Read Online Man Who MIstook His Wife for a Hat by Oliver Sacks - Free Book Online
Authors: Oliver Sacks
Tags: General, sci_psychology, Medical, Biography & Autobiography, Psychology, Literary Criticism, Psychopathology, Mental Illness, Neuropsychology, Social Scientists & Psychologists, Clinical Psychology, Neurology, Physiological Psychology
Ads: Link
Bergsonian 'intentional' time; what was fugitive, unsustainable, as formal structure, was perfectly stable, perfectly held, as art or will. Moreover, there was something that endured and survived. If Jimmie was briefly 'held' by a task or puzzle or game or calculation, held in the purely mental challenge of these, he would fall apart as soon as they were done, into the abyss of his nothingness, his amnesia. But if he was held in emotional and spiritual attention-in the contemplation of nature or art, in listening to music, in taking part in the Mass in chapel-the attention, its 'mood', its quietude, would persist for a while, and there
would be in him a pensiveness and peace we rarely, if ever, saw during the rest of his life at the Home.
I have known Jimmie now for nine years-and neuropsychologically, he has not changed in the least. He still has the severest, most devastating Korsakov's, cannot remember isolated items for more than a few seconds, and has a dense amnesia going back to 1945. But humanly, spiritually, he is at times a different man altogether-no longer fluttering, restless, bored, and lost, but deeply attentive to the beauty and soul of the world, rich in all the Kier-kegaardian categories-and aesthetic, the moral, the religious, the dramatic. I had wondered, when I first met him, if he was not condemned to a sort of 'Humean' froth, a meaningless fluttering on the surface of life, and whether there was any way of transcending the incoherence of his Humean disease. Empirical science told me there was not-but empirical science, empiricism, takes no account of the soul, no account of what constitutes and determines personal being. Perhaps there is a philosophical as well as a clinical lesson here: that in Korsakov's, or dementia, or other such catastrophes, however great the organic damage and Humean dissolution, there remains the undiminished possibility of reintegration by art, by communion, by touching the human spirit: and this can be preserved in what seems at first a hopeless state of neurological devastation.
Postscript
I know now that retrograde amnesia, to some degree, is very common, if not universal, in cases of Korsakov's. The classical Korsakov's syndrome-a profound and permanent, but 'pure', devastation of memory caused by alcoholic destruction of the mammillary bodies- is rare, even among very heavy drinkers. One may, of course, see Korsakov's syndrome with other pathologies, as in Luria's patients with tumours. A particularly fascinating case of an acute (and mercifully transient) Korsakov's syndrome has been well described only very recently in the so-called Transient Global Amnesia (TGA) which may occur with migraines, head injuries or impaired blood supply to the brain. Here, for a few minutes or hours, a severe and
singular amnesia may occur, even though the patient may continue to drive a car, or, perhaps, to carry on medical or editorial duties, in a mechanical way. But under this fluency lies a profound amnesia- every sentence uttered being forgotten as soon as it is said, everything forgotten within a few minutes of being seen, though long-established memories and routines may be perfectly preserved. (Some remarkable videotapes of patients during TGAs have recently [1986] been made by Dr John Hodges, of Oxford.)
Further, there may be a profound retrograde amnesia in such cases. My colleague Dr. Leon Protass tells me of a case seen by him recently, in which a highly intelligent man was unable for some hours to remember his wife or children, to remember that he had a wife or children. In effect, he lost thirty years of his life- though, fortunately, for only a few hours. Recovery from such attacks is prompt and complete-yet they are, in a sense, the most horrifying of 'little strokes' in their power absolutely to annul or obliterate decades of richly lived, richly achieving, richly memo-ried life. The horror, typically, is only felt by others-the
would be in him a pensiveness and peace we rarely, if ever, saw during the rest of his life at the Home.
I have known Jimmie now for nine years-and neuropsychologically, he has not changed in the least. He still has the severest, most devastating Korsakov's, cannot remember isolated items for more than a few seconds, and has a dense amnesia going back to 1945. But humanly, spiritually, he is at times a different man altogether-no longer fluttering, restless, bored, and lost, but deeply attentive to the beauty and soul of the world, rich in all the Kier-kegaardian categories-and aesthetic, the moral, the religious, the dramatic. I had wondered, when I first met him, if he was not condemned to a sort of 'Humean' froth, a meaningless fluttering on the surface of life, and whether there was any way of transcending the incoherence of his Humean disease. Empirical science told me there was not-but empirical science, empiricism, takes no account of the soul, no account of what constitutes and determines personal being. Perhaps there is a philosophical as well as a clinical lesson here: that in Korsakov's, or dementia, or other such catastrophes, however great the organic damage and Humean dissolution, there remains the undiminished possibility of reintegration by art, by communion, by touching the human spirit: and this can be preserved in what seems at first a hopeless state of neurological devastation.
Postscript
I know now that retrograde amnesia, to some degree, is very common, if not universal, in cases of Korsakov's. The classical Korsakov's syndrome-a profound and permanent, but 'pure', devastation of memory caused by alcoholic destruction of the mammillary bodies- is rare, even among very heavy drinkers. One may, of course, see Korsakov's syndrome with other pathologies, as in Luria's patients with tumours. A particularly fascinating case of an acute (and mercifully transient) Korsakov's syndrome has been well described only very recently in the so-called Transient Global Amnesia (TGA) which may occur with migraines, head injuries or impaired blood supply to the brain. Here, for a few minutes or hours, a severe and
singular amnesia may occur, even though the patient may continue to drive a car, or, perhaps, to carry on medical or editorial duties, in a mechanical way. But under this fluency lies a profound amnesia- every sentence uttered being forgotten as soon as it is said, everything forgotten within a few minutes of being seen, though long-established memories and routines may be perfectly preserved. (Some remarkable videotapes of patients during TGAs have recently [1986] been made by Dr John Hodges, of Oxford.)
Further, there may be a profound retrograde amnesia in such cases. My colleague Dr. Leon Protass tells me of a case seen by him recently, in which a highly intelligent man was unable for some hours to remember his wife or children, to remember that he had a wife or children. In effect, he lost thirty years of his life- though, fortunately, for only a few hours. Recovery from such attacks is prompt and complete-yet they are, in a sense, the most horrifying of 'little strokes' in their power absolutely to annul or obliterate decades of richly lived, richly achieving, richly memo-ried life. The horror, typically, is only felt by others-the
Similar Books
