#77: Was Freud Right All Along? Neuroscientist Mark Solms Reopens the Case

For most of the last 50 years, Sigmund Freud has been treated as a discredited relic — unscientific, unfalsifiable, a historical curiosity kept alive only by literary critics. Neuropsychologist Mark Solms disagrees, and he has the credentials to make the case: Chair of Neuropsychology at the University of Cape Town, discoverer of the actual brain mechanism behind dreaming, and translator of the 24-volume Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud.

In his new book "The Only Cure: Freud and the Neuroscience of Mental Healing," Solms argues that modern neuroscience is independently confirming several of Freud's central ideas about the unconscious mind, repression, and dreams — while also correcting him where he got it wrong. In this episode of The Prometheans, we go through Freud's legacy point by point: what neuroscience now vindicates, what Solms says Freud got flatly wrong, and whether psychoanalysis deserves a place back at the center of mental health care.

📚 Book discussed: The Only Cure: Freud and the Neuroscience of Mental Healing (Mark Solms, 2026) The Prometheans is a series on interfaith dialogue, philosophy of religion, and cross-civilizational intellectual history, hosted by Ali Zaka (AZD).

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