Oliver Sacks

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Ouroboros

The Tail Devourer
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  1. Pre-Medical
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Has anyone ever read Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat?

I found the case studies to be both fascinating and insightful not only to the mysteries of a plethora of neuropsychiatric disorders but also to the human psyche itself and am curious to know everyone else's reactions 🙂.

Opinions?

Synopsis From: <http://www.oliversacks.com/hat.htm> Here Dr. Sacks recounts the case histories of patients lost in the bizarre, apparently inescapable world of neurological disorders: people afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations; patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as ******ed yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.

If inconceivably strange, these brilliant tales remain, in Dr. Sacks's splendid and sympathetic telling, deeply human. They are studies of life struggling against incredible adversity, and they enable us to enter the world of the neurologically impaired, to imagine with our hearts what it must be to live and feel as they do.
 
he is a genius! I got to have dinner with him 2 years ago and he continues to wow me.
 
Check out "Phantoms in the Brain" by VS Ramachandran.
 
reading Oliver Sacks in 8th grade is what made me want to study this sort of stuff for the rest of my life 😀 . All of his books are wonderful, if a bit flowery. But that's what makes him him!

If you like interesting clinical case studies, also chack out Klawan's "Toscanini's Fumble and Other Tales of Clinical Neurology" and Cytowic's "The Man who Tasted Shapes".
 
One application I submitted asked for a psychological text that inspired you, and I named Sacks' the Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. Great stuff and well written.
 
reading Oliver Sacks in 8th grade is what made me want to study this sort of stuff for the rest of my life 😀 . All of his books are wonderful, if a bit flowery. But that's what makes him him!

If you like interesting clinical case studies, also chack out Klawan's "Toscanini's Fumble and Other Tales of Clinical Neurology" and Cytowic's "The Man who Tasted Shapes".

TMWMHWFAT had the same impact on me, although I was in college when I found it. Klawan's works are good too.
 
he is a genius! I got to have dinner with him 2 years ago and he continues to wow me.

Holy crap! Is he every bit as interesting in person as he is on paper?
 
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