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4.06 AVERAGE
4.06 AVERAGE
Interesting case studies. I need to stop reading about autism. Although I know many on the spectrum, it makes everything look autistic. Sometimes it is just a rock.
Oftentimes, collections of medical cases focus mainly on the unusual features of the cases, the efforts to diagnosis and to treat these cases. For Sacks' collections of neurological cases, they are also opportunities to meditate on the nature
An Anthropologist on Mars has seven tales. The Case of the Colorblind Painter recounts the tale of Mr I, an artist who at the age of 65 loses all sense of colour. Not just his ability to see and perceive colour, but indeed had "lost all the remembrance, the inner knowledge, of it that had been part of his very being….it was as if his past, his chromatic past, had been taken away, as if the brain's knowledge of colour had been totally excised, leaving no trace, no inner evidence, of its existence behind". The Last Hippie covers the case of Greg F, whose sight and memories post-1960s was destroyed by a large benign brain tumour that had only been diagnosed and removed after the damage had been done. A Surgeon's Life recounts the tale of Dr Carl Bennett, a surgeon in Branford, British Columbia with Tourette's Syndrome. The Landscape of His Dreams is about Franco Magnani, a man with extraordinarily detailed and accurate visual memories of his Tuscan hometown, Pontito, and spends his life making paintings of Pontito. Prodigies covered individuals with autism and how their deficiencies on some fronts were matched with exceeding talents on other fronts, such as a prodigious memory, calculating power, drawing ability, as was the case with Stephen Wiltshire. What struck me most from the piece was Sacks' observation that "savants provide the strongest evidence that there can ben many different forms of intelligence, all potentially independent of each other". An Anthropologist on Mars was on Temple Grandin, a remarkable autistic person who holds a PhD in animal science, teaches at Colorado State University and runs her own business designing complex feedlot and ranch facilities.
To See and Not See was on a fifty year old man named Virgil who had been virtually blind since early childhood but had recently gained a sense of sight after an operation to remove his thick cataracts. I found this tale particularly fascinating because it helped me understand that sight isn't a function you either have or don't have, it's something you have to learn to do:
"The rest of us, born sighted, can scarcely imagine [the confusion of people blinded since childhood who have their vision restored]. For we, born with a full complement of senses, and correlating these, one with the other, create a sight world from the start, a world of visual objects and concepts and meanings. When we open our eyes each morning, it is upon a world we have spent a lifetime learning to see. We are not given the world: we make our world through incessant experience, categorization, memory, reconnection." Babies have learn to see and make sense of what they are seeing - to know that the mass of colour and shapes is a face and to make the connection that a voice is coming from that face, for instance; to learn to understand space and distance - that things further away are smaller; to understand shadows and depth - to see steps as solid objects going p and down in three dimensional space and not just a mass of parallel and criss-crossing lines on a plane. So when babies spend time looking at caregivers' faces, looking at their own hands as they wave them about and clench and unclench them, fitting different shaped blocks into the corresponding holes, they are learning how to see. Sacks reminds us that "most of us have no sense of the immensity of this construction, for we perform it seamlessly, unconsciously, thousands of times a day, at a glance…we achieve perceptual constancy - the correlation of all the different appearances, the transforms of objects - very early, in the first months of life. It constitutes a huge learning task but is achieved so smoothly, so unconsciously, that its enormous complexity is scarecely realised (though it is an achievement that even the largest supercomputers cannot begin to match)." For people like Virgil, it is a monumental task that they have to learn late in life when their brain is much much less plastic compared to an infant's.
Overall, I found each case an interesting study but the reading experience was a little uneven. In the Case of the Colorblind Painter, Sacks included a significant chunk on the history of our knowledge on how the brain perceives colour, from Isaac Newton to experiments by Swiss opthamologist Louis Verrey, to Goethe's Farbenlehre, to name a few personalities. This might interest some people but it wasn't quite my cup of tea. Tales like A Surgeon's Life, Too See and Not See, Prodigies and An Anthropologist on Mars, which focussed more on the individuals behind the casesand their particular personal history, I found much more compelling to read.
