Hallucinations – Oliver Sacks
Published
08/11/2012
Publisher
Picador
Source – New Books Magazine
My Rating - 5 stars
Oliver Sacks has a knack of making seemingly complex issues accessible to the masses. An expert neurologist, one of his early works, Awakenings was adapted for the big screen as a blockbuster film starring Robin Williams and Robert de Niro. In his latest book, Hallucinations, he tackles a vast subject area but his engaging writing style, liberally peppered with anecdotes from patients and correspondents, makes a really satisfying read, equally entertaining and informative.
The book covers a wide range of hallucinatory experiences from intense visual images experienced by blind and partially sighted people to visions induced by meditation and even “seeing” a loved one after they passed over. Sacks dispels a lot of the stigma and myths which surround hallucinations – no, they are not a sign of madness, yes, they are more common than we might think. He even gives an honest recount of his own experiments with drugs detailing their adverse effect on the brain.
This isn’t a light read but it rewards attentive reading and will clarify a lot of experiences which we might otherwise categorise as paranormal or supernatural. An excellent group read which will provoke plenty of weird and wonderful anecdotes!
My thanks to New Books Magazine for giving me this book to review.
Oooh, this sounds really interesting – I have ‘The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat’ on my TBR but haven’t heard of this one. I wonder how many weird and wonderful occurrences can be explained away as a trick of the brain?
I heard him talk about this on a podcast sounds like another great insight from him into peoples minds ,all the best stu
He is very good at demystifying, Stu, without talking down to people.
And Marie, how many folk are considered mad when it was just a temporary brain trick!