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Hallucinations
Have you ever seen something that wasn’t really there? Heard someone call your name in an empty house? Sensed someone following you and turned around to find nothing?
Hallucinations don’t belong wholly to the insane. Much more commonly, they are linked to sensory deprivation, intoxication, illness, or injury. People with migraines may see shimmering arcs of light or tiny, Lilliputian figures of animals and people. People with failing eyesight, paradoxically, may become immersed in a hallucinatory visual world. Hallucinations can be brought on by a simple fever or even the act of waking or falling asleep, when people have visions ranging from luminous blobs of color to beautifully detailed faces or terrifying ogres. Those who are bereaved may receive comforting “visits” from the departed. In some conditions, hallucinations can lead to religious epiphanies or even the feeling of leaving one’s own body.
Humans have always sought such life-changing visions, and for thousands of years have used hallucinogenic compounds to achieve them. As a young doctor in California in the 1960s, Oliver Sacks had both a personal and a professional interest in psychedelics. These, along with his early migraine experiences, launched a lifelong investigation into the varieties of hallucinatory experience.
Here, with his usual elegance, curiosity, and compassion, Dr. Sacks weaves together stories of his patients and of his own mind-altering experiences to illuminate what hallucinations tell us about the organization and structure of our brains, how they have influenced every culture’s folklore and art, and why the potential for hallucination is present in us all, a vital part of the human condition.
Hallucinations don’t belong wholly to the insane. Much more commonly, they are linked to sensory deprivation, intoxication, illness, or injury. People with migraines may see shimmering arcs of light or tiny, Lilliputian figures of animals and people. People with failing eyesight, paradoxically, may become immersed in a hallucinatory visual world. Hallucinations can be brought on by a simple fever or even the act of waking or falling asleep, when people have visions ranging from luminous blobs of color to beautifully detailed faces or terrifying ogres. Those who are bereaved may receive comforting “visits” from the departed. In some conditions, hallucinations can lead to religious epiphanies or even the feeling of leaving one’s own body.
Humans have always sought such life-changing visions, and for thousands of years have used hallucinogenic compounds to achieve them. As a young doctor in California in the 1960s, Oliver Sacks had both a personal and a professional interest in psychedelics. These, along with his early migraine experiences, launched a lifelong investigation into the varieties of hallucinatory experience.
Here, with his usual elegance, curiosity, and compassion, Dr. Sacks weaves together stories of his patients and of his own mind-altering experiences to illuminate what hallucinations tell us about the organization and structure of our brains, how they have influenced every culture’s folklore and art, and why the potential for hallucination is present in us all, a vital part of the human condition.
326 pages, Hardcover
First published November 1, 2012
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About the author
Oliver Sacks
135 books9,615 followersOliver Wolf Sacks, CBE, was a British neurologist residing in the United States, who has written popular books about his patients, the most famous of which is Awakenings, which was adapted into a film of the same name starring Robin Williams and Robert De Niro.
Sacks was the youngest of four children born to a prosperous North London Jewish couple: Sam, a physician, and Elsie, a surgeon. When he was six years old, he and his brother were evacuated from London to escape The Blitz, retreating to a boarding school in the Midlands, where he remained until 1943. During his youth, he was a keen amateur chemist, as recalled in his memoir Uncle Tungsten. He also learned to share his parents' enthusiasm for medicine and entered The Queen's College, Oxford University in 1951, from which he received a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in physiology and biology in 1954. At the same institution, he went on to earn in 1958, a Master of Arts (MA) and an MB ChB in chemistry, thereby qualifying to practice medicine.
After converting his British qualifications to American recognition (i.e., an MD as opposed to MB ChB), Sacks moved to New York, where he has lived since 1965, and taken twice weekly therapy sessions since 1966.
Sacks began consulting at chronic care facility Beth Abraham Hospital (now Beth Abraham Health Service) in 1966. At Beth Abraham, Sacks worked with a group of survivors of the 1920s sleeping sickness, encephalitis lethargica, who had been unable to move on their own for decades. These patients and his treatment of them were the basis of Sacks' book Awakenings.
His work at Beth Abraham helped provide the foundation on which the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function (IMNF), where Sacks is currently an honorary medical advisor, is built. In 2000, IMNF honored Sacks, its founder, with its first Music Has Power Award. The IMNF again bestowed a Music Has Power Award on Sacks in 2006 to commemorate "his 40 years at Beth Abraham and honor his outstanding contributions in support of music therapy and the effect of music on the human brain and mind".
Sacks was formerly employed as a clinical professor of neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and at the New York University School of Medicine, serving the latter school for 42 years. On 1 July 2007, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons appointed Sacks to a position as professor of clinical neurology and clinical psychiatry, at the same time opening to him a new position as "artist", which the university hoped will help interconnect disciplines such as medicine, law, and economics. Sacks was a consultant neurologist to the Little Sisters of the Poor, and maintained a practice in New York City.
Since 1996, Sacks was a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters (Literature). In 1999, Sacks became a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences. Also in 1999, he became an Honorary Fellow at The Queen's College, Oxford. In 2002, he became Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Class IV—Humanities and Arts, Section 4—Literature).[38] and he was awarded the 2001 Lewis Thomas Prize by Rockefeller University. Sacks was awarded honorary doctorates from the College of Staten Island (1991), Tufts University (1991), New York Medical College (1991), Georgetown University (1992), Medical College of Pennsylvania (1992), Bard College (1992), Queen's University (Ontario) (2001), Gallaudet University (2005), University of Oxford (2005), Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (2006). He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours. Asteroid 84928 Oliversacks, discovered in 2003 and 2 miles (3.2 km) in diameter, has been named in his honor.
Sacks was the youngest of four children born to a prosperous North London Jewish couple: Sam, a physician, and Elsie, a surgeon. When he was six years old, he and his brother were evacuated from London to escape The Blitz, retreating to a boarding school in the Midlands, where he remained until 1943. During his youth, he was a keen amateur chemist, as recalled in his memoir Uncle Tungsten. He also learned to share his parents' enthusiasm for medicine and entered The Queen's College, Oxford University in 1951, from which he received a Bachelor of Arts (BA) in physiology and biology in 1954. At the same institution, he went on to earn in 1958, a Master of Arts (MA) and an MB ChB in chemistry, thereby qualifying to practice medicine.
After converting his British qualifications to American recognition (i.e., an MD as opposed to MB ChB), Sacks moved to New York, where he has lived since 1965, and taken twice weekly therapy sessions since 1966.
