The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

Emelia Seybert PSY 442 19 November, 2015 The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat Oliver Sacks I love Oliver Sacks and all of his interesting tales from his clinic. Previously I have read “Hallucinations” and “Awakenings” by him and I must say “Hallucinations” is one of my all time favorites. He has a way of taking subjects that one would find in a textbook and turning them into living breathing people with vivid and imaginative writing. His style and stories are engaging and I find myself accidentally learning more about the brain than I ever thought possible. This book adds greatly to our discussion as it takes different disorders we have been looking at through the course and gives them a face and a thorough and relatable description of…

In His book entitled The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Oliver Sacks tells 24 tales of various patients with neurological disorders. He breaks up his book into four parts to organize the stories based on the specific problems of the patients. These parts are called Losses, Excesses, Transports, and The World of the Simple. The story in which the book is named after, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, for example, is the first story in Losses. This is story was about a man by the name…

nucleotide to heart as a whole organ. I particularly found interest in the module ‘Cell recognition and the immune system’ where I throughly enjoyed learning about HIV, how the structure of the virus and how it replicates leads ultimately to the deterioration of our immune system. Viruses and genetic diseases is a topic I have deep interest in and would like to continue with into my further education. Chemistry complements my biology well especially in those topics linked to biology. Geography…

molecular sequences drive such incredible beings to function. What I find most intriguing, is the superior organ of our physique- the brain. It governs the action of the human body and causes each person to behave in a different way to others regardless of our similar anatomy. This, is what I believe, creates our exceedingly diverse population. Attending a Neuroscience masterclass held at University College London enabled me to analyse human brains and we discussed the anatomy, roles of the…

In the book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat by Oliver Sacks, the author describes odd psychological phenomenons in which he’s had personal experience with. Sacks describes multiple patients with lack, in the first part of his book, and patients with abundances, in the second part of the book, and transfer, in the third part of his book, of physiological features or abilities. The first of the studies in this book that were found the most interesting is the inspiration of the title. Dr.…

“Reflection on The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” As I read through this first “clinical tale”, I was really interested by the patient and his characteristics. Being a musical instructor is fascinating all on its own, but also having both visual agnosia and prosopagnosia (facial agnosia), I was really impressed that his quality of living could remain intact. The fact that he could continue teaching with the difficulties agnosia brings is impressive. It was fascinating that the patient was…

Content Summary: In “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” by Oliver Sacks, the idea presented throughout the entire book is that in life we will always face adversity and we can’t control what comes up on our journey through life. Many things happen that are against our will, we must learn from every situation that we face. If we don’t learn, we are bound to repeat. From every situation, we should come out with greater knowledge and understanding. The first part of the book is about…

The Man who Mistook His Wife for a Hat is a collection of short stories telling of people with abnormal brain disorders. These stories are written by Oliver Sacks, who has either witnessed the affected people and how their brain works, or has heard about them, and transferred these stories into short clinical tales, some of which being published in other books, such as ‘Witty Ticcy Ray’ and ‘Reminiscence’ in the London Review of Books. Sacks is the common character throughout each of the 24…

talking about reality, Stacks suggests “A man needs such a narrative, a continuous inner narrative, to maintain his identity, his self […] Unable to maintain a genuine narrative or continuity, unable to maintain a genuine inner world, he is driven to the proliferation of pseudo-narratives” (Sacks, 1998, p. 111). When thinking of the idea of our inner narrative I began viewing the mind as its own separate sphere then the nervous system. The brain is physical and obeys physical laws but our minds…

In The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, there are two case studies of proprioception. Proprioception is described as our “sixth sense”. As Dr. Oliver Sacks explains, we have five senses but there are other senses that are considered secret-senses or sixth senses which are just as vital as the other senses but go unrecognized. “It is the awareness of the relative position of the trunk and limbs, derived from receptors in the joints and tendons.” For normal people, in normal situations, these…