The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (Picador)

by Oliver W. Sacks

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (Picador)

book data

4172 ratings, 4.05 average rating, 473 reviews (more data...)

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published

July 7th 1986 (first published 1997) by Picador

binding

Paperback, 256 pages

isbn

0330294911 (isbn13: 9780330294911)

description

In his most extraordinary book, "one of the great clinical writers of the 20th century" (The New York Times) recounts the case histor...more

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All ratings | 5 stars (1360) | 4 stars (1788) | 3 stars (806) | 2 stars (130) | 1 star (28) | avg 4.05

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Sheffy

Sheffy rated it:

(review of isbn 0684853949)

09/15/08

Read in September, 2008

Despite so many people recommending this book, my high expectations were disappointed. Yes, it's perversely interesting to hear about neurological conundrums that afflict people in peculiar ways, but Sacks isn't a particularly good writer, nor does he have a good grasp on his audience. At times he obliquely refers to medical syndromes or footnotes other neurologists, as if he is writing for a technical physician audience, but on the whole his stories are too simplistic to engage such an audienc...more

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Dru

Dru rated it:

(review of isbn 0684853949)

03/09/08

Read in March, 2008

Dear Dr. Sacks,
On page 112 of the paperback edition of your book, the second paragraph begins with the following sentence:
"And with this, no feeling that he has lost feeling (for the feeling he has lost), no feeling that he has lost the depth, that unfathomable, mysterious, myriad-levelled depth which somehow defines identity or reality."
I've read this sentence at least twelve times, and I still don't even have the slightest inkling of what the hell it means. What ...more

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Mona

Mona rated it:

(review of isbn 0684853949)

04/16/07

bookshelves: nonfiction, science-health

I first heard about this book when my biology professor mentioned it in class in reference to right-brain and left-brain disorders. Just last year, I had the good fortune to see the author himself - Dr. Sacks - speak at the university in my hometown. He was a dynamic and entertaining speaker and from then on, I resolved to try out his books. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat matched its author. The book is a collection of case studies on Dr. Sacks's patients with neurological disorders. Sac...more I first heard about this book when my biology professor mentioned it in class in reference to right-brain and left-brain disorders. Just last year, I had the good fortune to see the author himself - Dr. Sacks - speak at the university in my hometown. He was a dynamic and entertaining speaker and from then on, I resolved to try out his books. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat matched its author. The book is a collection of case studies on Dr. Sacks's patients with neurological disorders. Sacks divides the book into four parts, each of which deals with "losses" and "excesses of neurological functions, "transports" of hallucinations, visions, and imagination, and "the simple", concerning the mentally or physically challenged, respectively.

In one chapter titled "The Twins", Sacks describes a pair of twins who had the ability to factor large numbers in their heads, so much so that they could calculate the date of any day of the week in history. He discovers that numbers, especially prime numbers were, for them, a special sort of communication that required no thinking through but was instantaneous. In another chapter, Sacks relates how a previously healthy patient woke up one morning convinced that the leg lying in his bed was not his. Efforts to convince him otherwise (including his own efforts to toss it out onto the floor which resulted in the rest of him falling out as well) were fruitless. How and why do these pheomena occur? These are the questions Sacks attempts to answer.

Although Sacks includes discussion of concepts that may be familiar only to psychologists or neurologists, the book is accessible to readers without that type of backgroud. It was extremely readable, such that I finished it in two days. My only complaint is that although Sacks includes a postscript to most of the chapters to explain further studies or new discoveries that occurred after he first met these patients, there is often no resolution to these stories. This is understandable, considering that many of the patients' disorders are unusual and may not have any resolution, but I still found it a little frustrating. I do, however, want to do more reading on this subject and look foward to reading Sacks' book titled Awakening. ...less

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J.C.

J.C. rated it:

(review of isbn 0684853949)

05/15/08

Read in June, 1996

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

I came across an old reading journal, where I summarized each of the stories in this intruiging book:

A collection of stories about patients with neurological disorders—strange, unique, and human.

