This commentary discusses Solms’s recent paper on the application of predictive processing theory to understand functional neurological disorder, and to put in context work by Freud and others that has previously sought to provide an explanatory framework for this condition. The commentary addresses the way in which predictive processing can become a unifying mechanism to link previous pathophysiological accounts and to arrive at a more general theoretical understanding of these disorders, and to provide pragmatic direction for clinical and research work.