Books for Prep | |
 - Brilliant, But Blind To Childhood And Prenatal Emotional TraumaAlthough I don't agree with many of Oliver Sacks's conclusions, I found this fascinating book a worthwhile read. It is packed with superior case material - and largely presented in a very readable format (and unlike in some of his other books, he reins in his footnotes!). Some of the chapters, like "Prodigies" or "An Anthropologist On Mars" or "To See Or Not To See," are downright brilliant and provide wonderful and unusual insights into the workings of the human brain - and the universals of human experience. Other chapters (such as "The Colorblind Painter" and "The Landscape Of His Dreams") are weak and drag on, rehashing the same relatively minute points ad nauseum. Overall, however, Sacks's main weakness is his lack of understanding of emotions, particularly the emotional dynamics between parents and children. He does occasionally wax eloquent about emotional states and spirituality, but this comes across more as an intellectualization of emotions than a truly deep grasp of them. He has little respect for their power to mold neurological development, and sidesteps his own data that point in this direction. To me this is shoddy science, and he failed to convince me of his foregone conclusion that disorders like autism and Tourette's syndrome are neurological in origin. In his chapter on Tourette's, Sacks presents a surgeon who appears to be acting out a huge degree of repressed hostility through his unconsciously motivated peculiarities. Sacks even opens the door a crack into why the surgeon might do it - that he was adopted and painfully isolated as a child, and it's not hard to speculate that he might be totally enraged at his rotten lot in early childhood life, and yet unable to express this appropriate anger through healthy avenues of expression, because that would only earn him MORE rejection. So instead (my gut tells me, though I lack the data to take it further) he acted it out through Tourette's. But Sacks never touches this one with a ten foot pole, or even speculates as to this possibility, and instead just idealizes this man for his bizarre outbursts, his violence, his hostility toward his own children, his terrible boundaries, and his occasional ability to rein in his symptoms and function super-normally. Had the surgeon not been so high functioning, and people not put up with his oddness and general offensiveness, I highly doubt Sacks would be putting him on such a pedestal. But I really question Sacks's confidence in stating that autism has nothing to do with childhood trauma. My gut tells me that at least some autistic children were emotionally traumatized in early childhood or in the womb, and were reacting on a primal level to their mothers' emotional pathology. Every fetus reacts to maternal emotional pathology - and emotional health - at some level, and I feel the autistic response is just an ultra-extreme one, like the crème de la crème of a schizoid response, so much so that the parts of the fetal brain that develop healthy emotional relating and expression and self-reflection become stunted or dead. My viewpoint might be difficult to prove, but I see it as less difficult to prove than Sacks's neurological etiology, which he defends in the most convenient way of all - by not even considering any opposing points of view. But in a world hell-bent on minimizing the blame on mothers for their children's problems, it makes sense why Sacks can get away with turning such a blind eye. Rating:  - the mind is fascinating on the whole i'd say the book was very good. i agree with previous reviewers that some chapters were more interesting than others, but all were well written and really described the situations beyond the hard science. i liked that he didnt delve too far in to explaining why patients behaved the way they did, i.e., didnt go on and on about dysfunctional neurons and brain injuries. it was neat to see that dr sacks stayed in contact with the people he wrote about/studied and to see their progression or regression. Rating:  - An Awesome Romp Through the Pluriverse."Anthropologist on Mars" begins with a quote by geneticist J.B.S. Haldane - a quote that so beautifullly sums up the book's aim as to bear repeating: "The universe is not only queerer than we imagine, but queerer than we can imagine." Oliver Sacks's seven paradoxical tales aim at showing us just that. We are offered a mere glimpse of the neurological pluriverse and, in so witnessing, become able to appreciate just how 'queer' human nature can be. Other reviewers have gone into great detail about the outline of each story, so I will leave that to them. What I wish to point out to prospective readers is Sack's ability, through his tales, to make the ordinary things about our brains that we take for granted, appear unique, fragile, and more special than we might have thought. For instance, we witness two stories