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n8hanson 's review for:
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales
by Oliver Sacks
I had many complaints about this book, namely the ultraviolet prose; the outdated sources, and sloppy philosophy emerging from straining too hard for poetic but irrelevant conceits.
Be prepared for guest appearances by Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Hume, Wittgenstein, Bach, Freud, Mann, Borges and others. The name-dropping isn't terribly formidable but occasionally tedious. Between the overwrought mannerisms, condescending descriptions ("retards", "creatures", "soulless", "basket-case"), and citing 19th c. neurologists, he sometimes sound like a well-preserved Victorian relic himself.
The flowery writing sometimes obfuscates or even contradicts his metaphysical graspings. For example, he tersely admits Marr's computational theory of mind, before a long-winded and unfounded metaphysical blather about the musical foundations of consciousness. He dismisses the computation theory as lacking, embracing musical "scripts or scores" as a proper metaphor to envelop the iconic nature of mind. This clarifies nothing (what would the "scores" of the mind actually be) and is logically sloppy (a musical score is just a script for music). Perhaps he was fumbling after a dualistic explanation of consciousness, but it seems his intellectual flourishes outpace his critical thinking here.
A basic background in neuroscience and clinical psychology made the book quite legible, but I can't recommend it to those without any familiarity. The terminology could prove baffling: apraxia, agnosia, hyperosmia, Korsakoff's Syndrome, temporal lobes, Wernicke's Aphasia, encephalitis, confabulations, meningitis, etc etc etc ad nauseum. If all that reads like gobbledygook to you and you'd rather not spend considerable time googling, you might be happier reading something else. For those with prior exposure, the book is often frustratingly superficial: many of the diagnoses are obsolete or inaccurate in light of modern research findings.
My criticisms are harsh, but I was nevertheless enthralled by the fascinatingly bizarre tales of human consciousness at the borders of our comprehension: identical twin "idiot savants" who conversed with 12-digit prime numbers. Patients with no proprioception who were forced to stare at their limbs to move them accurately. Aphasic patients whose loss of word comprehension but enhanced sense of body language and tone exposed President Reagan's TV speech as a hilariously contrived fraud. Or a man who murdered in a PCP-induced fugue was forced to relive the horrible repressed memory over and over after an epilepsy-inducing head injury.
Sacks' aim is to present a more personal, "romantic science" of neurology that acknowledges the individual. His palpable empathy for his patients, and occasional treatment successes, is a testament to his passion. While he frequently and extensively waxes poetic and philosophical in flights of analytical conjecture, his essential humanity shines through and still renders these clinical portraits with depth and feeling. It was an interesting series of superficial case studies, illuminated by a brilliant if unfocused mind, that unfortunately has not aged well.
Be prepared for guest appearances by Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Hume, Wittgenstein, Bach, Freud, Mann, Borges and others. The name-dropping isn't terribly formidable but occasionally tedious. Between the overwrought mannerisms, condescending descriptions ("retards", "creatures", "soulless", "basket-case"), and citing 19th c. neurologists, he sometimes sound like a well-preserved Victorian relic himself.
The flowery writing sometimes obfuscates or even contradicts his metaphysical graspings. For example, he tersely admits Marr's computational theory of mind, before a long-winded and unfounded metaphysical blather about the musical foundations of consciousness. He dismisses the computation theory as lacking, embracing musical "scripts or scores" as a proper metaphor to envelop the iconic nature of mind. This clarifies nothing (what would the "scores" of the mind actually be) and is logically sloppy (a musical score is just a script for music). Perhaps he was fumbling after a dualistic explanation of consciousness, but it seems his intellectual flourishes outpace his critical thinking here.
A basic background in neuroscience and clinical psychology made the book quite legible, but I can't recommend it to those without any familiarity. The terminology could prove baffling: apraxia, agnosia, hyperosmia, Korsakoff's Syndrome, temporal lobes, Wernicke's Aphasia, encephalitis, confabulations, meningitis, etc etc etc ad nauseum. If all that reads like gobbledygook to you and you'd rather not spend considerable time googling, you might be happier reading something else. For those with prior exposure, the book is often frustratingly superficial: many of the diagnoses are obsolete or inaccurate in light of modern research findings.
My criticisms are harsh, but I was nevertheless enthralled by the fascinatingly bizarre tales of human consciousness at the borders of our comprehension: identical twin "idiot savants" who conversed with 12-digit prime numbers. Patients with no proprioception who were forced to stare at their limbs to move them accurately. Aphasic patients whose loss of word comprehension but enhanced sense of body language and tone exposed President Reagan's TV speech as a hilariously contrived fraud. Or a man who murdered in a PCP-induced fugue was forced to relive the horrible repressed memory over and over after an epilepsy-inducing head injury.
Sacks' aim is to present a more personal, "romantic science" of neurology that acknowledges the individual. His palpable empathy for his patients, and occasional treatment successes, is a testament to his passion. While he frequently and extensively waxes poetic and philosophical in flights of analytical conjecture, his essential humanity shines through and still renders these clinical portraits with depth and feeling. It was an interesting series of superficial case studies, illuminated by a brilliant if unfocused mind, that unfortunately has not aged well.