Hallucinations

February 25, 2013
Olive Sacks sets himself a challenging task in his latest book: to explore the full range of human hallucinations, those figments of the imagination that terrify, madden, comfort, or merely entertain. Drawing on famous cases, from Joan of Arc to Dostoyevski, Sacks charts a diverse and pervasive phenomenon, one rich in colorful examples caused by trauma, drugs, illnesses, the mind’s deterioration, or boredom and the absence of stimuli. The scope of human hallucinations Sacks presents is staggering for its range, myriad causes, and levels of severity. Some hallucinations are little more than distractions: an imagined song in place of silence, a conversation with an absent friend, a light sense of déjà vu. For others hallucinations create the fabric of the world in which they live, with the often-frightening images overwhelming reality. The solid performance of Dan Woren, whose business-like narration is the one constant throughout, keeps the listener grounded even during the book’s most fantastic passages. Woren offers a brisk reading that when paired with the author’s elegant prose guides listeners safely on a long and surreal journey through fantasy and nightmare. A Knopf hardcover.

Starred review from August 13, 2012
We think of seeing—or hearing, smelling, touching or inchoately sensing—things that aren’t there as a classic sign of madness, but it’s really a human commonplace, according to Sacks’s latest fascinating exploration of neuropsychiatric weirdness. Acclaimed neurologist Sacks (The Mind’s Eye) investigates a wide range of hallucinations, from the geometric zigzags of some migraines and the painful cramps of phantom limbs to florid multicharacter melodramas, grotesque phantasms, and mystic trances induced by brain disorders and drugs. He also studies how people live with their hallucinations; some recognize them as just diverting figments while for others they constitute an inescapable unreality as malevolent and terrifying as a horror movie. (Sacks amply recounts his own entertaining hallucinations, including a drug-induced encounter with a spider who talked to him about Bertrand Russell.) As always, Sacks approaches the topic as both a brain scientist and a humanist; he shows how hallucinations elucidate intricate neurological mechanisms—often they are the brain’s bizarre attempt to fill in for missing sensory input—and examines their imprint on folklore and culture. (Dostoyevski’s fiction, he theorizes, is marked by the ecstatic religious trances induced by his epilepsy.) Writing with his trademark mix of evocative description, probing curiosity, and warm empathy, Sacks once again draws back the curtain on the mind’s improbable workings. Agent: The Wylie Agency.

September 15, 2012
Acclaimed British neurologist Sacks (Neurology and Psychiatry/Columbia Univ.; The Mind's Eye, 2010, etc.) delves into the many different sorts of hallucinations that can be generated by the human mind. The author assembles a wide range of case studies in hallucinations--seeing, hearing or otherwise perceiving things that aren't there--and the varying brain quirks and disorders that cause them in patients who are otherwise mentally healthy. In each case, he presents a fascinating condition and then expounds on the neurological causes at work, drawing from his own work as a neurologist, as well as other case studies, letters from patients and even historical records and literature. For example, he tells the story of an elderly blind woman who "saw" strange people and animals in her room, caused by Charles Bonnet Syndrome, a condition in with the parts of the brain responsible for vision draw on memories instead of visual perceptions. In another chapter, Sacks recalls his own experimentation with drugs, describing his auditory hallucinations. He believed he heard his neighbors drop by for breakfast, and he cooked for them, "put their ham and eggs on a tray, walked into the living room--and found it completely empty." He also tells of hallucinations in people who have undergone prolonged sensory deprivation and in those who suffer from Parkinson's disease, migraines, epilepsy and narcolepsy, among other conditions. Although this collection of disorders feels somewhat formulaic, it's a formula that has served Sacks well in several previous books (especially his 1985 bestseller The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat), and it's still effective--largely because Sacks never turns exploitative, instead sketching out each illness with compassion and thoughtful prose. A riveting look inside the human brain and its quirks.

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June 1, 2012

Hallucinations don't belong wholly to the insane. Illness or injury, intoxication or sensory deprivation, or simply falling sleeping can cause anyone to see (or hear, or smell, or sense) swirly, twirly things that aren't there. Everyone's favorite neurologist is back to explain types of hallucinations, what they tell us about the brain's workings, and how they have influenced art and culture. Who knew medicine could be so much fun.

Copyright 2012 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from September 1, 2012
Sacks' best-selling nonfiction stories based on his practice of clinical neurology constitute one shining reason for thinking that we're living in a golden age of medical writing. His twelfth book, though neither as scrappy as The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (1985) nor as focused as Musicophilia (2007), yields nothing to them in fascination. It's about the varieties of seeing, hearing, smelling, and feeling things that aren't there, from Charles Bonnet syndrome, in which sufferers of vision losses see people, animals, and cartoonlike figures more vividly than their impairments should allow, to the kinds of seeing oneself, which include out-of-body experiences as well as doppelganger encounters. The final chapter (of 15) considers the related phenomena of phantom body parts, which differ from other hallucinations in that they occur immediately and almost invariably after loss of their physical originals. Sacks never talks down to readers nor weighs them down with too much neurological patois. When he does use an unfamiliar term, his genial, informative style makes one want to look it up. High-Demand Backstory: Sacks defines the best of medical writing, and his latest book will be promoted as such.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)