The Hidden Spring by Mark Solms

 

Mark Solms is a neuropsychologist and psychoanalyst and one of the founders of neuropsychoanalysis. He is a professor at the University of Cape Town and has published hundreds of papers and several books.

Mark Solms

His excellent book The Hidden Spring: A Journey to the Source of Consciousness has been published in 2021.

In this post, I will review the book’s central ideas and briefly discuss how these ideas relate to conceptualizations of cognitive abilities and to therapy.

Many philosophers grapple with questions concerning consciousness. For example, we may ask why and how the neural signals activated in our brains when we look at a particular object give rise to the experience of seeing that object. A camera also processes visual input, yet it has no experience of seeing. Why did such an experience evolve in us? What purpose does it serve?

The answers Mark Solms proposes to these questions are related to Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. They validate certain aspects of that theory while proposing changes to others. These answers create an integration between theories of perception and information processing and psychoanalytic theory.

Mark Solms argues that consciousness originates in drives, needs, and the emotions that arise from them. Whereas Freud spoke of two drives that are in conflict with one another, the life drive and the death drive, Solms proposes that there are seven drives or needs. Emotions are the ways in which these drives are expressed consciously.

Seven primary emotions correspond to the seven drives or needss. The drive to explore the environment exists because our biological needs can be met only through the environment. We experience this drive as curiosity and interest. It resembles the Freudian concept of libido. The drive or emotion of lust helps us find sexual partners. Fear is intended to make us flee from dangerous situations. Rage helps us destroy objects that prevent us from satisfying our needs. We have a need for attachment, and feelings of panic and despair arise when we are separated from attachment figures or lose them. We also have a need or drive to care for others, especially our offspring. This is the maternal instinct. Finally, we need to play. Play is the means through which social hierarchies are created and boundaries between and within groups are maintained.

When one of these drives is not satisfied, an emotion arises. The emotion is conscious. It arouses consciousness, and its purpose is to motivate us to act in order to satisfy the drive, calm the emotion, and return to equilibrium. The striving to return to a state of equilibrium in which our needs are satisfied and our emotions are calm resembles Freud’s death drive, except that, according to Solms, its purpose is the preservation of life.

Solms identifies the consciousness aroused by emotion with working memory. Through working memory, we consider a course of action that will satisfy the drive, calm the emotion, and return us to equilibrium. When we are in a state of equilibrium, we operate on a kind of “autopilot.” In this state, we perform many sequences of actions automatically, procedurally, and unconsciously.

Consciousness requires effort and cognitive resources and is “costly” for the system. The system, meaning our body, prefers to perform as many actions as possible unconsciously. Thus, unconsciousness is the preferred state and the default condition. This state is disrupted as soon as one of our needs falls out of balance and must be satisfied. In such a situation, an emotion arises, interrupts the autopilot, and awakens consciousness.

Solms argues that emotions are conscious by definition. He therefore claims that the id is conscious. He locates the source of consciousness in the brainstem, a region that generates drives and emotions. In contrast to emotions, much thinking can take place unconsciously. For example, a word flashed very rapidly can influence an action a person performs afterward, even though that person is not aware of having read the word.

We perform many complex procedures that require thought without being conscious of them. Getting ready in the morning, driving to work, and even patterns of interaction with other people, such as the way we greet one another, are carried out automatically and unconsciously. Thus, surprisingly it is the ego that is at least partly unconscious.

To know our condition, whether we have departed from equilibrium and whether there is an unsatisfied need, we constantly sample both our internal environment, the body, and our external environment. However, we certainly do not process our entire external environment. Much of what we see, for example, is created by the brain.

As I sit in a room writing these words, I do not need to process anew, at every moment, all the visual objects around me. I know that they are there and expect them to remain there in the next moment. I know the meaning and function of the objects surrounding me because of my past experiences with them. I therefore “see” the room through my prior knowledge and actually need to process only the changes occurring within it, and especially unexpected changes.

In vision, we use prior knowledge to predict what exists around us and what we are seeing, and we use our senses to test these predictions. When there is a discrepancy between the prediction and the sensory data, we act to correct it. Such a discrepancy can be corrected by changing the internal model of the external environment, meaning changing the prediction; by changing the sensory data, meaning acting upon the world; or by changing the degree of confidence we place in the sensory data.

As noted above, the predictions we generate about the appearance of the environment and about every situation we encounter derive from our past experience, from our memories. Memory exists to enable us to predict the environment.

