The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.
Freely adapted from Oliver Sacks' " The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat".
This is the chacter that gives the name to the book.
From the text:
- "His responses here were very curious. His eyes would dart from one thing to another, picking up tiny
features, individual features, as they had done with my face. A striking brightness, a color, a shape would arrest his attention and elicit comment—but in no case did he get the scene-as-a-whole. He failed
to see the whole, seeing only details, which he spotted like blips on a radar screen"
This is the chacter that gives the name to the book.
From the text:
- "His responses here were very curious. His eyes would dart from one thing to another, picking up tiny
features, individual features, as they had done with my face. A striking brightness, a color, a shape would arrest his attention and elicit comment—but in no case did he get the scene-as-a-whole. He failed
to see the whole, seeing only details, which he spotted like blips on a radar screen"
"On the level".
Freely adapted from oliver Sacks' "The man who mistook his wife for a hat".
From the text:
‘Problem? No problem—none that I know of ... But others keep telling me I lean to the side: “You’re
like the Leaning Tower of Pisa,” they say. “A bit more tilt, and you’ll topple right over.” ‘
‘But you don’t feel any tilt?’
‘I feel fine. I don’t know what they mean. How could I be tilted without knowing I was?’
From the text:
‘Problem? No problem—none that I know of ... But others keep telling me I lean to the side: “You’re
like the Leaning Tower of Pisa,” they say. “A bit more tilt, and you’ll topple right over.” ‘
‘But you don’t feel any tilt?’
‘I feel fine. I don’t know what they mean. How could I be tilted without knowing I was?’
Cupid's disease.
Freely adapted from O. Sacks' "The man who mistook his wife for a hat"
From the text:
A bright woman of ninety, Natasha K., recently came to our clinic. Soon after her eighty-eighth birthday, she said, she noticed ‘a change’. What sort of change? we queried.
‘Delightful!’ she exclaimed. ‘I thoroughly enjoyed it. I felt more energetic, more alive—I felt young
once again. I took an interest in the young men. I started to feel, you might say, “frisky”—yes, frisky.’
From the text:
A bright woman of ninety, Natasha K., recently came to our clinic. Soon after her eighty-eighth birthday, she said, she noticed ‘a change’. What sort of change? we queried.
‘Delightful!’ she exclaimed. ‘I thoroughly enjoyed it. I felt more energetic, more alive—I felt young
once again. I took an interest in the young men. I started to feel, you might say, “frisky”—yes, frisky.’
The president's speech.
Freely adapted from Oliver Sacks' "The man who mistook his wife for a hat".
From the text:
Why all this? Because speech—natural speech—does not consist of words alone, nor (as Hughlings
Jackson thought) ‘propositions’ alone. It consists of utterance—an uttering-forth of one’s whole
meaning with one’s whole being—the understanding of which involves infinitely more than mere wordrecognition. And this was the clue to aphasiacs’ understanding, even when they might be wholly
uncomprehending of words as such.
From the text:
Why all this? Because speech—natural speech—does not consist of words alone, nor (as Hughlings
Jackson thought) ‘propositions’ alone. It consists of utterance—an uttering-forth of one’s whole
meaning with one’s whole being—the understanding of which involves infinitely more than mere wordrecognition. And this was the clue to aphasiacs’ understanding, even when they might be wholly
uncomprehending of words as such.
The lost mariiner.
Freely adapted from Oliver Sack' "Tha man whi mistook his wife for a hat"
From the text:
Astounded—and indifferent—for he was a man who, in effect, had no ‘day before’. His entries
remained unconnected and un-connecting and had no power to provide any sense of time or continuity.
Jimmie both was and wasn’t aware of this deep, tragic loss in himself, loss of himself.
From the text:
Astounded—and indifferent—for he was a man who, in effect, had no ‘day before’. His entries
remained unconnected and un-connecting and had no power to provide any sense of time or continuity.
Jimmie both was and wasn’t aware of this deep, tragic loss in himself, loss of himself.
A passage to India.
Freely adapted from O. Sacks' "The man who mistook his wife for a hat"
From the text:
Bhagawhandi P., an Indian girl of 19 with a malignant brain tumor, was admitted to our hospice in 1978. The tumor—an astrocytoma—had first presented when she was seven, but was then of low
malignancy, and well circumscribed, allowing a complete resection, and complete return of function,
and allowing Bhagawhandi to return to normal life.
