoza (dual-aspect monism), Hilary Putnam (functionalism), Edward Tolman (multiple memory systems), B. F. Skinner, Donald Hebb, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, 4E cognition and enactivism, Philip Ball, and Freud’s letter to Einstein.
For paid subscribers to Love and Philosophy or the way-making philosophy blog of Andrea Hiott, we’re also sharing this research conversation about Inventing Temperature, operational coherence, and how some of Chang’s ideas could be helpful towards clarifying a navigational approach to mind.
The landmark challenge to the “serotonin theory”
The single most influential recent paper is the umbrella review by Moncrieff and colleagues. Published in Molecular Psychiatry on 20 July 2022, it synthesized systematic reviews and meta-analyses across the main areas of serotonin research and concluded there was no consistent evidence of a relationship between serotonin and depression. It subdivided the hypothesis into six areas: serotonin and 5-HIAA levels in body fluids, serotonin receptor activity, serotonin transporter activity, tryptophan depletion studies, serotonin transporter gene levels, and the interaction between the transporter gene and stress. It became enormously visible — downloaded well over a million times and cited more than 900 times.
Moncrieff J, Cooper RE, Stockmann T, Amendola S, Hengartner MP, Horowitz MA. “The serotonin theory of depression: a systematic umbrella review of the evidence.” Molecular Psychiatry 28:3243–3256 (2022/2023).
Rebuttals and critiques
Several substantial responses argued the review was flawed or attacked a strawman version of the hypothesis:
Bartova L, Lanzenberger R, Rujescu D, Kasper S, et al. “Reply to...” Molecular Psychiatry 28:3153–3154 (2023). A methodological rebuttal.
A large Comment written by 36 experts, led by researchers at King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, published as part of a series in Molecular Psychiatry. Their core arguments: the serotonin theory was never meant to claim depression is caused by an imbalance in a single chemical, but rather described brain changes that could help explain how some antidepressants work; and the 2022 review was methodologically inconsistent with the conventional umbrella review process, summarizing existing results without new analysis and including selectively chosen individual studies.
Rihmer Z, Dome P, Katona C. “Serotonin and depression — a riposte to Moncrieff et al. (2022).” Neuropsychopharmacol Hung 24(3):120-125 (2022). Argues the paper can cause misunderstandings, since the serotonin hypothesis in its original form is not what was tested.
Möller HJ, Falkai P. “Is the serotonin hypothesis/theory of depression still relevant? Methodological reflections...” Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin Neurosci (2023). Notes that the hypothesis was first proposed in 1967, was later refined, and was eventually folded into more complex neurobiological theories — so the review’s critical findings come as no surprise, and the areas it addressed cover the main theory but not all aspects of it.
Work supporting a serotonin–depression link (the “links” side)
Kraus C, Castrén E, Kasper S, Lanzenberger R. “Serotonin and neuroplasticity — Links between molecular, functional and structural pathophysiology in depression.” Neurosci Biobehav Rev 77:317–326 (2017). Argues that serotonin modulates neuroplasticity, especially during early life, and that dysfunctions in both systems contribute to the pathophysiology of depression — with SSRIs triggering reactivation of juvenile-like plasticity, though how this translates to clinical treatment remains unclear.
A “treatment-resistant depression” hypothesis paper (PMC4033019) proposing that TRD may not be a simple serotonin deficit state but rather an excess of midbrain peri-raphe serotonin with a subsequent deficit at fronto-limbic projection sites, compromising serotonin-mediated neuroplasticity. A useful example of a more nuanced serotonin model.
The shift toward neuroplasticity frameworks (where the field is moving)
Much contemporary neuroscience reframes the question away from “serotonin levels” toward how antidepressants change the brain:
Casarotto PC, et al. “Antidepressant drugs act by directly binding to TRKB neurotrophin receptors.” Cell 184:1299–1313 (2021). A landmark paper showing that chemically distinct antidepressants — fluoxetine (an SSRI), imipramine (a tricyclic), and ketamine — all interact with the BDNF receptor TrkB, suggesting a shared mechanism not reducible to serotonin reuptake.