Sacks began consulting at chronic care facility Beth Abraham Hospital (now Beth Abraham Health Service) in 1966. At Beth Abraham, Sacks worked with a group of survivors of the 1920s sleeping sickness, encephalitis lethargica, who had been unable to move on their own for decades. These patients and his treatment of them were the basis of Sacks' book Awakenings.
His work at Beth Abraham helped provide the foundation on which the Institute for Music and Neurologic Function (IMNF), where Sacks is currently an honorary medical advisor, is built. In 2000, IMNF honored Sacks, its founder, with its first Music Has Power Award. The IMNF again bestowed a Music Has Power Award on Sacks in 2006 to commemorate "his 40 years at Beth Abraham and honor his outstanding contributions in support of music therapy and the effect of music on the human brain and mind".
Sacks was formerly employed as a clinical professor of neurology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine and at the New York University School of Medicine, serving the latter school for 42 years. On 1 July 2007, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons appointed Sacks to a position as professor of clinical neurology and clinical psychiatry, at the same time opening to him a new position as "artist", which the university hoped will help interconnect disciplines such as medicine, law, and economics. Sacks was a consultant neurologist to the Little Sisters of the Poor, and maintained a practice in New York City.
Since 1996, Sacks was a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters (Literature). In 1999, Sacks became a Fellow of the New York Academy of Sciences. Also in 1999, he became an Honorary Fellow at The Queen's College, Oxford. In 2002, he became Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Class IV—Humanities and Arts, Section 4—Literature).[38] and he was awarded the 2001 Lewis Thomas Prize by Rockefeller University. Sacks was awarded honorary doctorates from the College of Staten Island (1991), Tufts University (1991), New York Medical College (1991), Georgetown University (1992), Medical College of Pennsylvania (1992), Bard College (1992), Queen's University (Ontario) (2001), Gallaudet University (2005), University of Oxford (2005), Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (2006). He was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2008 Birthday Honours. Asteroid 84928 Oliversacks, discovered in 2003 and 2 miles (3.2 km) in diameter, has been named in his honor.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 1,902 reviews
August 13, 2015
Hallucinations come in more varieties than you can possibly imagine - and Sacks details them all, exhaustively so, whether they are visual, tactile, audio or more rarely of smell and a combination of any of them. He details the causes whether it is an organic brain problem, temporary or permanent, or a more generalised reaction (dehydration and exhaustion), unwanted or deliberate - drugs. Almost more than you might want to know.
The "best" sort of hallucinations, are those that feel absolutely real and pleasurable but you know aren't, so you know you are quite sane. A good example of this was an old woman freed of Parkinson's who begins to hallucinate erotic episodes on a regular basis. She knows they are hallucinations but enjoys them so much that she sets aside time for them.
Synchronicity - I recently read Nellie Bly's 10 Days in a Madhouse where she, a journalist, pretended to be crazy to get into a madhouse to report on it. None of the patients were taken in by her but all the doctors were and she couldn't get out of her own accord. In Hallucinations, there is an anecdote about eight researchers who went to A&E and reported hearing voices. All were sent to the psychiatric ward - schizophrenia - and as with Nellie Bly, all the doctors but none of the patients were fooled as to the sanity of the researchers. What does this tell you? Nothing good, right? You don't have to be schizophrenic or in any way psychotic to hear voices. Hallucinations might well have an organic cause.
One of the most interesting points of the book is to do with Dostoyevsky and his book, The Idiot. Dostoyevsky was an epileptic subject to a type of vision called "ecstatic hallucinations" just before his fits. These ecstatic hallucinations are much liked and sought after by those who experience them and depending on the person can be interpreted as religious in nature. This apparently influenced The Idiot who was also an epileptic.
One person detailed by Sacks had ecstatic religious hallucinations very often and converted to sixteen different religions before ending up with an ecstatic atheist hallucination which is where he ended up. It is speculated that Joan of Arc and many other historical figures claiming out-of-this-world religious experiences may also have been subject to this hallucination.
The other most interesting point in this book is that of phantom limbs. We've all heard of people who've had a limb amputated and continue to feel it, but I have never heard how useful this is. When an amputee gets a prosthethetic limb they are able to use that feeling of the phantom limb to incorporate the prosthetic one in a much more natural and useful way. This is why some people can do amazing feats with artificial limbs.
What was also interesting but very creepy really is that some people who have been born without one or more limbs also feel these missing arms and legs. It is as if the brain knows where something should be and does its part, but there's nothing corporeal for it to act on, so it just feels.
All in all a very interesting book covering everything from migraine auras, through drug experiences - Sacks tries everything, enjoys most things and details perhaps too many of them in the book - to organic misfunctionings of the brain as well as mind. Worth reading even if I did drift off a bit with some of the physical brain descriptions. Maybe you have to be a neurologist to appreciate those.
The "best" sort of hallucinations, are those that feel absolutely real and pleasurable but you know aren't, so you know you are quite sane. A good example of this was an old woman freed of Parkinson's who begins to hallucinate erotic episodes on a regular basis. She knows they are hallucinations but enjoys them so much that she sets aside time for them.
Synchronicity - I recently read Nellie Bly's 10 Days in a Madhouse where she, a journalist, pretended to be crazy to get into a madhouse to report on it. None of the patients were taken in by her but all the doctors were and she couldn't get out of her own accord. In Hallucinations, there is an anecdote about eight researchers who went to A&E and reported hearing voices. All were sent to the psychiatric ward - schizophrenia - and as with Nellie Bly, all the doctors but none of the patients were fooled as to the sanity of the researchers. What does this tell you? Nothing good, right? You don't have to be schizophrenic or in any way psychotic to hear voices. Hallucinations might well have an organic cause.
One of the most interesting points of the book is to do with Dostoyevsky and his book, The Idiot. Dostoyevsky was an epileptic subject to a type of vision called "ecstatic hallucinations" just before his fits. These ecstatic hallucinations are much liked and sought after by those who experience them and depending on the person can be interpreted as religious in nature. This apparently influenced The Idiot who was also an epileptic.
One person detailed by Sacks had ecstatic religious hallucinations very often and converted to sixteen different religions before ending up with an ecstatic atheist hallucination which is where he ended up. It is speculated that Joan of Arc and many other historical figures claiming out-of-this-world religious experiences may also have been subject to this hallucination.
The other most interesting point in this book is that of phantom limbs. We've all heard of people who've had a limb amputated and continue to feel it, but I have never heard how useful this is. When an amputee gets a prosthethetic limb they are able to use that feeling of the phantom limb to incorporate the prosthetic one in a much more natural and useful way. This is why some people can do amazing feats with artificial limbs.
