THE MAN WHO MISTOOK HIS WIFE FOR A HAT
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Book Description
In
The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat & Other Clinical Tales, Dr Oliver Sacks explores a variety of neurological disorders & their extraordinary effects upon the minds & lives of those affected. Sacks shows predicaments almost inconceivably strange, but he also eloquently describes the resilience & resourcefulness of the human spirit & shows how, in the face of alm...
MoreIn The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat & Other Clinical Tales, Dr Oliver Sacks explores a variety of neurological disorders & their extraordinary effects upon the minds & lives of those affected. Sacks shows predicaments almost inconceivably strange, but he also eloquently describes the resilience & resourcefulness of the human spirit & shows how, in the face of almost impossible odds, we may still achieve a sort of accommodation & affirmation. Here we encounter "The Lost Mariner," who has lost his memory & with it the greater part of his personal history; patients who are convulsed by epileptic memories from the past; patients with remarkable perceptual & intellectual aberrations—like "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat"; others with extraordinary perceptual amplifications & gifts. We encounter patients who are galvanized by incessant tics, imitations, explosions of passion & imagery. We encounter patients who feel partly or wholly disembodied, others who feel phantom limbs or bodies. We encounter every sort of excess & defect, every sort of aberration & transformation—patients who become, briefly, under the spur of neurological disorder, flirts, visionaries, murderers or dogs. These tales aren't simply studies of disease but of life itself struggling against extraordinary adversity. This exploration is always leavened by a deep human sympathy, so that these men & women, however strangely afflicted, are felt as intensely human. Sacks enables us to enter their strange situations & imagine with the heart, if no with the mind, what it must be to live & feel as they do.
Implicit in these tales is a plea for a deeper & more humane science. These tales themselves are exemplars of such a science.
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