“The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”—Dr. P cannot recognize faces or visual images. His brain is deteriorating in a way that causes him to see only individual features and not the whole. He can only keep at a task by singing, and if he’s interrupted, he forgets everything.
“The L...more I came across an old reading journal, where I summarized each of the stories in this intruiging book:

A collection of stories about patients with neurological disorders—strange, unique, and human.

“The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat”—Dr. P cannot recognize faces or visual images. His brain is deteriorating in a way that causes him to see only individual features and not the whole. He can only keep at a task by singing, and if he’s interrupted, he forgets everything.
“The Lost Mariner”—A 49-year old man cannot remember anything past the mid-1940s, and he always thinks he is 19. He can’t hold any thought for more than a few seconds, although he is very sharp. He has no real emotions, since he can’t really remember anything, but he seems to find peace when he gardens.
“The Disembodied Lady”—A once-healthy woman suddenly loses all sense of proprioception”—her sense of self and where her body is. She has to relearn walking, etc., by watching all her movements (so she knows where everything is).
“The Man Who Fell Out of Bed”—A man who thinks someone has attached a fake leg to his body tries to throw it out of bed—but realizes it is his own. He cannot recognize it, or feel it, but he cannot think where his own leg might be. It is like a dead leg.
“Hands”—60 year old blind woman with cerebral palsy cannot do anything with her hands because they feel like lumps of dough. She is taught, however, to recognize things by touch, and finally she learns to sculpt. She reveals her true talent as an artist, and proves that others with her problem can also be cured.
“Phantoms”—A phantom is the sensation of feeling a limb is still intact, even after it has been amputated. This can sometimes be painful, dangerous, or even helpful. It is nearly impossible to teach an amputee to walk again if there is no sensation that a leg still exists. This is not one, but several short examples.
“On the Level”—A dynamic 93-year old man with Parkinson’s disease doesn’t realize he is walking at a tilted 20-degree angle. He fixes the problem ingeniously, however, by designing a special pair of glasses that work as a spirit level, just as in carpentry. He can tell when he’s walking straight.
“Eyes Right”—Having suffered a massive stroke that affected her right cerebral hemisphere, a woman in her 60s no longer has a concept of “left.” She cannot look left and only makes up half of her face. When shown a video image of herself, she can see her left, but it is disturbing to her since she cannot feel it.
“The President’s Speech”—Aphasiacs cannot understand words as such, but they can recognize utterance well enough to understand almost completely what was said to them. This is why they found the president’s speech so funny—they understood what he was saying better than those who understood he words.
“Witty Ticcy Ray”—A victim of Tourette’s since 4, Ray cannot imagine a life without his sudden, violent tics. They keep him sharp-witted, quick, and brilliant at percussion and ping-pong. He briefly tries the drug Haldol but is discouraged to find it slows him down and prevents him from being himself. For 3 months, he imagines life without Tourette’s, and when he tries the drug again, it works ‘miraculously.’ But because he misses his ‘freedom,’ he does not take the drug on weekends—and leads a stable life.
“Cupid’s Disease”—Having contracted syphilis 70 years ago, and having it treated but not eradicated, Mrs. K suddenly feels younger, livelier, and “frisky.” Rather than having it treated, however, she chooses to remain feeling young. Another man experiencing this excited stage of neurosyphilis is very animated. After being given Haldol to quiet him down, he lost his animation and energy.
“A Matter of Identity”—Mr. Thompson cannot identify anyone correctly, so he makes up fictional characters and recognizes people as such. He also cannot accurately remember anything, and so he creates a past of fiction. He is like Jimmie in “The Lost Mariner” with Korsakov’s, but the only time he seems at peace is when he’s by himself and doesn’t need to make up stories.
“Yes, Father-Sister”—Although very smart, Mrs. B developed an irreversible indifference to the world. She knew the difference between right and left, but it didn’t mean anything to her.
“The Possessed”—The story relates the author’s experience of seeing a “Super Touretter” in the streets of NYC. The woman mimicked every person she saw, but was incapable of creating any gestures of her own. She lacked her own personality and was eaten away by Tourette’s.

