Hallucinations
Oliver Sacks
Vintage
Nonfiction, Biography/Medicine/Psychology/Science
Themes: Cross-Genre, Dreams, Medicine
***+
Description
The first word that pops into most people's heads when someone mentions "hallucinations" is "crazy". After all, only a deeply disturbed mind could conjure images and voices from thin air, and only an equally disturbed person would actually believe these figments of imagination brought to apparent life, right? But hallucinations, of various forms and with various causes, are something most everyone has experienced at some time or another, from the phantom ringing phone at the edge of sleep to the "night terrors" associated with sleep paralysis. Medical doctor Oliver Sacks explores the causes, manifestations, and history of hallucinations through the lenses of medicine, psychology, and popular culture past and present.
Review
This was another random selection via Libby. Like many people, I, too, have experienced what author Sacks would call "hallucinations" a time or two, mostly around the edges of sleep, though never to the extent of needing medical intervention. Referring to historical texts and recent investigations, as well as some personal experiences, Sacks relates the broad range of phenomena that could be called "hallucinations" - covering everything from seeing objects that do not exist to hearing voices to migraine "auras" to the phantom limbs felt by amputee patients and more - and how quite a few people who experience them aren't "crazy" in the least. Brains are tricky, complicated organs, about which quite a bit is still not fully understood, and the fact that we rely totally and utterly on them to interpret input from our senses to understand the world around us (and understand our own thoughts about said world) means that we can't always reliably sort out what's actual sensory input and what is a hiccup or glitch in the wiring or processing units. Historically, many cultures did not attach the stigma that the modern world often places on hallucinations, and sometimes they were deliberately sought out for healing or religious reasons. Likewise, not all hallucinations are necessarily harmful or indicative of major problems. Several of the stories were interesting, though the book as a whole seemed a little scattered, some parts feeling shallow or barely touched on before Sacks moved on, and I thought it could've used a stronger wrap-up at the end to summarize and tie together what it had covered. (Part of the problem may have been that the topic turned out to be too broad to adequately cover in a single volume of any reasonable length.)