dealing with sight. First, we explore the case of a painter who loses ALL sense of color late in life. We also see its opposite - a blind man given sight late in life. In the first case, we get a real sense of how integral the sense of color is for life. We watch this man describe how the world becomes infinitely duller and less interesting when all one can see is shades of gray. He is driven almost to suicide! In the next tale, we see how astonishingly hard it is to 'learn to see' and all the things the brain must do to achieve this (which becomes all the harder the older one is). We also meet some folks who are autistic and, as such, lack the social instincts and abstraction that we who have them take for granted. Imagine, if you can, having to learn social rules (such things as body language, vocal inflection, and sense of humor) like one would learn algebra - not instinctually, but intellectually. And imagine being mystified by ideas like romantic love and the beauty of music. Temple Grandin - in the final of Sacks tales - shows us what this is like. Through all of this, Sacks takes on the role not only of a neurologist and story teller, but of a philosopher. The philosopher takes the ordinary and puts it under a microscope to show us how breath-taking it really is. Just because most of us - the impaired call us neurotypicals - have brains that smoothly operate thus and so, does not mean that we all do. Some, like Virgil, have to work hard at seeing such basic things as 2D represntations of 3D objects. Others, like Temple Grandin, have to work at understanding the idea of sociality. All in all, this is a stunning book that will make you think and marvel. Dare I say, if you are like me, you will never look at the human brain with quite the same lens as you did before. Rating: - Second the motion Broadening our sense of the 'human'I recommend Dennis Littrell's review of this book on this site.He outlines clearly what the book is about, and gives us the basic story of each of the seven chapters, the seven cases that make up the book. He headlines his review 'extraordinary genius' and I share this feeling about Oliver Sachs. What I find most remarkable about Sachs' work is his ability to patiently study, and work to help people who seem lost completely. Instead of being as most of us are repelled by these kind of often 'freakish abnormalities ' Sachs in studying the people and recounting their cases , makes their stories 'human'. He extends in a certain way our conception of what the human is, and increases our sense of how remarkable the human mind is. He is also a most moving author whose human sympathy and compassion inspire. Rating: - Great Primer on the Power of the BrainAn Anthropologist on Mars is the much anticipated follow-up to his previous best-seller, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat. In it, Dr. Sacks further explores the recesses of the Central Nervous System's never ending quest for logic and understanding. Gestalt tells us that if we look at a broken circle long enough, the brain will fill-in the missing piece. The brain easily embraces a circle, but finds no concrete logic to a broken circle. Thus, the brain rejects such a concept as impossible. Consider our memories: most people have heard that eye witness accounts of rare events are digitized in such a way that the brain can change the sequence of events in a manner scewed toward the logical arrangment of the rare event. People who have witnessed an aircraft explode during flight most often remember this rare event quite differently immeadiatley after it happens. Plains don't explode then crash, plains crash, then they explode. That makes sense to the brain, but explode then crash does not make sense. OK, enough of Psych 101. As a neurologist, Dr. Sacks understands how the brain works, and is thus able to explain it in an easy going manner. It wasn't until a skiing accident though inwhich Dr. Sacks lost a leg, and learned first hand the phenomonon of phanthom feeling that he became fully aware of the brains search for logic. The brain hates the idea of ONE LEG, and thus continues to accept information from something that isn't even there, and, more remarkably, responds to the information. Now armed with subjectivity as well as objectivity, Dr. Sacks marshalls his considerable talent as a writer and walks a thin line in the telling of our miraculous brain. Finally, it's clear he really cares about the people he puts forth as examples of neurological insult. He offers us a wide variety of people, thier afflictions, and the results. He does seem to favor Tourette Syndrome as a perfect example of a brain run amuk. After all, Tourette Syndrome is named after a student of great French neurologist Jean Charcot. Dr. Tourette devoted his career to the study of one person who suffered from what we now call Tourette Syndrome. Dr. Sacks widens the view effectively. In association with Amazon.com | |