The work of the famous neurologist Oliver Sachs "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and Other Stories from Medical Practice" became a bestseller and has been translated into many languages. In it, the author talks about his medical experience, about people who become incomprehensible to many and cause conflicting feelings.
Despite the fact that the author is a doctor, his work is read quite easily. Of course, there is a description of some diseases and their features, but the writer tried to avoid complex terms. It is noteworthy that Oliver Sacks writes about people not as if he were taking notes in the anamnesis of the patient. His narrative does not look dry and concise, on the contrary, it is filled with feelings, empathy, reflections, humanity.
The book contains the stories of many people who have some deviations in mental development, in the work of the brain. For example, the author brings to attention the stories of people who suffer from the now known autism, but he also talks about very unusual cases.
It is interesting how complex the human brain is, how all the processes take place in it. If the slightest failure occurs somewhere, then this can already radically change the perception of a person. The book deals with both congenital and acquired deviations.
The author of the book not only observes people, but also reflects on them. Most people perceive such people as eccentrics, fools, even as abnormal and inferior. But if you think about it, perhaps their thinking is just a feature, not an aberration. Sometimes unusual perception allows people to create masterpieces of music, painting, literature. Or maybe those people who live in their own world are not so unhappy? Sometimes, watching such people, one gets the feeling that they can live a happier and more fulfilling life than we, normal and ordinary, loaded with work and endless problems. The book will be of great interest to anyone who wants to learn more about people with an unusual psyche and worldview.
On our website you can download the book "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and Other Stories from Medical Practice" by Oliver Sachs for free and without registration in fb2, rtf, epub, pdf, txt format, read the book online or buy the book on the Internet store.
Science editor's preface
When I received an offer to edit the translation of the book by the famous neurologist, psychologist and writer Oliver Sachs, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, I accepted without a second thought. This book, a gift from an American colleague, has been on the shelf of my closet for fifteen years next to the works of A. R. Luria. I have returned to it many times over the years. When teaching a course in neuropsychology, it is simply impossible not to quote Sachs. But "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" is much more than a special monograph or manual for a teacher and doctor.
Oliver Sachs is one of the most famous names in his field in the West. And his popularity goes far beyond the narrow professional environment.
He was born and educated in London and continued in the USA. Since 1970, his books - "Migraine", "Awakenings", "A Leg to Stand" - have been gaining readers. The book that the reader picks up is the fourth in a row and one of the most significant works of Sachs. It cannot be said that Saks is not known at all in Russia. Several of his essays entitled "Case Studies" were published in the journal "Foreign Literature". Russian authors refer to his works - both neuropsychologists and writers (for example, Tatyana Tolstaya). But the real acquaintance with the work of Oliver Sachs is yet to come for the Russian reader.
How to define the genre of this wonderful book - popular, scientific? Or is there something else here? On the one hand, the book is devoted to the problems of neurology and neuropsychology. The topic assumes a rather narrow circle of readers. This is not to say that Oliver Sachs resorts to simplifications to attract the attention of the uninitiated. On the contrary, his approach is more complex than the schematized presentation of the material in a textbook and monograph. What matters is not what Oliver Sacks writes about, but how he writes. The language of the book is lively, captivating, with a penchant for word games and literary associations. Neither medical slang interferes with perception (well, who else can call a patient with Gilles de la Tourette's syndrome "tourette"?), nor an abundance of special terms, nor an enumeration of chemicals, the existence of which most simply do not know.
Is it possible to imagine a "neurological play" or a film based on a special monograph? Probably, in this case, the monograph should carry something special - drama, internal dynamics, intensity of passions. And her hero should be a man, not his disease. This is precisely the most important feature of Sax's work. And it is not surprising that his book "Awakenings" became the basis for the play by Harold Pinter, and was later filmed. It is absolutely difficult to imagine a chapter from a monograph or a popular science book on the opera stage. But this is exactly what happened with this book. The opera was written by Michael Nyman, a popular contemporary composer, the author of music for most of Peter Greenaway's films. I think the plot attracted the composer not so much because the main character is a famous musician. The music is present in the book itself - the rhythm and, if you like, the melody. The reader will catch it in the same way that the hero, listening to the noise in the street, catches in it a certain symphony. Music makes up the inner world of a person who is deeply inferior in other respects, filling not only his memory, but also his soul. The music transforms the clumsy, dysplastic Rebecca, in the dance her movements acquire grace. Music remains the only force that organizes the life of Professor P., who "has its own melody for every action."
It seems that every reader can find something different in the book. Someone will be interested in the "Kunstkamera" - amazing neuropsychological stories. For another reader, the book of Oliver Sachs is a small tragedy, where in the foreground is not illness, ugliness, but the experience, fate, the tension of a person's struggle with the disease. Tragic is the misunderstanding of one's position, even more tragic is awareness - for a moment. For the physician, here is an in-depth description of complex and rare clinical cases. For a psychologist, it is an attempt to comprehend the human soul: a fracture reveals the hidden. Where can one find a reader as universal as the author?
I am convinced that such a reader exists. And his meeting with this book will be the beginning of a long friendship. He will read all the other books of Sachs, marveling at the persistence of the author, who, defending the main thesis, each time discovers something new. For us. But above all, for yourself.
It is amazing that Oliver Sacks, a man of vast clinical experience, manages to retain his ability to be surprised. Each of his descriptions is imbued with this feeling.