3.5 stars overall.
An Anthropologist on Mars has seven tales. The Case of the Colorblind Painter recounts the tale of Mr I, an artist who at the age of 65 loses all sense of colour. Not just his ability to see and perceive colour, but indeed had "lost all the remembrance, the inner knowledge, of it that had been part of his very being….it was as if his past, his chromatic past, had been taken away, as if the brain's knowledge of colour had been totally excised, leaving no trace, no inner evidence, of its existence behind". The Last Hippie covers the case of Greg F, whose sight and memories post-1960s was destroyed by a large benign brain tumour that had only been diagnosed and removed after the damage had been done. A Surgeon's Life recounts the tale of Dr Carl Bennett, a surgeon in Branford, British Columbia with Tourette's Syndrome. The Landscape of His Dreams is about Franco Magnani, a man with extraordinarily detailed and accurate visual memories of his Tuscan hometown, Pontito, and spends his life making paintings of Pontito. Prodigies covered individuals with autism and how their deficiencies on some fronts were matched with exceeding talents on other fronts, such as a prodigious memory, calculating power, drawing ability, as was the case with Stephen Wiltshire. What struck me most from the piece was Sacks' observation that "savants provide the strongest evidence that there can ben many different forms of intelligence, all potentially independent of each other". An Anthropologist on Mars was on Temple Grandin, a remarkable autistic person who holds a PhD in animal science, teaches at Colorado State University and runs her own business designing complex feedlot and ranch facilities.
To See and Not See was on a fifty year old man named Virgil who had been virtually blind since early childhood but had recently gained a sense of sight after an operation to remove his thick cataracts. I found this tale particularly fascinating because it helped me understand that sight isn't a function you either have or don't have, it's something you have to learn to do:
"The rest of us, born sighted, can scarcely imagine [the confusion of people blinded since childhood who have their vision restored]. For we, born with a full complement of senses, and correlating these, one with the other, create a sight world from the start, a world of visual objects and concepts and meanings. When we open our eyes each morning, it is upon a world we have spent a lifetime learning to see. We are not given the world: we make our world through incessant experience, categorization, memory, reconnection." Babies have learn to see and make sense of what they are seeing - to know that the mass of colour and shapes is a face and to make the connection that a voice is coming from that face, for instance; to learn to understand space and distance - that things further away are smaller; to understand shadows and depth - to see steps as solid objects going p and down in three dimensional space and not just a mass of parallel and criss-crossing lines on a plane. So when babies spend time looking at caregivers' faces, looking at their own hands as they wave them about and clench and unclench them, fitting different shaped blocks into the corresponding holes, they are learning how to see. Sacks reminds us that "most of us have no sense of the immensity of this construction, for we perform it seamlessly, unconsciously, thousands of times a day, at a glance…we achieve perceptual constancy - the correlation of all the different appearances, the transforms of objects - very early, in the first months of life. It constitutes a huge learning task but is achieved so smoothly, so unconsciously, that its enormous complexity is scarecely realised (though it is an achievement that even the largest supercomputers cannot begin to match)." For people like Virgil, it is a monumental task that they have to learn late in life when their brain is much much less plastic compared to an infant's.
Overall, I found each case an interesting study but the reading experience was a little uneven. In the Case of the Colorblind Painter, Sacks included a significant chunk on the history of our knowledge on how the brain perceives colour, from Isaac Newton to experiments by Swiss opthamologist Louis Verrey, to Goethe's Farbenlehre, to name a few personalities. This might interest some people but it wasn't quite my cup of tea. Tales like A Surgeon's Life, Too See and Not See, Prodigies and An Anthropologist on Mars, which focussed more on the individuals behind the casesand their particular personal history, I found much more compelling to read.
3.5 stars overall.
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
An Anthropologist on Mars is an engaging collection of seven neurological case studies that illustrate a supposed paradox - that what is perceived as disability or neurological deficit can result in amazing adaptations that make it a kind of gift. For example, a painter sustains a brain injury that makes him unable to see colour, and after a period of initial depression and disorientation, begins to appreciate his new way of seeing, and to reproduce it in black and white art.