...less

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Linda

Linda rated it:

(review of isbn 0684853949)

03/20/08

bookshelves: junioryearadvisoryreadingnovels

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
While I was reading this chapter of this book, I came to realize that our hearing aid and our vision for music are very important because when Dr. P lost his vivid imagination, he relied on the body-music instead of body-image. Dr. P had a “massive tumour or degenerative process in the visual parts of his brain” (Sacks 19). I couldn’t believe that he was actually a music teacher who couldn’t recognize his students but when they moved, he seems to r...more The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
While I was reading this chapter of this book, I came to realize that our hearing aid and our vision for music are very important because when Dr. P lost his vivid imagination, he relied on the body-music instead of body-image. Dr. P had a “massive tumour or degenerative process in the visual parts of his brain” (Sacks 19). I couldn’t believe that he was actually a music teacher who couldn’t recognize his students but when they moved, he seems to recognize them. Dr. P failed to see the whole only specific details of faces and pattern. He would recognize someone by their teeth and jaw-basically any physical characteristic traits. Sacks began to analyze Dr. P’s artistic work and noticed that his earlier work had been more naturalistic and realistic “with vivid mood and atmosphere, but finely detailed and concrete” (Sacks 17) but later it became “less vivid, less concrete, less realistic and naturalistic, but far more abstract, even geometrical and cubist” (Sacks 17). His wife got used to his disease and criticize Sacks for not seeing the artistic development and the “advanced into abstract, nonrepresentational art?” (Sacks 17). His wife even acted like it was normal when Dr. P, her husband grab her head thinking her head was a hat. Dr. P leaned toward the complexity of life rather than the simple. He would describe something in mathematical terms yet, for a child, a child would say it’s a glove or a rose. Dr. P also relied on his smelling. Once he smelled the rose, he became revived. Dr. P had difficulties with the leftness of his visual field deficits. But, he continued to teach music. When Dr. P faced people, he would turn his ears toward them thinking he was facing the people, but actually not.

Rebecca
Juxtaposing the 2 chapters, I realized our hearing aid is very important. Rebecca had a partial cleft palate, which caused her to have a “whistling in her speech; short, stumpy fingers, with blunt, deformed nails; and a high, degenerative myopia requiring very thick spectacles-all stigmata of the same congenital condition which had caused her cerebral and mental defects” (Sacks 178). Rebecca loved the world of verbal images and was hungry for the nourishment of reality. Rebecca’s IQ was 60 or less and was called a moron, fool, or booby (Sacks 179). However, she was 19 and acted like a child (Sacks 178). Her parents died, thus Rebecca lives with her grandmother. Rebecca heavily relied on her grandmother to read to her stories, but one day, her grandmother passed away and left her in a world of complete winter on the inside (Sacks 182). However, Rebecca realized that there was a spring and the rise of new hope and determination. Living with her great aunt, she is now removed from the workshop build to fixed her needs. Rebecca believed these workshops were destructive to her self-identity and killed her soul.
...less

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Bell

Bell rated it:

(review of isbn 0684853949)

01/09/08

bookshelves: health

Read in January, 2008

very interesting neurological case studies that begged me to reconsider intelligence and "normalcy" particularly in terms of visual perception and its relationship to reality as well as the profound structure that the arts (he specifically mentions music, dance, story-telling and drawing) provide for those with the inability to form or develop conceptual frameworks. Indeed, it seems that the fine arts aren't just high-concepts of beauty and art, but healing mechanisms crucial to many ...more

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Clampants

Clampants rated it:

(review of isbn 0060970790)

05/12/08

Read in May, 2008

I picked up this book because I am a fan of Oliver Sacks and his various speaking engagements (lectures, public radio interviews, etc)...but I have to say I was fairly nonplussed with it.

While the case studies in and of themselves make for interesting reading, the tone of the writing is fairly "clinical" and...removed. Despite the review blurbs stating that these are "personal" and "touchingly human" looks at neurological disorders, I saw only a few glimpses of...more

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Mary

Mary rated it:

(review of isbn 0684853949)

02/21/08

Read in July, 1980

recommends it for: Anyone with an interest in out-of-the-ordinary people and events.