Soon this vague dreaminess took on a more defined, more concrete, and more visionary character. It
now took the form of visions of India—landscapes, villages, homes, gardens—which Bhagawhandi
recognized at once, as places she had known and loved as a child.
From the text:
Bhagawhandi P., an Indian girl of 19 with a malignant brain tumor, was admitted to our hospice in 1978. The tumor—an astrocytoma—had first presented when she was seven, but was then of low
malignancy, and well circumscribed, allowing a complete resection, and complete return of function,
and allowing Bhagawhandi to return to normal life.
Soon this vague dreaminess took on a more defined, more concrete, and more visionary character. It
now took the form of visions of India—landscapes, villages, homes, gardens—which Bhagawhandi
recognized at once, as places she had known and loved as a child.
A matter of identity.
Freely adapted from Oliver Sack' "The man who mistook his wife for a hat"
From the text:
‘What’ll it be today?’ he says, rubbing his hands. ‘Haifa pound of Virginia, a nice piece of Nova?’
(Evidently he saw me as a customer—he would often pick up the phone on the ward, and say
‘Thompson’s Delicatessen’.)
‘Oh Mr Thompson!’ I exclaim. ‘And who do you think I am?’
‘Good heavens, the light’s bad—I took you for a customer..
So it would happen, with variations, every time—with improvisations, always prompt, often funny,
sometimes brilliant, and ultimately tragic. Mr Thompson would identify me—misidentify, pseudoidentify me—as a dozen different people in the course of five minutes
From the text:
‘What’ll it be today?’ he says, rubbing his hands. ‘Haifa pound of Virginia, a nice piece of Nova?’
(Evidently he saw me as a customer—he would often pick up the phone on the ward, and say
‘Thompson’s Delicatessen’.)
‘Oh Mr Thompson!’ I exclaim. ‘And who do you think I am?’
‘Good heavens, the light’s bad—I took you for a customer..
So it would happen, with variations, every time—with improvisations, always prompt, often funny,
sometimes brilliant, and ultimately tragic. Mr Thompson would identify me—misidentify, pseudoidentify me—as a dozen different people in the course of five minutes
Witty ticcy Ray.
Freely adapted from O. Sack' "The man who mistook his wife for a hat"
From the text:
He came back, the following week, with a black eye and a broken nose and said: ‘So much for your
fucking Haldol.’ Even this minute dose, he said, had thrown him off balance, interfered with his speed,
his timing, his preternaturally quick reflexes.
From the text:
He came back, the following week, with a black eye and a broken nose and said: ‘So much for your
fucking Haldol.’ Even this minute dose, he said, had thrown him off balance, interfered with his speed,
his timing, his preternaturally quick reflexes.
The disincarnated.
Freely adapted from
o.Sacks' "The man who mistook his wife for a hat"
From the text:
She could scarcely even sit up—her body ‘gave way’. Her face was oddly expressionless and slack,
her jaw fell open, even her vocal posture was gone.
‘Something awful’s happened,’ she mouthed, in a ghostly flat voice. ‘I can’t feel my body. I feel
weird—disembodied.’
This was an amazing thing to hear, confounded, confounding. ‘Disembodied’
o.Sacks' "The man who mistook his wife for a hat"
From the text:
She could scarcely even sit up—her body ‘gave way’. Her face was oddly expressionless and slack,
her jaw fell open, even her vocal posture was gone.
‘Something awful’s happened,’ she mouthed, in a ghostly flat voice. ‘I can’t feel my body. I feel
weird—disembodied.’
This was an amazing thing to hear, confounded, confounding. ‘Disembodied’
The possessed
Freely adapted from Oliver Sacks' "The man who mistook his wife for a hat".
From the text:
This grotesque, involuntary resonance, or mutuality, by which everyone
was drawn into an absurdly amplifying interaction, was the source of the disturbance I had seen from a
distance. This woman who, becoming everybody, lost her own self, became nobody. This woman with a
thousand faces, masks, personae—how must it be for her in this whirlwind of identities
From the text:
This grotesque, involuntary resonance, or mutuality, by which everyone
was drawn into an absurdly amplifying interaction, was the source of the disturbance I had seen from a
distance. This woman who, becoming everybody, lost her own self, became nobody. This woman with a
thousand faces, masks, personae—how must it be for her in this whirlwind of identities