What was also interesting but very creepy really is that some people who have been born without one or more limbs also feel these missing arms and legs. It is as if the brain knows where something should be and does its part, but there's nothing corporeal for it to act on, so it just feels.
All in all a very interesting book covering everything from migraine auras, through drug experiences - Sacks tries everything, enjoys most things and details perhaps too many of them in the book - to organic misfunctionings of the brain as well as mind. Worth reading even if I did drift off a bit with some of the physical brain descriptions. Maybe you have to be a neurologist to appreciate those.
February 13, 2020
Another Oliver Sacks book, my last for a while. I definitely enjoyed this much more than The Mind's Eye though. Probably because hallucinations are much more fascinating to think about. I think the book did a good job going over hallucinatory experiences and I definitely learned a lot that I didn't know before. I even enjoyed hearing about Sack's personal experiences this time because he didn't give as much unnecessary detail and it was cool to know that someone so successful has his own struggles, it makes him much more real to the reader I think. I do find that towards the end of Oliver Sack's books though I begin to get tired of reading and wish it would end already for some reason. Not sure if it's just me but it gets to be a bit much because he does have a tendency to go on and on. All in all an interesting and informative read.
January 13, 2013
I enjoyed this one, but I’m not going to review this book in any depth, really. It was all very interesting in its journey through both delusional and drug induced hallucinations – but what I found most interesting in this book, and the bit that I will remember in six months time, is the stuff about indigo.
I need to start by saying I’m insanely dull, fairly close to the least interesting person I know. Unlike President Clinton, I have inhaled the smoke of the marijuana plant, but I found it anything but a recreational drug of choice for me. Anxiety and paranoia aren’t really my favourite emotions and so taking drugs to induce these feelings seemed, what? Counter-productive? Redundant? Other drugs likely to induce hallucinations always seemed far too terrifying for me to even consider. Like I said, I’m an intensely boring person – I can hardly remember the last time I was properly drunk. As an Irishman this is actually an act of treachery – an alcoholic stupor being the conscious state of choice for my people, as St Patrick’s Day makes all too clear. All this is meant as context, by the way.
Now, Sacks is not like me at all. For a time he took lots of drugs, at least in part to observe the impact taking them would have on his consciousness – as good an excuse as any, I suppose. Since he is a neurologist, I can understand his attraction – but his descriptions of the effects of these drugs, like the other descriptions of drug use I’ve read over the years, has done nothing to encourage me to get my hands on some magic mushrooms or LSD. I have what is perhaps an irrational fear that ‘normal’ consciousness is something rather tenuous and so playing with stuff that turns the faces of people on a bus into something resembling an insect is exactly the kind of thing I need to avoid like the plague. That said, and as part of my own variety of self-rationalisation, I’m also likely to fall for stories that tell me that there are other means of achieving altered states of consciousness (particularly aesthetic experiences - religion being as barred to me as heavy drug use and for much the same reason) that are just as effective, if rather less fast acting, than chemistry.
Like I said, I’m telling you all this because the story Sacks tells about indigo confirmed my biases and I want my biases to be up front.
One day Sacks decided he really wanted to know what indigo looked like. Yes, it is a colour of the rainbow, the 'i' in Roy G Biv, but it also isn’t really. While it is easy to call ‘yellow’ to mind (although, yellow has changed in definition over the years – it having once having been a kind of murky brown) no such simple means of calling indigo to mind is possible. (This ‘calling to mind’ thing is also terribly interesting – interesting in that we can’t call smells to mind in the way we do music or images, why is that?)
I’ve only recently found out Newton made indigo up, so it is hardly surprising we struggle with it as a colour. Indigo was necessary to give the rainbow seven colours and our eyes don’t really work according to numerology. Anyway, one day Sacks took a mixture of drugs and stood staring at a white wall and called out, “I want to see indigo” – and there in front of him was this most amazing blue-purple colour. Like nothing he had ever seen before. After this he spent years trying to find that exact colour again. And was never successful.
Now, that last bit isn’t quite true. One day he was at a museum listening to a concert – I’ve forgotten the music that was played already – something Baroque, I think, and just right too – and it was really moving, you know, an ‘oh wow’ musical experience. Anyway, during the intermission and basking in the afterglow of the music he nipped out and looked around the Egyptian pottery and what-not and there it was: indigo. There was the colour he had been searching for for years and now his search was over, for all he ever had to do was call around to the museum when ever he needed to see it.
Except that the second half of the concert wasn’t nearly as good as the first half, perhaps, ironically enough, disturbed by the thought of indigo being always available and at such close range. No earth moving this time. But when he went out again for a reviving dose of indigo from our friendly dealers in mystic colours from Ancient Egypt the indigo was gone. Now all he could see was blue.
Like I said, I’m too much of a coward to play with the drugs Sacks did – but it is nice to believe (even if I have to force myself) that doing heavy art can produce much the same effect.
I need to start by saying I’m insanely dull, fairly close to the least interesting person I know. Unlike President Clinton, I have inhaled the smoke of the marijuana plant, but I found it anything but a recreational drug of choice for me. Anxiety and paranoia aren’t really my favourite emotions and so taking drugs to induce these feelings seemed, what? Counter-productive? Redundant? Other drugs likely to induce hallucinations always seemed far too terrifying for me to even consider. Like I said, I’m an intensely boring person – I can hardly remember the last time I was properly drunk. As an Irishman this is actually an act of treachery – an alcoholic stupor being the conscious state of choice for my people, as St Patrick’s Day makes all too clear. All this is meant as context, by the way.
Now, Sacks is not like me at all. For a time he took lots of drugs, at least in part to observe the impact taking them would have on his consciousness – as good an excuse as any, I suppose. Since he is a neurologist, I can understand his attraction – but his descriptions of the effects of these drugs, like the other descriptions of drug use I’ve read over the years, has done nothing to encourage me to get my hands on some magic mushrooms or LSD. I have what is perhaps an irrational fear that ‘normal’ consciousness is something rather tenuous and so playing with stuff that turns the faces of people on a bus into something resembling an insect is exactly the kind of thing I need to avoid like the plague. That said, and as part of my own variety of self-rationalisation, I’m also likely to fall for stories that tell me that there are other means of achieving altered states of consciousness (particularly aesthetic experiences - religion being as barred to me as heavy drug use and for much the same reason) that are just as effective, if rather less fast acting, than chemistry.