Absolutely amazing! In "The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat", the author, a prominent neurosurgeun, introduces the reader to his most interesting patients, all of whom have sustained - and are coping with - varying degrees of brain damage. In this collection, you'll gain insights into the astonishing inner world of the neurological patient: the titular patient, who was completely baffled by an object he was asked to identify - until he smelled it; the man who mistook a zoo's tigres...more

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Roman

Roman rated it:

(review of isbn 0684853949)

07/19/08

All fiction inevitably explores human perception and consciousness. These neurological case studies are a more direct approach. Abnormal and afflicted minds reveal much about how complex and rich we are.

I struggled with some of his excessive description and analysis and found myself skipping from one case-study to the next; specifically, italicizing the word "that" twice in one sentence, a dry winter "twiglet," the "febrile intimacy" of an autistic's house - ...more

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Jen

Jen rated it:

(review of isbn 0684853949)

05/12/08

Read in March, 2008

Very interesting series of case studies of unusual neurological conditions, some dating from the early days of neuroscience. Oliver Sacks imbues them with a sense of his personal wonder and attention that sometimes makes the difference between treating the stories as entertainment and stories as expressions of the hidden dimensions of the brain. I would recommend this to anyone with even a passing interest in psychology, autism, sense and perception, or mental conditions.

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Heather

Heather rated it:

(review of isbn 0684853949)

06/29/08

Read in June, 2008

Written by a clinical neurologist, this book examines the case histories of some of the doctor-author's patients. These patients are afflicted with some unusual aberrations. One older woman suddenly feels frisky, one man is stuck in a moment in the past, another no longer recognizes people as people. Read a tale in this book before attending a party, and your retelling is sure to engage strangers.

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Collin

Collin rated it:

(review of isbn 0684853949)

06/07/08

Read in June, 2008

Dry. Reading this book is like eating saltine crackers without anything to drink. He only briefly discusses the cases (these are, ahem, the interesting parts of the book) and then embarks on tedious philosophical discussions about neurology. He does seem very proud of himself and his education, though; I will give him that as a backhanded compliment.

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Allison

Allison rated it:

(review of isbn 0684853949)

07/24/08

Non fiction. Read it many years ago for my pysch class and have been recommending it ever since. Actual clinical tales of people w/ brain injuries and perception problems, so interesting it reads like a story. Amazing machine the mind is and even more amazing when something goes wrong w/ how it interprets the world we see, hear, feel.

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Sarah

Sarah rated it:

(review of isbn 0684853949)

07/09/08

Oliver Sachs is scientist with a heart, a sense of humor and the wisdom to allow his patient's stories tell themselves (and he's a great writer)

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Jlleigon

Jlleigon rated it:

(review of isbn 0684853949)

09/11/08

An excellent book on how the brain can alter our perceptions. Funny, heartwarming, and ultimately eye opening.

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Amara

Amara rated it:

(review of isbn 0684853949)

10/04/08

bookshelves: nonfict

recommends it for: Everyone!

Fascinating real life tales of psychological oddities, like a women who thinks her arm is her son's arm.

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Bryn

Bryn rated it:

(review of isbn 0684853949)

05/18/08

Like watching a really awesome NOVA special from the late seventies.

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Carra

Carra rated it:

(review of isbn 0684853949)

11/05/08

bookshelves: currently-reading

Oliver Sacks, always a good time.

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Churpa

Churpa rated it:

(review of isbn 0684853949)

11/21/08

bookshelves: nonfiction

recommended to Churpa by: John Freeman

Not the sort of thing I normally read. As someone who is terrified of doctors, medical literature is not exactly my cup of tea. That said, I found this collection of case studies of bizarre neurological disorders to be fascinating, informative, and often moving. Most of the disorders seem surreal; I kept thinking they would be good subjects for Borges short stories and was amused to discover a Borges quote in a chapter toward the end of the book. The author, a neurologist, writes beautifully, an...more

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Angel

Angel rated it:

(review of isbn 0684853949)

06/05/08

bookshelves: advisory-2007-2008

This book was pretty amazing because it introduced new ideas and concepts about the wonders in the world. This novel talks about the mysteries of what the world can enfold. For example, there was a chapter about how a man couldn't do simple math, yet when he saw complex things such as a box of matches that fell and dispersed on the floor, he was able to mentally count the amount of matches within a few seconds. This fascinated me because I have always thought that there were some parts of the...more

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