The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat
Author: Oliver Sacks
Publsiher: Vintage
Total Pages: 280
Release: 2021-09-14
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780593466681

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In his most extraordinary book, the bestselling author of Awakenings and "poet laureate of medicine” (The New York Times) recounts the case histories of patients inhabiting the compelling world of neurological disorders, from those who are no longer able to recognize common objects to those who gain extraordinary new skills. Featuring a new preface, Oliver Sacks’s The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with perceptual and intellectual disorders: 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; whose limbs seem alien to them; who lack some skills yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents. In Dr. Sacks’s splendid and sympathetic telling, his patients are deeply human and his tales are studies of struggles against incredible adversity. A great healer, Sacks never loses sight of medicine’s ultimate responsibility: “the suffering, afflicted, fighting human subject.”

Musicophilia

Musicophilia
Author: Oliver Sacks
Publsiher: Vintage Canada
Total Pages: 448
Release: 2010-02-05
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780307373496

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What goes on in human beings when they make or listen to music? What is it about music, what gives it such peculiar power over us, power delectable and beneficent for the most part, but also capable of uncontrollable and sometimes destructive force? Music has no concepts, it lacks images; it has no power of representation, it has no relation to the world. And yet it is evident in all of us–we tap our feet, we keep time, hum, sing, conduct music, mirror the melodic contours and feelings of what we hear in our movements and expressions. In this book, Oliver Sacks explores the power music wields over us–a power that sometimes we control and at other times don’t. He explores, in his inimitable fashion, how it can provide access to otherwise unreachable emotional states, how it can revivify neurological avenues that have been frozen, evoke memories of earlier, lost events or states or bring those with neurological disorders back to a time when the world was much richer. This is a book that explores, like no other, the myriad dimensions of our experience of and with music.

Awakenings

Awakenings
Author: Oliver Sacks
Publsiher: Vintage Canada
Total Pages: 464
Release: 2011-03-04
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780307371058

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Awakenings — which inspired the major motion picture — is the remarkable story of a group of patients who contracted sleeping-sickness during the great epidemic just after World War I. Frozen for decades in a trance-like state, these men and women were given up as hopeless until 1969, when Dr. Oliver Sacks gave them the then-new drug L-DOPA, which had an astonishing, explosive, "awakening" effect. Dr. Sacks recounts the moving case histories of his patients, their lives, and the extraordinary transformations which went with their reintroduction to a changed world.

Imagination

Imagination
Author: Jim Davies
Publsiher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 400
Release: 2019-11-05
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9781643132884

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We don’t think of imagination the way that we should. The word is often only associated with children, artists and daydreamers, but in reality, imagination is an integral part of almost every action and decision that we make. Simply put, imagination is a person’s ability to create scenarios in his or her head: this can include everything from planning a grocery list, to honing a golf swing, to having religious hallucinations. And while imagination has positive connotations, it can also lead to decreased productivity and cooperation, or worse, the continuous reliving of past trauma.The human brain is remarkable in its ability to imagine—it can imagine complex possible futures, fantasy worlds, or tasty meals. We can use our imaginations to make us relaxed or anxious. We can imagine what the world might be, and construct elaborate plans. People have been fascinated with the machination of the human brain and its ability to imagine for centuries. There are books on creativity, dreams, memory, and the mind in general, but how exactly do we create those scenes in our head? With chapters ranging from hallucination and imaginary friends to how imagination can make you happier and more productive, Jim Davies' Imagination will help us explore the full potential of our own mind.

Good Morning Monster

Good Morning  Monster
Author: Catherine Gildiner
Publsiher: Penguin
Total Pages: 331
Release: 2019-09-03
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780735236974

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A therapist creates moving portraits of five of her most memorable patients, men and women she considers psychological heroes. Catherine Gildiner is a bestselling memoirist, a novelist, and a psychologist in private practice for twenty-five years. In Good Morning, Monster, she focuses on five patients who overcame enormous trauma--people she considers heroes. With a novelist's storytelling gift, Gildiner recounts the details of their struggles, their paths to recovery, and her own tale of growth as a therapist. The five cases include a successful but lonely musician suffering sexual dysfunction; a young woman whose father abandoned her and her siblings in a rural cottage; an Indigenous man who'd endured great trauma at a residential school; a young woman whose abuse at the hands of her father led to a severe personality disorder; and a glamorous workaholic whose negligent mother had greeted her each morning with "Good morning, Monster." Each patient presents a mystery, one that will only be unpacked over years. They seek Gildiner's help to overcome an immediate challenge in their lives, but discover that the source of their suffering has been long buried. It will take courage to face those realities, and creativity and resourcefulness from their therapist. Each patient embodies self-reflection, stoicism, perseverance, and forgiveness as they work unflinchingly to face the truth. Gildiner's account of her journeys with them is moving, insightful, and sometimes humorous. It offers a behind-the-scenes look into the therapist's office and explains how the process can heal even the most unimaginable wounds.

