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 The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat : And Other Clinical Tales :: 0684853949
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| In his most extraordinary book, "one of the great clinical writers of the 20th century" (The New York Times) recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders. Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents. If inconceivably strange, these brilliant tales remain, in Dr. Sacks's splendid and sympathetic telling, deeply human. They are studies of life struggling against incredible adversity, and they enable us to enter the world of the neurologically impaired, to imagine with our hearts what it must be to live and feel as they do. A great healer, Sacks never loses sight of medicine's ultimate responsibility: "the suffering, afflicted, fighting human subject." Editorial Descriptions are usually submitted by the manufacturers, publishers and authors. Contact us if you are one of them, and wish to change the above description. |
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Author: Guest
Extremely interesting, a shame it was done at a time, when more detailed diagnostic tests were not available to help determine the exact (physical)nature of the problems, but still a great read.
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Author: Guest
Sacks has a wonderfully lucid style that brings his anecdotes to life. The stories do a wonderful job of pointing out the things we take for granted in our lives by showing us people who don't have them. And we're not talking about money and food, we're talking about (in some cases) a sense of personal identity. This book will be both valuable and interesting even for people who aren't the least interested in neuroscience.
That said, at a couple points Sacks seems to stray a bit far from his strengths. He speaks of people who have (due to various pathologies) exceedingly fractured experiences as "Humean beings", referring to the 18th-Century Scottish philosopher David Hume. Hume argued that there is no such thing as a "self", either of the form Descartes argued for ("I think, therefore I am") or of the Christian soul. What we think of as a self, Hume argued, is merely a bundle of experiences, with no single experiencer underlying those experiences. Regardless of whether one agrees with this view, Sacks' references to Hume betray a fundamental misunderstanding of the arguments that no-self theorists such as Hume have advanced. No-self theorists (the most well-known of which may be Buddha) argue precisely that we can have a unified sense of experience without an underlying self, not that selflessness would imply confusion and disunity. Sacks doesn't profess to be a philosopher, but his use of the phrase "Humean being" is misleading at best--even if it is catchy.
Still, it's a great book and a worthwhile read.
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Author: Guest
I am a neuroscientist PhD candidate and this book was what originally made me interested in neuroscience!
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Author: Guest
I've never read a book like it, but I hope to find many more. Whether I was to love this book rested on maybe three things: I wanted a sensitive and humble genius of an author who could thoroughly amuse me with exceptionally amazing stories. Because Sacks succeeded at this, it will remain one of my favourite books of all time. In 'The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat', Sacks gives account after account of the various people he works with as a neurologist; and behind every one of his patients is a story to challenge some of your deepest assumptions on the limits of mankind. By way of a simple example, if a great many autistic people - having never been instructed in maths - can intuitively grasp this subject at a level to challenge computers, what does this say about mankind's innate mathematical abilities? Maybe our schooling in maths should be more a matter of reminding us than of teaching us, therefore. Anyway, these were the kinds of questions that awoke in my mind as I read this gem of a book, but because this is precisely the reason that I enjoyed it so much, I have given you perhaps the least fascinating example that you might discover the more touching gems for yourself. (Oh, and be careful, therefore, of reviews that might give too much away in these respects and thus spoil some of the surprises for you.) Anyway, you will enjoy the explanation that Sacks offers for an otherwise highly intelligent and respectable man who can mistake his own wife for a hat, but there are many other stories of note, and this book could well develop in you a new fascination for the human brain and mind. I can label it as nothing less than a must read.
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Author: Guest
After reading this book I have become a big fan of Dr Oliver Sacks. Hats off to him for showing such a remarkable involvement and empathy in his patients.
This book is about people who suffer from neurological deficiencies, who are considered not normal by people like us. It has three sections: 'Losses', 'Excesses' and 'The world of simple'. The strange title comes from a story where a fine gentleman, a distinguished musician has difficulty seeing faces or scenes as a whole. Read on to see how he mistook his wife.... There are eight other narratives in this section. People touched upon here have lost use of some essential faculty, so the title 'Losses'. And read on, one can even lose the sense of ones body and may feel that the legs or the feet are not there unless one actually sees it! Scary to say the least!
In the second section people may have too much of some faculty, but can that ever be a problem? You bet it can be. There is a lady in her late eighties starts behaving out of character, almost like a teen-ager and then she knew something is wrong. Ten more ways to get victim of excesses, ten more fascinating
Finally there is the world of simple who may actually be geniuses at certain activities like numbers or drawing (Remember `Trainman' an Oscar winning movie where a simple person was a mathematical genius? There are two real people who are as brilliant). And around this with the expert care they can build satisfying lives.
Though the whole book talks about people who are in some sense not normal as we define it but they are beautiful people with enriching lives. This great doctor has brought it out so well in this book that I plan to read all the books.
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