The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

I originally chose this book because of how intriguing and puzzling the title is. As I presume was Sacks’ intention, it compelled me to read with the expectation of stories as seemingly fantastical as a character mistaking his wife for a hat. Once I began reading this particular story, as well as the others included in the book, I certainly was satisfied with my choice – but not for the reasons I thought I would be.  Yes, to some extent, there’s a curious or even bizarre nature behind these stories, but these “tales” ultimately portrayed human reality. In The Disembodied Lady, Sacks discussed a story about a woman whose nightmare came true before a surgery: she had no control over her body.  Rather than deem her experience crazy and hysterical, he expresses the reality within her mind: “What is more important for us, at an elemental level, than the control, the owning and operation, of our own physical selves? And yet it is so automatic, so familiar, we never give it a thought” (p42).

In conjunction with this, another striking aspect of the book was Sacks’ philosophical interjections.  The stories mainly revolved around neuroscience and human nature, but Sacks made it a point to bring questions of epistemology, phenomenology, and what it means to live a good life.  In The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,  Sacks describes a man, Dr. P, who couldn’t see the world or faces in a big-picture way, living in mystery and complication.  He compared Dr. P, who was oblivious to his behavior/nature, to another patient who was aware of his own mystery: “[…]Zazetsky […] ‘fought to regain his lost faculties […] whereas Dr P. was not fighting, did not know what was lost, did not indeed know that anything was lost. But who was more tragic, or who was more damned— the man who knew it, or the man who did not?” (p18).  In essence, Sacks begs the question of what it means to live a decent life as a human being, and whether or not ignorance truly means bliss. An author could simply tell the story, explain the neuroscience underneath, and conclude, but Sacks took his stories a step further into philosophical waters.

Sacks additionally was impactful to me in terms of creating awareness. The more I read, I gradually formed a knowledge of several disorders, many of which to me were previously ambiguous and/or unrelatable. Not only was awareness emphasized implicitly through his storytelling, he explicitly advocated for general mental disorder awareness (a specific example would be in Witty Ticcy Ray when he discusses Tourette’s and the TSA).  It’s easy to be ignorant or even dismissive of neurological disorders when they don’t affect you or someone you love.  Even as someone who is a huge physical/mental disorder advocate with many family members who strengthened my sympathies, I have a newly genuine awareness of the disorders themselves, the importance of their recognition, and how this knowledge affects the world.