Everything in Its Place

Everything in Its Place
Author: Oliver Sacks
Publsiher: Knopf Canada
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2019-04-23
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780345811400

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From the bestselling author of Gratitude and On the Move, a final volume of essays that showcases Sacks's broad range of interests--from his passions for ferns, swimming, and horsetails, to his final case histories exploring schizophrenia, dementia, and Alzheimer's. Oliver Sacks, renowned scientist and storyteller, is adored by readers for his neurological case histories, his fascination and familiarity with human behaviour at its most unexpected and unfamiliar. Everything in Its Place is a celebration of Sacks's myriad interests, all told with his characteristic compassion, erudition, and luminous prose. From the celebrated case history of Spalding Gray that appeared in The New Yorker four months before his death to reflections on mental asylums; from piercing accounts of Schizophrenia to a reminiscence of Robin Williams; from the riveting tale of a medical colleague falling victim to Alzheimer's to the cinematography of Michael Powell, this volume celebrates and reflects the wondrous curiosity of Oliver Sacks.

Hallucinations

Hallucinations
Author: Oliver Sacks
Publsiher: Vintage
Total Pages: 326
Release: 2012-11-06
Genre: Science
ISBN: 9780307957252

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The "poet laureate of medicine" (The New York Times) and author of The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat weaves together stories of mind-altering experiences to reveal what they tell us about our brains, our folklore and culture, and why the potential for hallucination exists in us all. “An absorbing plunge into a mystery of the mind.” —Entertainment Weekly To many people, hallucinations imply madness, but in fact they are a common part of the human experience. These sensory distortions range from the shimmering zigzags of a visual migraine to powerful visions brought on by fever, injuries, drugs, sensory deprivation, exhaustion, or even grief. Hallucinations doubtless lie behind many mythological traditions, literary inventions, and religious epiphanies. Drawing on his own experiences, a wealth of clinical cases from among his patients, and famous historical examples ranging from Dostoevsky to Lewis Carroll, the legendary neurologist Oliver Sacks investigates the mystery of these sensory deceptions: what they say about the working of our brains, how they have influenced our folklore and culture, and why the potential for hallucination is present in all humans.

The Mind s Eye

The Mind s Eye
Author: Oliver Sacks
Publsiher: Vintage
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2010-10-26
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 9780307594556

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In The Mind’s Eye, Oliver Sacks tells the stories of people who are able to navigate the world and communicate with others despite losing what many of us consider indispensable senses and abilities: the power of speech, the capacity to recognize faces, the sense of three-dimensional space, the ability to read, the sense of sight. For all of these people, the challenge is to adapt to a radically new way of being in the world. There is Lilian, a concert pianist who becomes unable to read music and is eventually unable even to recognize everyday objects, and Sue, a neurobiologist who has never seen in three dimensions, until she suddenly acquires stereoscopic vision in her fifties. There is Pat, who reinvents herself as a loving grandmother and active member of her community, despite the fact that she has aphasia and cannot utter a sentence, and Howard, a prolific novelist who must find a way to continue his life as a writer even after a stroke destroys his ability to read. And there is Dr. Sacks himself, who tells the story of his own eye cancer and the bizarre and disconcerting effects of losing vision to one side. Sacks explores some very strange paradoxes—people who can see perfectly well but cannot recognize their own children, and blind people who become hyper-visual or who navigate by “tongue vision.” He also considers more fundamental questions: How do we see? How do we think? How important is internal imagery—or vision, for that matter? Why is it that, although writing is only five thousand years old, humans have a universal, seemingly innate, potential for reading? The Mind’s Eye is a testament to the complexity of vision and the brain and to the power of creativity and adaptation. And it provides a whole new perspective on the power of language and communication, as we try to imagine what it is to see with another person’s eyes, or another person’s mind.