About the Book
Have you ever seen something that wasn't really there? Heard someone call your name in an empty house? Sensed someone following you and turned around to find nothing? Hallucinations don't belong wholly to the insane. Much more commonly, they are linked to sensory deprivation, intoxication, illness, or injury. People with migraines may see shimmering arcs of light or tiny, Lilliputian figures. People with failing eyesight, paradoxically, may become immersed in a hallucinatory visual world. Hallucinations can be brought on by a simple fever or even the act of waking or falling asleep, when people have visions ranging from luminous blobs of colour to beautifully detailed faces or terrifying ogres. Those who are bereaved may receive comforting 'visits' from the departed. In some conditions, hallucinations can lead to religious epiphanies or even the feeling of leaving one's own body. Humans have always sought such life-changing visions, and for thousands of years have used hallucinogenic compounds to achieve them. As a young doctor in California in the 1960s, Oliver Sacks had both a personal and a professional interest in psychedelics.
These, along with his early migraine experiences, launched a lifelong investigation into the varieties of hallucinatory experience. Here, with his usual elegance, curiosity, and compassion, Dr Sacks weaves together stories of his patients and of his own mind-altering experiences to illuminate what hallucinations tell us about the organization and structure of our brains, how they have influenced every culture's folklore and art, and why the potential for hallucination is present in us all, a vital part of the human condition.
About the Author :
Oliver Sacks was born in 1933 in London and was educated at the Queen's College, Oxford. He completed his medical training at San Francisco's Mount Zion Hospital and at UCLA before moving to New York, where he soon encountered the patients whom he would write about in his book Awakenings.
Dr Sacks spent almost fifty years working as a neurologist and wrote many books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, and Hallucinations, about the strange neurological predicaments and conditions of his patients. The New York Times referred to him as 'the poet laureate of medicine', and over the years he received many awards, including honours from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Science Foundation, the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Royal College of Physicians. In 2008, he was appointed Commander of the British Empire. His memoir, On the Move, was published shortly before his death in August 2015.
Review :
‘Oliver Sacks is a neurologist, a man of humane eloquence, and a genuine communicator’ Observer
‘Sacks writes, basically, adventure stories, accounts of voyages into the unexplained territory of the brain. In doing so, he reveals a landscape far more complex and strange than anything we could infer from our daily interactions’ Sunday Times
‘Sacks is above all a clinician, and writes with compassion and clarity . . . The result is a sort of humane discourse on the fragility of our minds, of the bodies that give rise to them, and of the world they create for us’ Daily Telegraph
‘In measured prose with a blessed lack of jargon, Sacks explores the ingenuity with which individuals cope with bizarre neurological conditions . . . humane, empathic, he is the doctor you would want’ Independent
‘Oliver Sacks has become the world’s best-known neurologist. His case studies of broken minds offer brilliant insight into the mysteries of consciousness’ Guardian
'Sacks is at his most engaging when he brings the ostensibly strange into the realm of normality . . . This is where Sacks triumphs. Not just in the clarity with which he teaches us about the obscure phenomology of the human brain, but in the light his writings casts on even our most ordinary experiences.' Daily Telegraph
‘The king of pop-neurology reveals how almost all of us have hallucinations’ GQ
‘It’s a feat to bring any specialty in medicine vividly to life, and to do so without relinquishing the sensitivity and empathy that characterise the best doctors is something that few achieve. Oliver Sacks has managed it throughout his career . . . Affable, affectionate, respectful and smart, Sacks could be the David Attenborough of the human mind.’ Independent on Sunday
'An enthralling, often guiltily comic insight into the pecularities the brain can conjure.' Irish Examiner
'Oliver Sacks is a graceful, lucid and elegant prose stylist. Though perhaps above all, he is the witty, warm, humble and deeply compassionate explorer of how our brains influence our world . . . fascinating.' Lady
'Hallucinations is an absorbing study of an exotic subject . . . Hallucinatory literature is either transgressive or presented as a search for enlightenment. This new volume sits elegantly between the two extremes and is more rewarding than either - a continuing investigation into what makes us human.' Literary Review
'The greatest living ethnographer of those fascinating tribes qho live on the outer and still largely unchartered shores of the land of Mind-and-Brain.' Observer
'A very human insight into what happens when our brains go awry.' Psychologies
'Sacks writes in the the great tradition of literary doctors. He is humane, relaxed and amused, and loved a good anecdote.' Spectator
'Startling and intriguing' Sunday Times
‘No more enlightening science book has appeared this year . . . Miss this at your peril.’ Sunday Times Science Book of the Year
'A superb synthesis of the literature on these arresting, disturbing and sometimes terrifying phenomena, and a profound work of humanity.' TLS
'Fascinating'
‘Wide-ranging, compassionate and ultimately revelatory . . . Hallucinations is the keystone of the amazing edifice that is this remarkable thinker’s oeuvre.’ Will Self, Guardian
Sacks's trip through the world of hallucinations - and his own LSD experiences - explains some of the mesmerising ways our brains can deceive us