Like I said, I’m telling you all this because the story Sacks tells about indigo confirmed my biases and I want my biases to be up front.
One day Sacks decided he really wanted to know what indigo looked like. Yes, it is a colour of the rainbow, the 'i' in Roy G Biv, but it also isn’t really. While it is easy to call ‘yellow’ to mind (although, yellow has changed in definition over the years – it having once having been a kind of murky brown) no such simple means of calling indigo to mind is possible. (This ‘calling to mind’ thing is also terribly interesting – interesting in that we can’t call smells to mind in the way we do music or images, why is that?)
I’ve only recently found out Newton made indigo up, so it is hardly surprising we struggle with it as a colour. Indigo was necessary to give the rainbow seven colours and our eyes don’t really work according to numerology. Anyway, one day Sacks took a mixture of drugs and stood staring at a white wall and called out, “I want to see indigo” – and there in front of him was this most amazing blue-purple colour. Like nothing he had ever seen before. After this he spent years trying to find that exact colour again. And was never successful.
Now, that last bit isn’t quite true. One day he was at a museum listening to a concert – I’ve forgotten the music that was played already – something Baroque, I think, and just right too – and it was really moving, you know, an ‘oh wow’ musical experience. Anyway, during the intermission and basking in the afterglow of the music he nipped out and looked around the Egyptian pottery and what-not and there it was: indigo. There was the colour he had been searching for for years and now his search was over, for all he ever had to do was call around to the museum when ever he needed to see it.
Except that the second half of the concert wasn’t nearly as good as the first half, perhaps, ironically enough, disturbed by the thought of indigo being always available and at such close range. No earth moving this time. But when he went out again for a reviving dose of indigo from our friendly dealers in mystic colours from Ancient Egypt the indigo was gone. Now all he could see was blue.
Like I said, I’m too much of a coward to play with the drugs Sacks did – but it is nice to believe (even if I have to force myself) that doing heavy art can produce much the same effect.
December 4, 2012
I think that my decision to pursue neuroscience, and eventually get my PhD, was partly inspired from reading Oliver Sacks's "Awakenings" and "The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat" just before starting college. The strange things that happen to people with brain dysfunction reveal more about the nature of reality than all the great works of philosophy. In addition to the significance of Sacks's books to my academic choices, I was particularly excited about reading this book because since childhood I've had a strong interest in hallucinations. For instance, as a child I had a few hypnogogic hallucinations that I misconstrued as supernatural events, and not until I reinterpreted these as hallucinations was I able to abandon my beliefs in ghosts. Thus, I would undoubtedly enjoy this book.
Somehow, though, I found HALLUCINATIONS a bit boring. Maybe all my neuroscience education made me a little less shocked by the many bizarre things that Sacks describes. Maybe it is because a large fraction of his stories are recycled from his previous books. Maybe it is because so many of his examples are from literary sources and their reliability may be compromised by creative flourishes. Maybe it is because the book is 95% a catalogue of hallucinations and only 5% an attempt to explain or synthesize these accounts. Nonetheless, the book will likely be pretty exciting for people who haven't already read several of his books or have little knowledge of the crazy things that the brain can do (or the things that the crazy brain can do).
I've always been a bit incredulous of Oliver Sacks's descriptions of his own mental idiosyncrasies, for he seems to suffer from a medical student syndrome in which he has diagnosed himself with every conceivable neurological disorder. By his own accounts, he may have one of the most abnormal brains to ever exist as he suffers from or experiences migraine, synethesia, prosopagnosia, dyslexia, tone deafness, and alien limb syndrome (to name just a few). With HALLUCINATIONS, he adds to this list a new set of more plausible fatigue and drug-induced conditions. The most enjoyable chapter of the book describes, with little remorse, Sacks's more youthful experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs (does anyone know where one can get some Artane?), and actually attributes his decision to become a writer to an amphetamine-induced mania. With HALLUCINATIONS, I began to see the point of Sacks's self-overdiagnoses: he is acknowledging that such abnormal brain states are more common than one might expect, and even if they may startle or worry us, we can learn to appreciate them as sources of insight into the inner workings of our minds.
Somehow, though, I found HALLUCINATIONS a bit boring. Maybe all my neuroscience education made me a little less shocked by the many bizarre things that Sacks describes. Maybe it is because a large fraction of his stories are recycled from his previous books. Maybe it is because so many of his examples are from literary sources and their reliability may be compromised by creative flourishes. Maybe it is because the book is 95% a catalogue of hallucinations and only 5% an attempt to explain or synthesize these accounts. Nonetheless, the book will likely be pretty exciting for people who haven't already read several of his books or have little knowledge of the crazy things that the brain can do (or the things that the crazy brain can do).
I've always been a bit incredulous of Oliver Sacks's descriptions of his own mental idiosyncrasies, for he seems to suffer from a medical student syndrome in which he has diagnosed himself with every conceivable neurological disorder. By his own accounts, he may have one of the most abnormal brains to ever exist as he suffers from or experiences migraine, synethesia, prosopagnosia, dyslexia, tone deafness, and alien limb syndrome (to name just a few). With HALLUCINATIONS, he adds to this list a new set of more plausible fatigue and drug-induced conditions. The most enjoyable chapter of the book describes, with little remorse, Sacks's more youthful experimentation with hallucinogenic drugs (does anyone know where one can get some Artane?), and actually attributes his decision to become a writer to an amphetamine-induced mania. With HALLUCINATIONS, I began to see the point of Sacks's self-overdiagnoses: he is acknowledging that such abnormal brain states are more common than one might expect, and even if they may startle or worry us, we can learn to appreciate them as sources of insight into the inner workings of our minds.
April 10, 2018
I have completed the entire Sacks's oeuvre, with the single exception of Seeing Voices. Oliver Sacks has been one of those life altering writers for me. He has changed the way I see the world. The great revelation with this volume for me was just how commonplace hallucinations are. There are myriad reasons why the brain might produce them: sensory deprivation, disease, drugs, etc.—many of them surprisingly benign. Fascinating and highly recommended.
Also see Will Self's review at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/...
Also see Will Self's review at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2012/...
December 18, 2012
Two weird things happened while I was reading this book. I had been having some bad insomnia, so I took a little something-something to help get to sleep. Before it kicked in I was reading this book, and it looked like the background of my Kindle Paperwhite had clouds floating around behind the text. Conversation with my husband:
Me:"There's clouds floating around the background of my Kindle."
Husband:"Sounds kind of pretty."
