In Doctor Oliver Sacks’ book, “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales,” the reader follows Sacks’ recounting of odd mental health mysteries that he had encountered in his career and how he responded to them. Sorted into a great number of short-story-style recitations of abnormal maladies that Doctor Sacks’ patients were afflicted with, this novel explores a numerous amount of different cerebral sicknesses. These sicknesses vary massively from patient to patient in the symptoms and in how they manifest themselves. Throughout all of these, however, runs a strain of similarity: these are either unprecedented or very uncommon maladies that perplex the treatment teams helping the clients in the book, making it difficult …show more content…
In this section, the reader is introduced to a woman, Christina, whose nightmare of losing control of her limbs and losing her fine and gross motor skills was realized. One portion mentions that her hands roamed and she was seemingly unaware of this happening. This stuck out to me because it seems a lot like an aspect of an episode of dissociation. Because of past events in my life, I experience dissociation in various forms relatively frequently, so I felt drawn to this story. Based on knowledge of neuroscience from that portion of the course, I would assume that the Basal Ganglia was affected in some way, causing the movement to be stunted. Additionally, from this part of the class, we learned that acetylcholine enables muscle action and that dopamine influences movement, so I feel that it is possible that these neurotransmitters played a part in Christina’s difficulties. She also expresses in the chapter that her body does not feel like her own- a concept similar to that of depersonalization, though much more extreme and permanent in her case. We learn that she accomplished no recovery neurologically, but rather had to relearn how she could recreate actions that she had learned how to do long ago. Structure of the brain should alter in order to facilitate function, but in her case, carrying out tasks never got easier. Although she was constantly positively reinforced …show more content…
Of course, having worked with the older adult population, I am always drawn to stories that humanize these individuals, as I have seen their families leave them, and I have seen the general public mistreat them, simply due to ageism. Additionally, I was drawn to this chapter because of how it reminded me of an earlier chapter, which was chapter eleven- “Cupid’s Disease.” Chapter sixteen recounts the experience of the patient who had irregular effects from the drug L-Dopa. The patient in this chapter was diagnosed with progressive post-encephalitic Parkinson’s when she was eighteen. The drug temporarily relieved many of her symptoms from the disease, but it brought with it other strange symptoms. These included a change in her personality and an awakening of long dormant memories or songs, slang, and experiences from when she was much younger. After getting herself back from these episodes, she could not recall the songs or words that she had said, and could not remember having still known them. Her revitalized youthfulness and increased libido reminded me of chapter eleven because these were symptoms experienced by Natasha K., who was experiencing effects of syphilis, or as she called it, Cupid’s Disease. More detail was given in chapter eleven, so we know that Natasha was so thrilled about having her juvenile spirit back, she was in no rush to get a treatment for the illness. Natasha’s
In 1978, Susan Sheehan took an interest in Sylvia Frumkin, a schizophrenic who spent most of her life in and out of mental hospitals. For more than two years, Sheehan followed Sylvia around, observing when Sylvia talked to herself, sitting in on sessions with Sylvia’s doctors, and at times, sleeping in the same bed as Sylvia during her stay at the psychiatric centers. Through Sheehan’s intensive report on Sylvia’s life, readers are able to obtain useful information on what it’s like to live with this disorder, how impairing it can be for them, and the symptoms and causes to look out for; likewise, readers can get an inside look of how some mental hospitals are run and how a misdiagnosis can negatively impact someone’s life.
Losses, Excesses, Transports, and The World of the Simple are all four topics in the book “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales,” by Oliver Sacks. You might not understand what those mean or discuss until you realize who Oliver Sacks is. Oliver Sacks is a Neurologist who has had the chance to take upon these twenty-four case studies and share them in a book. The book is more focused on neurological functions, different forms of the mind, and hallucinations/visions. All of these are related to the first few chapters in our Psychology textbook (Chapters 2,3,6,8,10). Oliver Sacks gives us clear insight into the mind of those that perceive things much differently than most. It is a clear insight to what most of us are curious about but may not fully understand.
Two ideas about the nervous system that can be better understood from these observations are the concepts of having and locating the I-function. It seems that the I-function here is very often affected in terms of voluntary movement. A person with Arnold-Chiari malformation who has lost the feeling in and control of his arm for example will not be able to move it even upon someone's request and his or her own desire to do so. Some use of the I-function is definitely impaired. However, these observations do not seem to necessarily imply that some part of the I-function was damaged, because it may very well be located elsewhere- connections may have simply been lost. A person with Arnold-Chiari can still think and have a sense of self, but somehow can not connect with the various body parts that can be affected. Some uses and pathways of the I-function can be understood, but the exact location of it remains vague.
