"The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales" is a book written by neurologist Sacks Oliver in 1985. The book describes the case records on some of his patients. Oliver decided on the title from the study of "Dr. P" who had visual agnosia. The twenty-four articles book comprises four sections including Transports, Losses, The World of the Simple and Excesses that mainly focuses on the function of the brain and its particular features. The first part discusses the excesses and deficits on the right side of the brain. The remaining sections describe and emphasize the phenomenological symptoms concerning reminiscences, unusual behaviors in people with mental disabilities, and alter perceptions.
People often think that mental illness is a static phenomenon; however, Oliver suggests that it is a neurological disability that alters humans behavior and mind thus they react unconsciously or consciously to restore a sense of mental stability. For example, The Lost Mariner", is a tale about Jimmie G., who is a victim of anterograde amnesia due to Korsakoff's syndrome (Krpan " O'Connor, 2017). The illness resulted in Jimmie’s brain losing the ability to produce new cell for memory. He is unable to recall any events in his life since the end of Second World War, including recent occurrence that took place a few minutes ago. However, apart from his incapability to recall his past life and the daily incident he behaved normal and was intelligent. Additionally, the tale displays that Jimmie G struggles to find happiness, meaning, and satisfaction as he can hardly recall what he is doing even for a minute. Additionally, in the book, Christina lost her instinctive awareness of her own body (Krpan " O'Connor, 2017). However; she learned to rely on her five senses to sustain consciousness of her body. Christina trained herself to use the eyes to find her arm, intentionally reestablishing herself.
“The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat” displays that not all mental disorder is uniformly “bad.” For a neurologist to classify a patient as mentally ill, they must be convinced that it is an arbitrary decision. Notions of wrong and right or normal are subjective to cultural forces and hence can change over time. All through his book, Oliver complicates and questions the definition of the term “illness,” implying that some of the so-called mental illnesses could be regarded as valuable gifts. One of the tales that displays intelligence disorder is “The Autist Artist." The case study is of a 21-year-old man known as Jose. Supposedly he is regarded as hopelessly retarded and also experiences repeated seizures. However, Stack once took a watch out of his pocket and asked Jose to paint what he can see. He composed himself and surprisingly drew every aspect and detail of the clock. (Krpan " O'Connor, 2017).
Oliver describes the story of Hildegard of Bingen and Dmitry Shostakovich, historical figures who probably had neurological disorders that resulted in them experiencing vibrant hallucinations and spontaneous seizures in the temporal lobes of the brain. However, Hildegard and Shostakovich conditions seemed to have aided them in being inspired and enlightened compared to the time of their lives they were mentally stable. The healthcare community pays no attention to the abilities of psychologically disabled people or recognizes these capabilities in the narrowest sense, instead of, mature cognitive ability and signs of sophisticated (Krpan " O'Connor, 2017). The medical community views their talents as petty as they believe they are not in a capacity to make sound decisions. Sacks also describe a mentally disabled lady by the name of Rebecca who possessed tremendous poetry imagination. Even though most therapeutic researchers infer such patients’ mental gifts as free from their mental disorder, Sacks put forward that their talents are and in fact a product of their mental illness (Krpan " O'Connor, 2017).
"The Twins," is a case study of autistic savants. Dr. Oliver meets two identical twins could neither perform multiplication nor read yet they were able to play a game that involved finding complex prime numbers as they generated numbers from seven to twenty digits. The case of the boys startled Sacks, and therefore he resorted to a guideline book of prime numbers to match their ability yet he was unable. Tommy Lee Jones featured the case study in the film House of Cards. Additionally, the brothers could instantaneously count up 111 plunged matches, concurrently concluding that one hundred and one is also three 37s. However, Makoto Yamaguchi questioned the validity of the story as he doubted the existence of a book that contained such large prime numbers (Krpan " O'Connor, 2017). Additionally, he pointed out that scientific reports only have approximate perceptions, particularly when counting large figures. Daniel Tammet, the autistic savant, explains that the brothers presented the matchbox and possibly might have calculated its contents earlier, noting that he found the values to be 111 "particularly beautiful and matchstick-like."
In summary, "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales" One of the central themes in the book is psychopathology perspective. The idea of the tales is the development of psychosomatic disorders such as depression, autism, psychopathy and schizophrenia with a life-course perception. Additionally the book displays some of the mental disorders as a gift.
Reference
Krpan, D., " O'Connor, A. (2017). The man who mistook his wife for a hat.
Moscow: Macat Library.