Me:"I guess."
Me:"But I'm trying to read."
The second weird thing is that I ended up with a freak infection in my arm, which caused some awful fevers. I paid close attention, and yup, got some fever-induced hallucinations. Specifically, when I closed my eyes, it was gray with what looked like b&w christmas ornaments raining down on me.
Fantastic. I would have loved to read more scientific details of the biological theories of the various types of hallucinations. There was some of this, but I wanted more.
By far the best part of the book was Sacks discussing his prolific drug use. He's pretty awesome.
Me:"There's clouds floating around the background of my Kindle."
Husband:"Sounds kind of pretty."
Me:"I guess."
Me:"But I'm trying to read."
The second weird thing is that I ended up with a freak infection in my arm, which caused some awful fevers. I paid close attention, and yup, got some fever-induced hallucinations. Specifically, when I closed my eyes, it was gray with what looked like b&w christmas ornaments raining down on me.
Fantastic. I would have loved to read more scientific details of the biological theories of the various types of hallucinations. There was some of this, but I wanted more.
By far the best part of the book was Sacks discussing his prolific drug use. He's pretty awesome.
March 1, 2025
“Hallucinations don’t belong wholly to the insane”
“Much more commonly, they are linked to sensory deprivation, intoxication, illness or injury.”
No doubt about it, I began HALLUCINATIONS with great expectations for enjoyment and elucidation of my virtually non-existent understanding of the causes and processes of experiencing hallucinations. And despite the fact that I did learn, with considerable interest, of a number of circumstances, both internal and external, that would result in a wide variety of hugely varying hallucinations, the book itself ended up suffering from endless repetition of hallucination anecdotes and physical explanations of brain process that, for me at least, were beyond bewildering in their complexity.
In short, what started with considerable interest lost itself in complicated and tedious repetition.
Paul Weiss
“Much more commonly, they are linked to sensory deprivation, intoxication, illness or injury.”
No doubt about it, I began HALLUCINATIONS with great expectations for enjoyment and elucidation of my virtually non-existent understanding of the causes and processes of experiencing hallucinations. And despite the fact that I did learn, with considerable interest, of a number of circumstances, both internal and external, that would result in a wide variety of hugely varying hallucinations, the book itself ended up suffering from endless repetition of hallucination anecdotes and physical explanations of brain process that, for me at least, were beyond bewildering in their complexity.
In short, what started with considerable interest lost itself in complicated and tedious repetition.
Paul Weiss
March 6, 2015
Hallucinations
was just not up to snuff for
Oliver Sacks
— actually, it made me question just how much I would like Sacks' work were I to read it today, having been exposed to a breadth of narrative science writing in the years since I first read his essays.
Sacks presents hallucinations (forms of consciousness wherein sensations occur autonomously, sometimes overlapping with misperceptions or illusions, but without consensual validation) through case studies, seasoning each one with socio-cultural/historical context and bits of neurological intel. And, as it turns out, hallucinations come in many more shapes and forms than one might expect—not all of which are unpleasant (or visual, but I digress).
The material itself is rich. For me, the mere concept of Charles Bonnet Syndrome (complex visual hallucinations experienced by people with partial blindness), or Anton's Syndrome (a form of anosognosia wherein completely blind patients behave as if they can see) is inherently intriguing. However, I simply wanted more science, the lack of which made what narrative there was seem fractured.
It was Sacks' accounts of his own drug-induced hallucinations, though, that really made me want to turn off and tune out (shoutout to my boy, Timothy Leary). As Sacks interspersed more and more of his personal anecdotes with patients' experiences, the stories became more and more (to use Sacks' own words) “like being privy to a dream.” But, guess what? Other people's dreams are often very, very boring. Seriously, I thought this was common knowledge.
Of course, I learned some interesting things (the mare in nightmare turns out to be not a horse, but a lady-demon who sits on your chest, giving you bad dreams and potentially suffocating you). But, by the end, I discovered that hearing about hallucinations was just not my thing. There are, of course, exceptions— cases in which the floor appears to be lava, and/or people begin transforming into Decepticons might spark my interest.
Sacks presents hallucinations (forms of consciousness wherein sensations occur autonomously, sometimes overlapping with misperceptions or illusions, but without consensual validation) through case studies, seasoning each one with socio-cultural/historical context and bits of neurological intel. And, as it turns out, hallucinations come in many more shapes and forms than one might expect—not all of which are unpleasant (or visual, but I digress).
The material itself is rich. For me, the mere concept of Charles Bonnet Syndrome (complex visual hallucinations experienced by people with partial blindness), or Anton's Syndrome (a form of anosognosia wherein completely blind patients behave as if they can see) is inherently intriguing. However, I simply wanted more science, the lack of which made what narrative there was seem fractured.
It was Sacks' accounts of his own drug-induced hallucinations, though, that really made me want to turn off and tune out (shoutout to my boy, Timothy Leary). As Sacks interspersed more and more of his personal anecdotes with patients' experiences, the stories became more and more (to use Sacks' own words) “like being privy to a dream.” But, guess what? Other people's dreams are often very, very boring. Seriously, I thought this was common knowledge.
Of course, I learned some interesting things (the mare in nightmare turns out to be not a horse, but a lady-demon who sits on your chest, giving you bad dreams and potentially suffocating you). But, by the end, I discovered that hearing about hallucinations was just not my thing. There are, of course, exceptions— cases in which the floor appears to be lava, and/or people begin transforming into Decepticons might spark my interest.
March 27, 2013
Ever get stuck talking about the fairly pedestrian dreams of a random stranger, ad nauseum? Yeah, that's this book.
I've read several of Sacks' other books, which are usually good for both giving insight into how our minds work as well as scratching a certain voyeuristic itch. I'm not entirely sure why this book fails at both--perhaps because we don't really understand enough about why we hallucinate. (Or perhaps the answer of "neurons fire when they shouldn't have" is just too simple and not all that interesting.)
The chapters are organized by type. We have hallucinations caused by phantom pain, by drugs, by Parkinsons, when falling asleep, etc. And they basically consist of lists: patient 1 saw zig zags, patient 2 saw random people in Victorian dress, patient 3 saw her dead cat. Nothing really about how this affected their lives or anything. Just "so and so saw x".
Main conclusion: lots of things besides insanity cause people to see/hear/smell things. Many different things. That's about it.