“Beyond the serotonin deficit hypothesis: communicating a neuroplasticity framework of major depressive disorder.” Molecular Psychiatry (2024). Explicitly proposes reframing the public and scientific narrative around neuroplasticity rather than a serotonin deficit.
Saarelainen T, et al. “Activation of the TrkB neurotrophin receptor is induced by antidepressant drugs and is required for antidepressant-induced behavioral effects.” J Neurosci 23:349–357 (2003). An earlier foundation for the neurotrophin view.
A 2026 preprint, “Revisiting the SSRI–TRKB Mechanism,” updates the debate over whether SSRIs bind TrkB directly and at what concentrations, noting fluoxetine binds TrkB with micromolar affinity enhanced by cholesterol.
A couple of accessible overviews if you want the debate framed for a general reader: The Pharmaceutical Journal’s “The serotonin theory of depression: how the media got it all wrong” (2022), and the Psychopharmacology Institute’s summary of the Moncrieff review.
One framing point worth keeping in mind as you read: much of the disagreement is about what the “serotonin theory” ever actually claimed. Critics of the simple “chemical imbalance” story and defenders of a more sophisticated serotonin-and-plasticity model are often not disagreeing about the same proposition.
If you love someone and have not told them so recently, tell them again today.
Operational Coherence and Inventing Temperature with Hasok Chang
Hasok Chang is the Hans Rausing Professor of History and Philosophy of Science and a Fellow of the British Academy, working on the history and philosophy of chemistry and physics, philosophy of scientific practice, realism, pluralism, and pragmatism.
2 months ago · 14 likes · 8 comments · Andrea Hiott
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Discussion about this episode
Will there be a video?
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Hope you found it Debbie, and hope you are well.
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Yes. It is now available in the paid area here and also in the YT members section and it will go live for everyone in a couple weeks.
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"Unconscious memories aren’t recalled as images; they’re repeated as 'motor policies.'"
In The Ego and the Id (at least in the Strachey translation) Freud clearly writes that the unconscious contents come to consciouisness by association with "word presentations." Freud was also big in his early works on supposedly recovered memories of childhood sexual abuse, as detailed by Frederick Crews in his New York Review of Books articles and elsewhere. I look forward to listening to Solms here. But excuse me for going in with some skepticism (although I think the "word presentations" claim has some deeply interesting implications -- in a direction apparently Solms doesn't go).
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Fully welcome the skepticism and look forward to hearing what you think of all this Whit
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Yes, the subjective experience and objective mechanism are two views of the same underlying process. That’s close to how I think about identity: a pattern that maintains itself from the inside as a story of itself and the outside as a cog in a larger purpose. The rest of the discussion about memory systems and transference fits into that same continuity model.
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Thank you, wonderfully written. Would also love to hear more about how you’re using ‘continuity model’ here.
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I use “continuity model” to describe how a system preserves a stable pattern across changes in state. From the inside, that looks like identity: the system experiences itself as the same agent over time. From the outside, it looks like coherence: the boundary keeps reorganizing just enough to maintain the pattern. Mutual incorporation fits into this because two systems temporarily share a single continuity loop. Each adjusts its boundary to sustain the joint pattern long enough for meaning to emerge.
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Indeed. I suppose I would add that there is no ‘one’ inside or outside to this process, even when considering the same agent, so we also would do well to always consider context (landscape) and aim. Does that make sense with your model and ideas as well?
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Yes, context and aim fit naturally into the continuity model. The pattern's “inside” and “outside” are always shaped by the landscape it’s acting within and the direction it’s trying to move. Any "one" agent is really a continuity loop adjusting across conditions, so the boundary is a position the pattern can hold under changing pressure.
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Could you please post or DM the link?
Thank you.
