Some Reviewing of The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat
Oliver
Sacks discusses neurological diseases within this composition, splitting the
illnesses into four different subcategories: losses, excesses, transports, and
the world of the simple. Throughout the book, Sacks makes the point that “the
patient’s essential being is very relevant in the higher reaches of neurology”
(viii) and suggest that the only way one can truly begin to embark on
neurological studies is to observe the patient fully and all forms of symptoms,
including how their thinking and feeling is affected. A doctor cannot merely
say that the arm is covered in splotches, rather that the woman is reminded of
her childhood during her seizures. Cases take on a much more personal level,
which Sacks calls the “neurology of identity” (viii), which is why all these
studies explain the patient’s case as a story, more than just facts and
figures. No one neurological case is the same.
The first section is titled losses,
specifically emphasizing on “an impairment or incapacity of neurological
function” (3). Sacks decides to focus on only right hemisphere syndromes, which
is used to recognize reality. These illnesses are seemingly rare and
understudied at the time this book was published (1985), which leads to more
questions than answers. Right hemisphere sicknesses are hard to be imagined as
normally people have never thought of not recognizing a human as a human or
feeling as if their leg is not their own. A lot of the time, the person who is
diseased does not even recognize it themselves. The key story in this section
was the story of Dr P., also known as the man who mistook his wife for a hat.
In the average neurological damage case, the patient loses sense of all things
categorical and logical, making patients rely on emotion. With the case of Dr.
P., a severe case of agnosia was inset. This disease is due to right hemisphere
damage, which gradually made the man lose all sense of emotional, concrete,
representation and reality. When looking at people, he sometimes mistook them
for objects as he did not take in the person, rather features. Looking at a
glove, all Dr. P. could see was geometrical shapes and called it a “container
of some sort” (14). There is no emotion related to things, as he could not
visualize things as a whole or establish a sense of importance to them. The
other stories within this chapter showed similar stories of deficits and told
many stories of people rejecting their own body parts as they did not feel like
they were their own.
The second section discusses
excesses in neurological function, meaning there is extra activity of the body
or mind that actually leaves the person with negative effects. These illnesses
leave people feeling “dangerously well” and sometimes offer a bit of seduction
to the side effects of the illness. This is best shown by 88 year old Natasha
K. who has cupid’s disease, also known as cerebral syphilis. This caused her to
become frisky and lively, a showing of disinhibitions. Natasha was very fond of
these new symptoms and had a hard time choosing to be treated with penicillin
as she enjoyed the illness so much. However, the most common of these excesses
was Tourette’s syndrome, with the self-proclaimed Witty Ticcy Ray being the
prime example. This man was fully functional and very intelligent, but the
disease caused vocal and physical tics that impeded his work and his marriage
from being successful. After being prescribed Haldol, which suppresses the
involuntary outbursts, Witty Ticcy Ray found himself unhappy with how sluggish
he was and unmotivated. Both extremes led him to only taking the medicine
during the work week, allowing himself to “roam free” on the weekend.
Transports is the third section,
which is composed of people who find themselves almost “transported” back in
time with memories, reminiscences, and a state of dreaming. A large majority of
these people have temporal lobe over-stimulation, usually through strokes,
seizures, or migraines. A lady named Mrs. O’C. who was somewhat deaf woke up
one morning and heard her childhood music playing (traditional Irish tunes),
but discovered it was only in her head. The music continued for many days,
reminding her of her childhood and sometimes she saw visions of her mother
during these outbreaks of music. After going to see Sacks, it was proven she
was having temporal lobe seizures that were causing these transports. As the
consequences of the stroke on her brain started to heal, the music started to
go away.
The final section is the world of
the simple, dealing with the mentally retarded. The stories emphasize how
concrete their world is as it is not convoluted with abstraction. The
defectiveness of the mind of these people with regards to the “conceptual and
abstract” (176) can cause a sort of compensation in other areas of mental
ability. For example, Sacks talks about the twins John and Michael, both of
which are severely autistic. The twins can however say what day of the week any
date will fall on in any year (using an unconscious algorithm), and can
remember hundreds of digits with no trouble. However, their IQs are 60s and do
horridly at calculating for other things. They can also tell the weather and
events of any day in their lives since they were four, showing how their memory
is limitless. The most peculiar thing the twins can do is count unnaturally
high numbers of things in seconds, saying they “just ‘saw’ their number, as a
whole, in a flash” (200). Many cases like this have been found among the
mentally retarded.
Sincerely Sydney
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