I've read several of Sacks' other books, which are usually good for both giving insight into how our minds work as well as scratching a certain voyeuristic itch. I'm not entirely sure why this book fails at both--perhaps because we don't really understand enough about why we hallucinate. (Or perhaps the answer of "neurons fire when they shouldn't have" is just too simple and not all that interesting.)
The chapters are organized by type. We have hallucinations caused by phantom pain, by drugs, by Parkinsons, when falling asleep, etc. And they basically consist of lists: patient 1 saw zig zags, patient 2 saw random people in Victorian dress, patient 3 saw her dead cat. Nothing really about how this affected their lives or anything. Just "so and so saw x".
Main conclusion: lots of things besides insanity cause people to see/hear/smell things. Many different things. That's about it.
June 21, 2020
هلوَسة
أوليفر ساكس
كان والد صديقي يمر بأزمة صحية حرجة، وذات يوم استيقظ في الليل باحثًا عن دواء السعال فلم يجده. فجأة ظهر له شيخ أبيض الشعر واللحية فأشار إلى الدرج الذي يحتوي على قنينة الدواء المطلوبة...واختفى. بعد الكثير من التأمل والتحليل واقتراحات تعج بالملائكة والشياطين والقرناء، وُجد أن أحد العقاقير التي يتناولها الرجل تسبب الهلوسة كأثار جانبية. هذه حالة هلوسة محترمة –إن كان بالإمكان إطلاق هذه الصفة- بينما كان أحد زملائي في المدرسة يصر على أن شخصا –أو شيئا- ما في بيته يقوم بتكسير البيض الموجود في الثلاجة ونشره على جميع غرف المنزل. الغريبة أن رائحة البيض كانت تفوح من منزلهم على الدوام. والسؤال الأهم هو لماذا يستمرون بشراء البيض والحالة هذه؟
العديد منا جرّب شكلًا من أشكال الهلوسة. فالهلوسة ليست بالضرورة تجسدًا غريبًا، بل قد تكون ذلك الظل الذي تلمح يتحرك بطرف عينك، ربما تلك القوة الغريبة التي تخنقك عندما توشك على الولوج في عالم النوم، أو ربما ذلك الصوت الذي يناديك عندما تكون لوحدك. في الحقيقة لهذه الأخيرة تفسير، فإن كان النداء باسمك العادي فهو محض هلوسة، وإما إن تم استخدام وصف مهين فهو عادة أحد الظرفاء الذين لم تقرر بعد أن تبتعد عنهم.
هذه هي التجربة الثانية مع أوليفر ساكس صاحب الكتاب الرشيق "الرجل الذي حسب زوجته قبعة". وهو هنا كما كان هناك، رجل علم واسع الخبرة يتقن تبسيط المعلومة دون إثقال كاهل القارئ بكم كبير من المصطلحات الطيبة أو الشروحات المعقدة. وهو إلى جانب ذلك كاتب ذو ميول أدبية وحس إنساني يجعلك تتعاطف مع معاناة الحالات الموصوفة في كتبه. هناك كم كبير من المعرفة المبسطة عن الأمراض العصبية والدماغية. في كتابه السابق، كوّنت فكرة ممتازة عن الفرق بين الأمراض النفسية والعصبية، وفي هذا الكتاب وجدت تفسيرا للكثير من أعراض الهلوسة التي لا يتعامل المجتمع معها في سياق علمي.
قسّم ساكس الكتاب إلى فصول إما حسب شكل أعراض الهلوسة: شمّية، سمعية، بصرية، وكذلك حسب المسببات مثل اضطراب النوم، العمى، الصداع النصفي والصرع. العديد من القصص الغريبة أو المألوفة، وكذلك بعض المعلومات عن مختلف الأمراض الآنف ذكرها. أمتع القصص هي تلك التي كانت تجربة شخصية مرّ بها ساكس، ومجملًا كان الفصل الذي يتحدث عن المخدرات هو أمتع الفصول وأشدها إثارة للرعب.
مايلاحظ في هذا الكتاب أن الدماغ حاوٍ ماهر يتقن الكثير من الألاعيب، وأن الوعي والاتزان والواقعية المرئية هي مفاهيم غير راسخة ويمكن بالسهولة فقدانها. جذب انتباهي أيضًا أن بعض المصابين باختلالات في الوعي واجهوا التحدي ومارسوا حياة مليئة بالنجاحات. تخيل شخصًا يرى الطريق أمامه ينقسم إلى أربعة أقسام أثناء القيادة، وآخر يرى ضيوفًا يزورونه دون أن يميز أحدًا منهم! ومع ذلك حافظوا على وظائفهم وربما طوّروا من قدراتهم. لا أدرى أن كان السبب هو أن تلك الشخصيات مميزة أو ربما لأنها تنتمي إلى مجتمع لم ينشأ على الركون إلى لوم الظروف ولوم الآخرين ويقضي وقته في صناعة الشمّاعات بدلًا من إيقاد الشموع.
أوليفر ساكس
كان والد صديقي يمر بأزمة صحية حرجة، وذات يوم استيقظ في الليل باحثًا عن دواء السعال فلم يجده. فجأة ظهر له شيخ أبيض الشعر واللحية فأشار إلى الدرج الذي يحتوي على قنينة الدواء المطلوبة...واختفى. بعد الكثير من التأمل والتحليل واقتراحات تعج بالملائكة والشياطين والقرناء، وُجد أن أحد العقاقير التي يتناولها الرجل تسبب الهلوسة كأثار جانبية. هذه حالة هلوسة محترمة –إن كان بالإمكان إطلاق هذه الصفة- بينما كان أحد زملائي في المدرسة يصر على أن شخصا –أو شيئا- ما في بيته يقوم بتكسير البيض الموجود في الثلاجة ونشره على جميع غرف المنزل. الغريبة أن رائحة البيض كانت تفوح من منزلهم على الدوام. والسؤال الأهم هو لماذا يستمرون بشراء البيض والحالة هذه؟
العديد منا جرّب شكلًا من أشكال الهلوسة. فالهلوسة ليست بالضرورة تجسدًا غريبًا، بل قد تكون ذلك الظل الذي تلمح يتحرك بطرف عينك، ربما تلك القوة الغريبة التي تخنقك عندما توشك على الولوج في عالم النوم، أو ربما ذلك الصوت الذي يناديك عندما تكون لوحدك. في الحقيقة لهذه الأخيرة تفسير، فإن كان النداء باسمك العادي فهو محض هلوسة، وإما إن تم استخدام وصف مهين فهو عادة أحد الظرفاء الذين لم تقرر بعد أن تبتعد عنهم.