The most famous case outlined in this book is of Temple Grandin, the renowned animal scientist and autism spokesperson. But the case I found most compelling was that of Virgil, a man in his fifties blind since childhood, who regains vision through surgery and finds his entire identity and way of life destabilized.
Sacks weaves together his subjects' case histories and stories of his visits with excerpts from medical, scientific, historical, psychoanalytic and classic literature. At times it gets a little bogged down in the history of research of a particular condition, but overall it remains accessible.
I don't doubt Sacks' good intentions towards his subjects - his goal was clearly to get a "normal" audience to understand his subjects' experiences and think about them as more than their disability or condition. In a few cases it's clear Sacks provided some useful treatment and advice to the people he writes about - such as the colourblind artist he studies or Greg, "the last hippie" - a man whose brain tumour dramatically affected his memory, personality and sense of time.
However, there were moments that gave me pause from an ethical perspective. Ultimately he is profiting off stories of people who, in some cases, can't fully consent to this or appreciate his words (Greg being the best example). This becomes especially problematic when he uses his expert status to override their voices. For example he describes some subjects somewhat condescendingly (e.g. his references to Virgil's weight and ill health) and questions the wisdom of friends and families who actually observe the subjects on a more regular basis (e.g. questioning Margaret's faith that Stephen Wiltshire experiences emotions).
While these may all be fair medical observations, I would have been interested to know more about conversations Sacks would have had with the subjects and their advocates before publishing their stories.
The most famous case outlined in this book is of Temple Grandin, the renowned animal scientist and autism spokesperson. But the case I found most compelling was that of Virgil, a man in his fifties blind since childhood, who regains vision through surgery and finds his entire identity and way of life destabilized.
Sacks weaves together his subjects' case histories and stories of his visits with excerpts from medical, scientific, historical, psychoanalytic and classic literature. At times it gets a little bogged down in the history of research of a particular condition, but overall it remains accessible.
I don't doubt Sacks' good intentions towards his subjects - his goal was clearly to get a "normal" audience to understand his subjects' experiences and think about them as more than their disability or condition. In a few cases it's clear Sacks provided some useful treatment and advice to the people he writes about - such as the colourblind artist he studies or Greg, "the last hippie" - a man whose brain tumour dramatically affected his memory, personality and sense of time.
However, there were moments that gave me pause from an ethical perspective. Ultimately he is profiting off stories of people who, in some cases, can't fully consent to this or appreciate his words (Greg being the best example). This becomes especially problematic when he uses his expert status to override their voices. For example he describes some subjects somewhat condescendingly (e.g. his references to Virgil's weight and ill health) and questions the wisdom of friends and families who actually observe the subjects on a more regular basis (e.g. questioning Margaret's faith that Stephen Wiltshire experiences emotions).
While these may all be fair medical observations, I would have been interested to know more about conversations Sacks would have had with the subjects and their advocates before publishing their stories.
A very exciting look at many unique cases in brain damage, neurophysical disorders, etc. I enjoyed reading about the exceptionalities of Stephen Wiltshire and Temple Grandin especially.
Pochi riscono ad essere affascinanti come Sacks e i suoi casi clinici, anche se molti ne avevo letti in giro, questa resta una delle sue raccolte migliori, specialmente per quanto riguarda i "primi tempi".
It's kinda like The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, pt 2. He makes continuing reference to both that book and Awakenings. It's a sort of continuing conversation with interesting patients. I found this one a little bit more compelling than The Man. It feels like, as time goes by, he finds a clearer and clearer writing voice. I'll keep reading them.He's a brilliant scientist and the humanity he brings forth in his discussions of his patients is assuring.
I thought this was perhaps Oliver Sacks' most compelling and interesting book ever. I read it in conjunction with Temple Grandin's Thinking In Pictures - Temple Grandin is the subject of the title essay - and I highly recommend reading these books together.