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psychological structures and functioning on the other. It proposes as a fundamental principle the homeostatic balance of all biological functions required for organismic survival, replicated on the behavioral and intrapsychic levels of psychic organizations. The two key theoretical approaches integrated in Solms’ proposal are the contribution to affective neuroscience by Jack Panksepp, and the contribution of information theory the computational neuroscientist Karl Friston (2010). Friston’s mathematical approach develops the understanding of the organization of the neural system as a complex information system that registers both endogenous and exteroceptive information required to carry out basic life sustaining functions derived from bodily needs from birth on, and regulates the interaction between receptive and motor neurons. Motor action is ultimately based on the affect determined predictive demands for work dealing with the available endogenous and sensory perceptive information in the light of basic body needs and needs for environmental survival and reproduction. These predictive expectations are reflected in the cognitive functions of the brain, and cognitive integration includes a complex self-organizing system equipped with a metacortical center that constitute the basic ‘self system’. Solms’ conception transforms Freud’s ‘hydraulic theory’ of energy into energy as a requirement for work determined by computational analysis of bodily needs and reality. Solms’ theory relates these computational potentials to higher level, complex decision-making processes that become part of the internal structures of the psychic apparatus. Solms’ utilization of Panksepp’s concept of affect systems includes the conception of affects as complex psychophysiological structures involving particular limbic brain areas, specific neurotransmitters, and related hormonal processes, and very importantly, an essential subjective aspect of satisfaction and/or dissatisfaction, pleasure and unpleasure, specific for each of the major affective systems described by Panksepp. In addition, affects involve the communicative function of specific affects that link the individual with his human environment, and express essential needs for survival, their satisfaction or failure, in specific emotional reactions linked to interpersonal experience. Affects contribute specific predictive signals that initiate specific actions involving the sensory perceived world and determine the individual reaction to the external environment. Solms designates as ‘ drive’ the pressure for work that salience of affects induces in the central nervous system , and proposes that consciousness is an essential function of the affective systems at their points of salience. Consciousness thus originates from the affective expression of core biological needs and not as a consequence of the cognitive organization of the perceived significance of the external world. The ‘central control system’ that Solms attributes to the ‘midbrain decision triangle’ (PAG: periaqueductal grey) spectrum and midbrain locomotor regions, corresponds to what Panksepp has described as the primary self , where decision making occurs regarding the prioritization of the competing affect systems. One major original contribution of Solms is the centralizing of the general function of homeostasis as the main autonomic inborn control mechanism of physiological functions that regulate the relationships in the interpersonal world as well. A second major shift from Freud’s
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