هذه هي التجربة الثانية مع أوليفر ساكس صاحب الكتاب الرشيق "الرجل الذي حسب زوجته قبعة". وهو هنا كما كان هناك، رجل علم واسع الخبرة يتقن تبسيط المعلومة دون إثقال كاهل القارئ بكم كبير من المصطلحات الطيبة أو الشروحات المعقدة. وهو إلى جانب ذلك كاتب ذو ميول أدبية وحس إنساني يجعلك تتعاطف مع معاناة الحالات الموصوفة في كتبه. هناك كم كبير من المعرفة المبسطة عن الأمراض العصبية والدماغية. في كتابه السابق، كوّنت فكرة ممتازة عن الفرق بين الأمراض النفسية والعصبية، وفي هذا الكتاب وجدت تفسيرا للكثير من أعراض الهلوسة التي لا يتعامل المجتمع معها في سياق علمي.
قسّم ساكس الكتاب إلى فصول إما حسب شكل أعراض الهلوسة: شمّية، سمعية، بصرية، وكذلك حسب المسببات مثل اضطراب النوم، العمى، الصداع النصفي والصرع. العديد من القصص الغريبة أو المألوفة، وكذلك بعض المعلومات عن مختلف الأمراض الآنف ذكرها. أمتع القصص هي تلك التي كانت تجربة شخصية مرّ بها ساكس، ومجملًا كان الفصل الذي يتحدث عن المخدرات هو أمتع الفصول وأشدها إثارة للرعب.
مايلاحظ في هذا الكتاب أن الدماغ حاوٍ ماهر يتقن الكثير من الألاعيب، وأن الوعي والاتزان والواقعية المرئية هي مفاهيم غير راسخة ويمكن بالسهولة فقدانها. جذب انتباهي أيضًا أن بعض المصابين باختلالات في الوعي واجهوا التحدي ومارسوا حياة مليئة بالنجاحات. تخيل شخصًا يرى الطريق أمامه ينقسم إلى أربعة أقسام أثناء القيادة، وآخر يرى ضيوفًا يزورونه دون أن يميز أحدًا منهم! ومع ذلك حافظوا على وظائفهم وربما طوّروا من قدراتهم. لا أدرى أن كان السبب هو أن تلك الشخصيات مميزة أو ربما لأنها تنتمي إلى مجتمع لم ينشأ على الركون إلى لوم الظروف ولوم الآخرين ويقضي وقته في صناعة الشمّاعات بدلًا من إيقاد الشموع.
September 2, 2015
8-30-15 Rest in Peace, Oliver Sacks.
The neurologist Oliver Sacks has written a compassionate book about hallucinations, full of individual patients' stories as well as his own experiences. Hallucinations caused by sensory deprivation were especially interesting. Blindness, hearing problems, solitary confinement, sailors staring at an endless calm sea, and sensory deprivation tanks can all lead to hallucinations because "the brain needs not only perceptual input but perceptual change." In addition to visual hallucinations, people can also have auditory, olfactory, and tactile sensations. Illness, fevers, migraines, epilepsy, dementia, delirium, sleep deprivation, alcohol, drugs, and grief are some of the other causes of hallucinations.
Dr Sacks' own experiences with psychedelics and other drugs in the 1960s are very colorfully described. He also shares his experiences with migraines which he first developed as a child. He interviewed people who had hallucinations that took on a mystical aspect or a religious experience. He also gives theories about the possible causes of the near death experience. Ways that neurologists are helping patients with amputated limbs deal with the "phantom limb" sensation were also discussed.
Dr Sacks' love of literature is evident since he quotes neurology papers that are centuries old, and references famous authors who have experience hallucinations. After reading this book, the reader could read with fresh eyes works by Edgar Allan Poe, Guy de Maupassant, Lewis Carroll, Dostoyevsky, and Nabokov. Even "The Bible", "The Illiad", and "The Odyssey" have examples of hallucinations--visions and voices. Many traditional fairytales and folktales also have elements of hallucinations--elves, leprechauns, and various demons.
I thought it would have been useful if the author had included a short glossary of neurological terms since some readers might not have an extensive medical vocabulary. Overall, I found Hallucinations to be a fascinating book.
The neurologist Oliver Sacks has written a compassionate book about hallucinations, full of individual patients' stories as well as his own experiences. Hallucinations caused by sensory deprivation were especially interesting. Blindness, hearing problems, solitary confinement, sailors staring at an endless calm sea, and sensory deprivation tanks can all lead to hallucinations because "the brain needs not only perceptual input but perceptual change." In addition to visual hallucinations, people can also have auditory, olfactory, and tactile sensations. Illness, fevers, migraines, epilepsy, dementia, delirium, sleep deprivation, alcohol, drugs, and grief are some of the other causes of hallucinations.
Dr Sacks' own experiences with psychedelics and other drugs in the 1960s are very colorfully described. He also shares his experiences with migraines which he first developed as a child. He interviewed people who had hallucinations that took on a mystical aspect or a religious experience. He also gives theories about the possible causes of the near death experience. Ways that neurologists are helping patients with amputated limbs deal with the "phantom limb" sensation were also discussed.
Dr Sacks' love of literature is evident since he quotes neurology papers that are centuries old, and references famous authors who have experience hallucinations. After reading this book, the reader could read with fresh eyes works by Edgar Allan Poe, Guy de Maupassant, Lewis Carroll, Dostoyevsky, and Nabokov. Even "The Bible", "The Illiad", and "The Odyssey" have examples of hallucinations--visions and voices. Many traditional fairytales and folktales also have elements of hallucinations--elves, leprechauns, and various demons.
I thought it would have been useful if the author had included a short glossary of neurological terms since some readers might not have an extensive medical vocabulary. Overall, I found Hallucinations to be a fascinating book.
December 29, 2012
I gave this four stars at first because I think it's true that it's not written with quite the verve of some of Sacks' earlier books. But then I added a fifth because -- dammit -- I really did enjoy it. It did for me precisely what he's so good at -- leaving me thinking for hours about some of the case studies, the experiences and the far bigger points they raise about life and consciousness.
Somewhere in it (and it is now enormously annoying to me that I can't find the quotation) he talks about the way current understanding of memory has changed-- that memory isn't fixed at point of experience and then accessed later -- but rather that recall (remembering) is a creative act in which the narrative is continually remade. I love this idea and it feels true to me. But that's the kind of potent idea that appears as an aside. It isn't even mainly what the book is about.