A distinction can be made between two types of long-term memory: declarative and non-declarative. Declarative memories are things that can be thought about, mentally represented, and conceptualized in words. Declarative memories are preconscious: they can be brought into consciousness when needed.

Non-declarative memories are unconscious. They cannot be represented. They cannot be thought about or formed into mental images. Unlike declarative memories, they are not encoded in the cortex.

Non-declarative memories may take the form of procedures, such as knowing how to ride a bicycle. They may also consist of patterns of action and interaction that developed in very early childhood as a result of our experiences with the figures who cared for us. These patterns of action became automatic.

Because non-declarative memories cannot be represented, we cannot remember them; we can only enact them. Sometimes these patterns of action are ineffective in satisfying our needs. In such cases, emotions arise and interfere with our daily life. Because non-declarative memories cannot be represented, thought about, or imagined, the way to cope with these emotions and bring about change in therapy is through the repetition of these patterns of action.

Solms argues that people who seek therapy suffer from intense emotions that overwhelm and disturb them. They try as best they can to cope with these emotions in order to satisfy the need or drive that aroused them and return themselves to equilibrium, but they do not succeed.

The reason for this failure is that the predictions these individuals use to perceive the environment, understand interpersonal interactions, and act on the basis of these understandings do not correspond to the sensory data. We should remember that predictions about the environment are based on both declarative and non-declarative memory.

It is possible that childhood experiences created non-declarative memories in these individuals that generate unsuccessful predictions. These unsuccessful predictions do not allow them to act in the world in ways that adequately satisfy their needs and restore equilibrium.

Here is a highly simplified example. It can also be used to think about similar situations involving interpersonal relationships or a child’s performance during an assessment.

As explained above, in order to reduce the discrepancy between a prediction and sensory data, one can change the internal model of the external environment, change the sensory data by acting on the environment, or change the degree of confidence one places in the sensory data.

To drink the coffee from the cup that is lying on my desk, I do not need a high level of consciousness. I can do so without paying attention, by activating automatic sequences of action. But if the color of the coffee suddenly turns fuchsia pink, my internal model will be unable to explain it. There will be a mismatch between the prediction, the expectation of brown coffee, and the sensory data, coffee that is fuchsia pink.

The pink coffee will arouse an emotion, perhaps curiosity or fear, and consciousness will come into operation in order to understand the situation and act in the world so as to “soothe” the emotion.

If I discover that reality has indeed changed, that there is also a variety of pink coffee, I will change my internal model accordingly, and my prediction concerning the appearance of a cup of coffee will include the color pink. The emotional response aroused by the sight of the pink coffee will then subside, and I will return to equilibrium.

The next time I encounter pink coffee, I will be able to drink it by activating an automatic sequence of actions. If reality has changed but I fail to change my internal model, I will continue to predict brown coffee and experience curiosity mixed with fear anew every time I see its pink color.

A state in which drinking every cup of coffee is accompanied by emotional turmoil and conscious effort is undesirable because it consumes valuable processing resources. Thus, an inability to adapt the internal model and the predictions to the sensory data causes psychological difficulty: emotions that cannot be calmed and an inability to return to equilibrium.

If, through conscious effort, the use of working memory, and action in the world, I discover that reality has not changed, that there is no pink coffee and that what is before me is a cup of gouache paint, I will of course not drink it. In this case as well, the feelings of curiosity and fear will subside, and I will return to equilibrium.

But if I doubt the sensory data or fail to take them into account, saying to myself, “I am not seeing pink coffee because there is no such thing,” and continue to act according to the failed prediction, according to my internal model, I may place myself in danger by tasting the “coffee” and discovering that it is gouache paint.

Such a situation would take me even farther from my goal of reaching equilibrium. Here, perhaps, defense mechanisms have operated in an attempt to calm the emotions in a maladaptive way.

In summary, Solms proposes that consciousness consists of emotions that arise and are processed in working memory in order to satisfy a drive. The drive arises when we depart from equilibrium, a state that may endanger us. Our aim is to return to equilibrium. In a state of equilibrium, the emotions that arose subside and the drives are satisfied.

Our interaction with the world consists largely of predictions about the world that we generate on the basis of our memories. We update and correct these predictions in accordance with sensory data. A problem in the correspondence between predictions flowing “from the top down” and sensory data flowing “from the bottom up” may prevent us from calming the emotion or drive and returning to equilibrium. Emotional difficulties may arise as a result.