The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, by Oliver Sacks

While reading this book, I was left with more questions and curiosities as I kept going through several parts of the book. Each part of the book presented several case studies about neurology. An element that I loved in this book is the manner in which Oliver Sacks shows the reader how the patients explore and discover ways to live with their deficiencies. These patients figured out a way to manage their deficits and live a normal life. Sacks makes a strong point when he says that most medical research labels neurological disorders as deficits in a way, compared to the way the brain is normally supposed to function. This concept can be seen in the case studies Sacks presents, such as Dr. P who has a rare form of face blindness that does not allow him to recognize his own wife, Mrs. S who cannot determine the left direction of her body due to a stroke, which damaged that side of her brain, and Christina who has cerebral palsy and feels that she has no control of her hands and sense of body. These were very intriguing to read and I learned much more about these neurological disorders.

In the second part of the book, Sacks explains more neurological disorders from the perspective of how it affects daily life, not just focusing on the specific parts of the brain that are affected by the disease. Sacks goes in depth about Tourette’s syndrome and explains how it is very common. The third part of the book discusses an interesting phenomenon caused by neurological disorders, when people see the world differently. For example, in one case study Sacks presents two women who could hear music playing in their heads. Sacks suggests that these women possibly had seizures in the temporal lobes of their brains which caused them to hear music. Another patient, Donald, who murdered his child while high on Phencyclidine (PCP) had no recollection of the incident. However, after getting head trauma from another accident, Donald experienced the event of killing his child over and over again. Donald was able to manage these visions by using several strategies to help him live a relatively normal life. Overall, I learned a great deal from this book and look forward to reading more books from Oliver Sacks.

References:

Oliver Sacks – TED 2009
What hallucination reveals about our minds https://www.ted.com/talks/oliver_sacks_what_hallucination_reveals_about_our_minds?language=en

Online through SBU library or On Reserve in Library:
The Man who Mistook his Wife for a Hat and other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks (online)