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A review by toggle_fow
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks
emotional
funny
informative
reflective
sad
medium-paced
3.0
This was a surprising and somewhat mysterious read.
I thought I knew what I was getting into with this book, but I was wrong. It's a compilation written by a neurologist of some of his most unusual, thought-provoking cases, meant to illustrate the endless complexity of the human body and how inextricable the working of the body is from the working of the human spirit. I think it does accomplish this goal quite well.
However, the author's forward conveys the idea that he ended up writing these abridged case studies for a general audience mostly because there was no appetite for them in the scientific literature of the day. As such, it is much denser in its focus on the mysterious science behind the patients' various strange issues than I would expect from the typical pop science/pop psychology book. Sometimes Sacks will take care to explain what he means, and sometimes he will drop a six-syllable scientific term as if he expects us all to already know it.
This book is also from the 1980s. That doesn't remove the interesting nature of its content, but it does mean that there are a lot of outdated terms and concepts used. I'm not sure how much of the actual scientific theory I can take away from this, since I have no idea how the discipline has advanced in the last forty years. I would love to read a modern version.
I hope we have advanced in our understanding and treatment of patients like these, but I suspect that there will always remain something elusive in our understanding of the interplay of brain, body, and spirit.
I thought I knew what I was getting into with this book, but I was wrong. It's a compilation written by a neurologist of some of his most unusual, thought-provoking cases, meant to illustrate the endless complexity of the human body and how inextricable the working of the body is from the working of the human spirit. I think it does accomplish this goal quite well.
However, the author's forward conveys the idea that he ended up writing these abridged case studies for a general audience mostly because there was no appetite for them in the scientific literature of the day. As such, it is much denser in its focus on the mysterious science behind the patients' various strange issues than I would expect from the typical pop science/pop psychology book. Sometimes Sacks will take care to explain what he means, and sometimes he will drop a six-syllable scientific term as if he expects us all to already know it.
This book is also from the 1980s. That doesn't remove the interesting nature of its content, but it does mean that there are a lot of outdated terms and concepts used. I'm not sure how much of the actual scientific theory I can take away from this, since I have no idea how the discipline has advanced in the last forty years. I would love to read a modern version.
I hope we have advanced in our understanding and treatment of patients like these, but I suspect that there will always remain something elusive in our understanding of the interplay of brain, body, and spirit.