Conversation with Casey Schwartz & Mark Solms

Casey Schwartz has worked as a staff writer at Newsweek/The Daily Beast, where she covered neuroscience, psychology, and psychiatry. Her writing has also appeared in The New York Times and The New York Sun. A graduate of Brown University, she also has a degree in psychodynamic developmental neuroscience from University College, London. Her book In the Mind Fields:  Exploring the New Science of Neuropsychoanalysis, an exploration of the coming together of neuroscience and psychoanalysis, was just published in August by Pantheon.  For info on her new book, please click here.

Mark Solms, Ph.D. is best known for his discovery of the forebrain mechanisms of dreaming, and for his pioneering integration of psychoanalytic theories and methods with those of modern neuroscience. Currently he holds the Chair of Neuropsychology at University of Cape town and Groote Schuur Hospital (Departments of Psychology and Neurology). His other current positions include Honorary Lecturer in Neurosurgery at St. Bartholomew’s & Royal London School of Medicine, and Director of the Arnold Pfeffer Center for Neuropsychoanalysis of the New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute (NYPSI). He was awarded Honorary Membership to NYPSI in 1998. Other awards include the George Sarton Medal of the Rijksuniversiteit Gent (1996) and the Sigourney Prize (2012). Solms has published widely in both neuroscientific and psychoanalytic journals, and has authored five books. His 2002 book The Brain and the Inner World, co-authored with Oliver Turnbull, was a best seller. It has since been translated into 12 languages. Solms’ most recent book, The Feeling Brain, was just published by Karnac Books in June of 2015. He is the authorized editor and translator of the forthcoming Revised Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud (24 vols), and Complete Neuroscientific Works of Sigmund Freud (4 vols). He is a member of the British Psychoanalytical Society and South African Psychoanalytical Association (of which he is President).

Lois Oppenheim, Ph.D. is University Distinguished Scholar, Professor of French, and Chair of the Department of Modern Languages and Literatures at Montclair State University where she teaches courses in modernism, literature, and applied psychoanalysis. A Scholar Associate Member of the New York Psychoanalytic Society and Institute and Honorary Member of the William Alanson White Society, she is the author of over 90 papers and the author or editor of twelve books (with a thirteenth in press). Among her most recent books are Imagination from Fantasy to Delusion, awarded the 2013 Courage to Dream Prize from the American Psychoanalytic Association; A Curious Intimacy: Art and Neuro-Psychoanalysis; Psychoanalysis and the Creative Endeavor; and The Painted Word: Samuel Beckett’s Dialogue With Art. Dr. Oppenheim is co-creator of the documentaries How to Touch a Hot Stove: Thought and Behavioral Differences in a Society of Norms (Honorable Mention, SAMHSA Awards) and Daniel, Debra, and Drew (in production).

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