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Brain Surgeon: An Intimate View of His World
Book by Shainberg, Lawrence
276 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1979
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April 22, 2011
"The Brain Surgeon" by Lawrence Shainberg is the nonfiction story of a famous (unnamed) brain surgeon in the 1970's, a time when psychology and neurology and surgery were even more at cross purposes than they are now, and the field of neuropsychology had yet to emerge. The hierarchies of coolness/importance remain in the same order though, psychology at the bottom of the heap, as always (and let's not even mention social work - the absolute disdain for social workers, I'm hoping, is at least ameliorated in the present).
I picked up TBS because I couldn't find the book of Mr. Shainberg's I really wanted ("Memories of Amnesia"), and I thought TBS might cover enough memory/perspective issues to be useful for my research purposes. It turned out to be a bit of a slog, and not narrative enough to pull me through easily. To boot, there wasn't enough reflection on memory for my needs, except for a couple of passages, including this gem:
"If memory is a function of the brain, what is the brain to do with memories of its own diminishment?"
However, it was fascinating to read how far these fields, and medicine in general, has come (the surgeon in question is a chain smoker, and restrains himself only in the ICU and in surgery itself. All other parts of the hospital are fair game), and how in some ways, they're exactly the same (he is an obnoxious tyrannical patriarch).
Also, the idea of exploratory brain surgery - surgery to figure out what to do in the "real" surgery - is something I have had the luxury of forgetting existed, since we now have MRIs and CAT scans and PET scans and such. Some of these technologies existed in the 70's, but weren't used widely or frequently enough. To give surgical snobbery some credit, I think it required a different kind of skill, speed, and stamina to be a brain surgeon in the 70's.
I should also add that I'm experiencing severe reader's block, and so my inability to get through this book with ease or enjoyment could also be a function of that. And I still think the excerpt of "Memories of Amnesia" that I read in the Vintage Book of Amnesia is some of the best, sharpest, most interesting writing I've read, memory related or not.
I picked up TBS because I couldn't find the book of Mr. Shainberg's I really wanted ("Memories of Amnesia"), and I thought TBS might cover enough memory/perspective issues to be useful for my research purposes. It turned out to be a bit of a slog, and not narrative enough to pull me through easily. To boot, there wasn't enough reflection on memory for my needs, except for a couple of passages, including this gem:
"If memory is a function of the brain, what is the brain to do with memories of its own diminishment?"
However, it was fascinating to read how far these fields, and medicine in general, has come (the surgeon in question is a chain smoker, and restrains himself only in the ICU and in surgery itself. All other parts of the hospital are fair game), and how in some ways, they're exactly the same (he is an obnoxious tyrannical patriarch).
Also, the idea of exploratory brain surgery - surgery to figure out what to do in the "real" surgery - is something I have had the luxury of forgetting existed, since we now have MRIs and CAT scans and PET scans and such. Some of these technologies existed in the 70's, but weren't used widely or frequently enough. To give surgical snobbery some credit, I think it required a different kind of skill, speed, and stamina to be a brain surgeon in the 70's.
I should also add that I'm experiencing severe reader's block, and so my inability to get through this book with ease or enjoyment could also be a function of that. And I still think the excerpt of "Memories of Amnesia" that I read in the Vintage Book of Amnesia is some of the best, sharpest, most interesting writing I've read, memory related or not.
Displaying 1 of 1 review