To begin, it seems the cliché phrase of “mind over matter” really connects to a lot of the experiences and symptoms that Sarah suffered from her Left Neglect. In reality, an individual experiences two sides to the world, the left and the right. The traumatic brain injury sustained from the accident caused Sarah’s mind to completely disassociate from the left. Sarah’s whole left side became non-existent. It didn’t matter what actually was in front of Sarah, what mattered is what her mind brought attention to. It seems like Genova tore a page straight from the Twilight Zone, for initially one could only imagine this disorder existing in th...
Scientists are on the brink of doing the unthinkable-replenishing the brains of people who have suffered strokes or head injuries to make them whole again. If that is not astonishing enough, they think they may be able to reverse paralysis. The door is at last open to lifting the terrifying sentence these disorders still decree-loss of physical function, cognitive skills, memory, and personality.
Demeter, Debora (1998). The Human Sexuality: Sex and the Elderly. Retrieved November 10, 2002 from the World Wide Web: http://www.umkc.edu/sites/hsw/age/
Hamilton’s psychological perspective of aging seems to be norm for her age. Despite the fact she had two cerebral vascular accidents (strokes), her long-term and short-term memories seemed to be intact. Mrs. Hamilton appropriately answered questions and we reminisced the time when we met for the first time as well as the times we ran into each other at the Arcadia senior center’s educational lectures. Mrs. Hamilton stated she has been experiencing forgetfulness since the strokes and difficulty finding words (aphasia). However, she was able to remember where she wrote my contact number and called me numerous times after our meeting. Mrs. Hamilton was a bookkeeper for her husband’s business and always had outstanding knowledge about investment, finance and businesses aspect of discussion. This is reflective of the Crystallized intelligence which is the information and skills that people have learned through experiences. (Quadagno, 2013, pg.
I had no idea what was going on, it never occurred to me that I was ill, my brain just didn’t put it in those terms. ”(p.48) Kay wasn’t exactly uninformed, she had been studying psychology in a personal and professional way for at least ten years. She just hadn’t accepted that she had an illness and so for many years there seemed no need to seek professional help.... ...
In the following context, the seriousness of the stories and their interpretative breakdowns should only cause a better understanding of how the ever-so-questionable human mind truly works from a professional perspective put into simple words. The story of "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" is quite an interesting story that opens the reader of the book into a world of confusion: Dr. P.'s world. The man, described in the story, is an accomplished doctor, in fact a teacher at an accomplished music school who seems to be fine on the outside, but with further analyses in Dr. Sacks' office, he mistakes his foot for his shoe. This is an astonishing mistake that intrigues the doctor and the reader to know why he mistakes objects for other objects. He then later, as he and his wife are preparing to leave; Dr. P. grabs his wife's head and tries to pull it off as if it were his hat.
The knowledge of mental illness was very small. Doctors did not understand how to diagnosis or treat mental disorders. They did not understand how the brain functioned and what to expect from people in certain situations. Many symptoms of physical illness today were considered mental illness in the eighteenth century. The constant shaking due to Parkinson’s disease was misinterpreted as a mental condition and treated as such4. These patients were placed into...
Walsh, Jason. "All in our heads: have we taken psychiatry too far?"Irish Times 14 Aug.2010,
Schildkrout, Barbara. “Unmasking Psychological Symptoms: How Therapists Can Learn To Recognize The Psychological Presentation Of Medical Disorders”. n.p.: Hoboken, N.J. : John Wiley & Sons, c2011., 2011. USMAI Catalog. Web. 12 Nov. 2013.
Morace, Robert A. “Interpreter of Maladies: Stories.” Magill’s Literary Annual 2000 1999: 198. Literary Reference Center. Web. 6 Apr. 2010. .
...tation test where a person were to read the story without the knowledge that the real author is also the narrator and a character, it would probably be read as a detailed work of fiction. Because readers have the knowledge that Oliver Sacks is in fact a neurologist, it changes the meanings in the text. This is how the real author is distinct from the implied author; the implied author is what the reader can deduce from the material presented in the text, without any knowledge of the real author’s context. The knowledge that Oliver Sacks is in reality a neurologist also positions readers to accept the narrator’s version of events because they would be inclined to accept the privileged and authoritative narrative voice. The techniques of point of view, subjective narration and characterisation therefore position readers to accept the meanings presented in the text.
The creation of a stressful psychological state of mind is prevalent in the story “The Yellow Wall-Paper” by Charlotte Perkins Gilman, as well as, Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Tell-Tale Heart”, Ophelia’s struggles in William Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, and the self-inflicted sickness seen in William Blake’s “Mad Song”. All the characters, in these stories and poems, are subjected to external forces that plant the seed of irrationality into their minds; thus, creating an adverse intellectual reaction, that from an outsider’s point of view, could be misconstrued as being in an altered state due to the introduction of a drug, prescribed or otherwise, furthering the percep...