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Can’t post links here apparently but it’s on the main page and also on youtube, we DM’d you both
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Thank you. I listened to the first hour on the way in to work.
I found it very interesting. Just got a volume booster on my phone so I can now listen while driving in my subjectively noisy experience creating 2010 Toyota Yaris with 334K miles, even with my aging former electric furnace steel mill damaged hearing. :>)
Mark Solms has indeed done us a service to recover Freud's work. I never understood why people wrote Freud off. Clearly he did not have the whole picture. Why would any one person. But clearly he laid even more groundwork than most of us were aware of.
As a materials engineer, we are taught that the foundation of the field is understanding the structure of the material (at the level of how atoms of different species are grouped), and that we can influence that structure by how we process the material (cast, forged, thermally treated, etc.) Then the structure of material influences the behavior of the material.
Your conversation with Mark showed how Freud started with the structure of the neuronal cells. Went on to understand that how we live our lives influences how those cells operate to generate our responses to life and create a feedback loop to influence our lives.
Process (Life Experience) => Structure => Behavior
In the case of the brain / mind, behavior influenced, as he explained so well on your podcast, and in his older book, The Hidden Spring, by AFFECT. By FEELINGS.
I am still confused about his statement in The Hidden Spring regarding his support for / belief in / knowledge of “substrate independence.” Silicon is not bathed in hormones. So I am, as I said, confused. Maybe he renounced substrate independence elsewhere.
As for the talking cure, yes. I have struggled with depression most of my life. There were years, if not decades, that my first thought in the morning was “F***, I’m still alive.” That is gone now. I still have despair about the world, but cultivating clarity of thought, and cultivating creative ways of seeing, have both created a better course for my life. My ex used to tell me I should medicate myself, but I don’t like doctors very much, and was concerned about side effects.
I will probably write more after I finish listening.
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I feel lots of resonance with this Debbie and really thank you for sharing it. At some point I also hope to share more relative to these points when I’m able but for now just wanted to say thank you and also congrats/v cool to hear about the volume booster! :)
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Ok. I listened to more. Need to go back now as I got distracted. But I had to make note of Mark's comments at 1:20 (ish) about "Free Won't." That we don't have free will, but we can have "Free Won't." We can learn to say no to the automatic responses that our subconscious minds serve up without scrutiny. Because these invisible unconscious responses are "hard to learn and hard to unlearn."
I would simply say that despite everyone "proving scientifically" that there's no free will because of the neural impulses that happen before we move our hand, etc. is NOT POSSIBLE. Because "free will" is a construct. It is not a concrete object that can have "yes" or "no" "True" or "False" statements made about it. Doing is is falling into the trap of the Reification Error.
I look at Free Will as the useful construct it is. As Niels Bohr says (more or less) "The opposite of a GREAT TRUTH is another great truth."
As the great George Gurdjieff is said to have said (but I can't find the quote, so it's among my favorite "non-quotes") "We have free will, but we have one foot nailed to the ground."
If, as Mark said, based on Freud, we have "Free Won't," we can start to build Free Will in some areas of our lives, despite the layers and layers of genetic and cultural programming we have. In my case, I still find myself lacking as much will as I would like. That forces me to build my depth of compassion. That too helps me acquire new skills where it matters, social capital.
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Thanks for reminding of the ‘free won’t’ part! Need to listen to that again too and perhaps highlight this. Would also like to do something going into more depth about free will and the famous Libet Experiment which does not hold at all in a movement and oriented understanding of mind and knowledge.
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L&P Beyond Dichotomy: An international collective exploring the power in caring beyond bounds. (Love & Philosophy Subscriber Stream)
Exploring philosophical, scientific, technological & poetic spaces beyond either/or bounds. Deeply human, friction friendly, & daring to care. Past and future show hosts include Andrea Hiott, Mirko Prokop, Fotis Tsiroukis, Henry Kramer, and Darius Parvizi-Wayne. Regular podcast links at https://loveandphilosophy.com/
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