In Oliver Sachs's book, the reader will find a certain duality. The author is a doctor, and he has all the stereotypes of traditional clinical thinking. He dreams of understanding the human soul through the physiology of brain structures. He believes in miraculous substances that "awake" patients. He has the optimism of a scientist who professes the principles of positive science. The brain is seen by him as a magnificent machine, extremely complex and well-coordinated. A machine whose failures are as extraordinary as its normal operation. However, a person begins to think about the structure of the mechanism mainly when this mechanism fails. Sachs never verbalizes this approach. On the contrary, his entire consciousness protests against mechanism. Sachs, a philosopher and writer, enters into an argument with the traditional thinking of the physician. He speaks not only about brain structures and neurotransmitters. He talks about archetypes, symbols, myths. He speaks emotionally, excitedly. It is clear to the reader which side is winning. Romantic worldview triumphs. It is no coincidence that A. R. Luria dreamed of a romantic neuroscience, and Sachs picks up this idea. The heterogeneity of the material of the book, the variety of problems raised in it requires a synthesis. This synthesis is almost impossible on an intellectual level. And this is where passion comes in.
The book also covers philosophical questions. What is the nature of the disease as such? What is health? What does mental illness do? Does it always take away - or does it sometimes bring something new and even positive into the human soul? The very structure of the book answers this question. Its main sections are called "Losses" and "Excess". But even in "Loss," Sacks agrees that, on some level, illness can enhance a person's creativity. Professor P., losing the ability to visual perception, moves from realism in painting to cubist and abstract canvases. And although in the end the hero's artistic abilities come to naught, but "halfway" he clearly acquires new qualities of style. Even in the inexhaustible inventions of another patient - a man who has lost his memory, Oliver Sachs sees a creative beginning.
To a psychiatrist who is accustomed to dividing symptoms into "productive" and "negative" ones, adding and taking away, this problem seems obvious. After all, if an ordinary person does not have hallucinations and delusions, but the patient does, then, consequently, we are talking about products, albeit pathological ones. And again, if the consciousness is deeply clouded, then we are talking about loss. But if bizarre images invade consciousness, filling the inner space along with the impressions of the real world, then we are talking about qualitative, productive disorders. However, Sacks' understanding of "loss and surplus" is more complex and, it seems to me, closer to the truth.
Yes, full, is there an excess? If it happens, it is only as a result of the lack of some other factor that upsets the balance. The easiest way to illustrate this thesis is by the example of a complete loss of the ability to memorize (Korsakov's syndrome). Confabulations (fictions, fantasies), usually found in memory loss, are a productive symptom. But after all, confabulations only fill a huge lack - the emptiness formed in the psyche of a person who is not able to store true impressions in his memory. Yes, crazy ideas are products. But Freud once showed that the delusional worldview of the paranoid is only a flawed attempt to recreate some semblance of harmony in the place of the psyche destroyed by the disease. Any disease includes not only changes, but also reactions to these changes: on the part of the brain structures - on the physiological level, on the part of the patient's psyche - on the psychological level, and also on the part of relatives and society ...
Despite the fact that scientists have advanced enough in the study of the brain, they still do not know about all its capabilities. Modern man knows perfectly how the main organ of the central nervous system works, but along with this, he knows little where the limit of his capabilities is, whether he exists at all and what a person can actually do and what he will never be subject to. Neurologists, psychologists, psychiatrists and physiologists have been trying to find answers to these questions for decades. To lift the veil over the mystery, experts study the human psyche, which sometimes defies the laws of ordinary life.
Writer and neuropsychologist Oliver Sacks has been studying the human psyche for many years, which explains his craving for writing "medical" bestsellers. Each work of the author addresses the topic of psychology and contains a medical basis. The main difference between his books is that Sachs artistically describes the stories of real people who have become victims of the metamorphosis of the subconscious, sincerely empathizing with all his heroes. One of the cult works of Mr. Sachs, created on this topic, is the book "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and Other Stories from Medical Practice". On the site you can download for free "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" in fb2, epub, pdf, txt, doc and rtf by Oliver Sacks.
In The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Stories from Medical Practice, Oliver Sachs collected more than 50 chapters, each of which is a separate story about a man who became an innocent victim of mental tricks.
People with mental health complaints cannot take a sober view of the world. Reality in their view is truthful, but from the point of view of a healthy person, it is curved. Medicine diagnoses such disorders, calling them neuroses, assuring that such relationships between the psyche and consciousness are caused by deep psychological conflicts, overstrain of nervous processes and the pressure of the Super Ego. On BookPoisk you can listen to an audio book and read online The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks.
Oliver Sachs, in his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Medical Stories, offers the reader more than just the memoirs of a neuropsychologist involved in the observation and treatment of mentally ill people. This is a book of stories, each of which will touch its reader to the core, destroying the boundaries between understandable and strange things. Somewhere in the middle of the book, you will certainly wonder if it is worth trying to make these people normal or squeeze them into society if it will never accept them because of deviations? Each reader will answer this question independently. Mr. Sachs does not give any unequivocal answers, he only offers ground for reflection.
This book is of interest, not only as a medical aid. The author's narrative style made it an interesting collection of stories about people who do not fit into society, but continue to live according to its laws and rules of the game, which are dictated by the subconscious.
