Sunday, December 30, 2012

Sacks Illustrates Medicine As Art, Narrative, As Well As Science In New Book on Hallucinations

 'Hallucinations,' by Oliver Sacks.  A Book Review by Siri Hustvedt.  Sunday Book Review.  The New York Times.  December 28, 2012.

Sacks method here is the narrative case study of a variety of hallucinations seeking always to preserves the part without losing the synthetic whole.  He seeks, as much as possible, to unite the physiological and the psychological to paint a picture of complex human reality.  The last sentence in the review is nice summary of the approach the reviewer sees in this book:  "Learned, quietly passionate and always curious, Sacks is a physician who has long understood that medicine is an art as well as a science.


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