The Only Cure

"A scholarly masterpiece, written by the world's greatest living authority on Freud—the Editor of the Revised Standard Edition, and founder of the Neuropsychoanalysis movement. The origin story of Freudian ideas is introduced in forensic and fascinating detail and developed carefully in light of evidence-based 21st-century insights into mind and brain. It is also a deeply personal narrative, reflecting the author's good citizenship, clinical compassion and capacity to critique the fundamentals of psychoanalysis. There is so much to be learned in these pages."

"Because of the author's unusual combination of expertise, The Only Cure provides many insights that are unique. The case descriptions are interesting and engaging. The science behind them is vast. It's an awesome book.  A must-read for anyone involved in or interested in mental health. 

"Solms shows how Freud's deepest insights are being vindicated by modern brain science. Bridging neuroscience and psychotherapy, he argues that psychoanalysis remains the only truly curative treatment for many mental disorders. An inspiring read."

"Solms appears to have literally brought Freud back to life in this page-turner of a book. A must-read for every beginning and senior psychiatrist, psychopharmacologist, neurologist, psychologist, therapist, and psychoanalyst."

"Provides nothing less than an empirical basis for the reenchantment of psychology, upending decades of scientific reductionism and returning human emotion to where it should always have been: at the very heart of the matter. It has the rare quality of being both an act of scholarship and an act of love."

"Sigmund Freud invented psychotherapy, a treatment that now has global reach, but why and how does the talking cure work? Mark Solms mingles the poignant, fascinating, sometimes harrowing stories of his psychoanalytic patients, as well as stories from his own life, with scientific research, past and present, which together illuminate Freud's original insights into the workings of brain and mind. Lucid, confiding, incisive, erudite, and often funny, Solms is the perfect guide for any reader curious about what it means to heal the ailing self."

"What begins as a rehabilitation of Freud from the perspective of neuroscience becomes a quietly radical statement of the need both to give and to receive care. It's that rare thing: a book that's actually necessary."

"Mark Solms brings his magisterial mind to Freud and those who followed in the quest to understand us human subjects. What Freud was arguing in the late 19th century is now the preoccupation of much neuroscience, albeit, often unacknowledged. Great thinkers need great explicators and Solms does an excellent job of linking developments in neuroscience, philosophy and psychoanalysis enabling us to more deeply understand human subjectivity. It is a great achievement."

"Offers a candidly argued defense of a regrettably overlooked idea: that in dealing with the universe of the human mind, sane and well as sick, a subjective perspective is indispensable. But Solms quietly achieves something no less important: he reminds us that Freud was a biologist and, wonder of wonders, that his ideas are part of the foundation of neuroscience."

"This is an extraordinary book on so many different levels. It's a dramatic history of psychoanalysis, a reassessment of Freud, a fascinating and moving autobiography, and a compelling argument for rethinking the place of feelings and subjectivity within the framework of science. And hence it's also about caring, and nurture—and love. How minds change is the question at the centre of this book. It's changing mine."

“A tour de force. Demonstrates the enduring truth that the only cure for mental suffering is the one that discovers and addresses its subjective causes.”

"Solms is making a brilliant, determined, scrupulous and tactful endeavor to approach, in a new way, the oldest question of them all.”

“Anyone paying close attention to the field of psychoanalysis will be aware of the breathtakingly revolutionary contributions of Mark Solms.”