We're on hallucinations, which have the property of reality in terms of the clarity with which they are experienced. They can be scary or enormously comforting. They are often associated with particular disorders, such as Charles Bonnet Syndrome and some types of dementia, but anybody may experience them from time to time.
It is clear that Sacks regards hallucinations as delusions rather than illusions. That is to say they 'seem' real but are simply the brain doing something weird, a weirdness of perception that can be explained in various logical ways. So ghosts, out of body experiences, near Death experiences, spiritualist exchanges, religious ecstasy and God (gods) are all framed in the hallucinatory picture. This made sense to me, although the chicken and egg factor is intriguing. Sacks suggests, for example, that our folktales about angels, devils, demons, fairies and little people may have arisen because of the way these images populate hallucinatory experience, rather than the other way around. Religious faith, he argues, may be founded on a single profound, life-changing hallucination (though for many religious folk, there may be a whole series of them).
Here's how he set me thinking, though. He distinguishes between different forms of consciousness rather engagingly. For example, consciousness in sleep -- leading to dreaming -- is nothing like the sort of consciousness involved in hallucination.
What I don't quite 'get' is this: if hallucination is, to all intents and purposes, real to the person experiencing it, what is reality? If the brain perceives a large yellow man approaching, and the fellow hits you on the head, causing acute pain -- is this not pretty 'real'? Reality is only what we perceive. Hallucination is only realised as such (by and large) in retrospect, when the person experiencing the delusion realises, through force of logic, that it cannot have been true, or alternatively, if a second person with 'normal' brain function is present in the room and able to confirm that the yellow man is not actually there. Or not there to them. Oh dear. I was reminded, while reading this book, time and time again of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper", and indeed she could have been another case study. Sensory deprivation - being shut up and not allowed access to normal stimulation - can lead to hallucination.
I like that the hallucinations are not necessarily visual. They can be aural, tactile or have the properties of smell. And of course one sits up smartly at parts of the book that tie in with personal experience. It has happened to me three or four times that I've woken at night smelling something burning so strongly that I've got up, wandered up and down the house looking for the cause (there has never been one). At one point I was slightly worried because I read somewhere that such phenomena can be associated with brain tumours. But the tumour didn't appear, and often years go past between the experiences. Once I woke in my parents' house (they were away) in absolute terror. I heard someone bang loudly and rattle the front door. Why? Who? Shaking, I crept downstairs. There was no-one there. It seems likely (after reading this book) that this was a case of a hallucination carried out of sleep into waking, much in the way one carries the emotion of a dream into waking life.
I have experienced 'holy' hallucinations too: a powerful and almost overwhelming sense of goodness. I don't talk about this much (Sacks says people don't) and I found I didn't mind it explained in terms of delusion. But that's because hallucinations are so intense that they ARE real to those people who have them. There are certain types of unreality I'd like to continue to have.
He doesn't deal with the interesting issue of group hallucination (i.e. several people seeing one 'ghost') except in passing, where he does bring in the delightful example of a whole French village who went dotty and had all sorts of strange experiences after the bread was contaminated with 'ergot', which effectively acts as a hallucinatory drug. (People on magic mushrooms, though, don't have group experiences, so far as I know. In fact, their mental experiences seem to isolate them in a way that alarms fellow experimenters.)
Towards the end, Sacks talks about the doppelganger, the sense of a second self -- perhaps a comfort, perhaps a threat -- which can become the "biological basis for religious passion and conviction, where the 'other', the 'presence', becomes the person of God." In fact, that's the last sentence of the book. He suggests that the "primal, animal sense of 'the other' . . may have evolved for the detection of threat". Indeed it might. But it might be a whole lot less explicable than that.
When I got to the end of the book, the sense I was left with -- yet again after reading Sacks -- was that of astonishment. The human brain -- the experiences we have of being alive -- are absolutely extraordinary. This book effectively discusses magical experiences. It doesn't explain them away so much as describe them in operation. Even tracking them to specific parts of the brain doesn't diminish the marvel that such things happen, and the even greater marvel of our consciousness.
I am a vivid dreamer, though I don't hallucinate much. (This book is not about dreams at all.) I have had experiences in my dreams that make me vividly glad to be alive, and some of those reminded me of some of the hallucinations Sacks describes. Not that long ago I found myself in an extraordinary country. I was very high up, on a flat grassy plain that ended like a shelf in a sheer drop, a steep cliff dropping for several miles below. It was dizzying and I had to lie down on the grass to be able to look over the edge. At the bottom there was a marvellous country, with waterfalls and mountains and forests and lakes and rivers. The colours were absolutely stunning and it was all incredibly detailed. The air was bright and clear and invigorating. I could see it much more clearly than I can see when I'm awake; it took my breath. I can't remember it properly now -- I can only remember the acuteness of my response to the scene. It was realler than real.
What amazing creatures we are that we have such things in our head! The Kingdom of Heaven is within us. Unfortunately, the Other Place seems to manifest in some cases too.
Somewhere in it (and it is now enormously annoying to me that I can't find the quotation) he talks about the way current understanding of memory has changed-- that memory isn't fixed at point of experience and then accessed later -- but rather that recall (remembering) is a creative act in which the narrative is continually remade. I love this idea and it feels true to me. But that's the kind of potent idea that appears as an aside. It isn't even mainly what the book is about.
We're on hallucinations, which have the property of reality in terms of the clarity with which they are experienced. They can be scary or enormously comforting. They are often associated with particular disorders, such as Charles Bonnet Syndrome and some types of dementia, but anybody may experience them from time to time.
It is clear that Sacks regards hallucinations as delusions rather than illusions. That is to say they 'seem' real but are simply the brain doing something weird, a weirdness of perception that can be explained in various logical ways. So ghosts, out of body experiences, near Death experiences, spiritualist exchanges, religious ecstasy and God (gods) are all framed in the hallucinatory picture. This made sense to me, although the chicken and egg factor is intriguing. Sacks suggests, for example, that our folktales about angels, devils, demons, fairies and little people may have arisen because of the way these images populate hallucinatory experience, rather than the other way around. Religious faith, he argues, may be founded on a single profound, life-changing hallucination (though for many religious folk, there may be a whole series of them).
Here's how he set me thinking, though. He distinguishes between different forms of consciousness rather engagingly. For example, consciousness in sleep -- leading to dreaming -- is nothing like the sort of consciousness involved in hallucination.
What I don't quite 'get' is this: if hallucination is, to all intents and purposes, real to the person experiencing it, what is reality? If the brain perceives a large yellow man approaching, and the fellow hits you on the head, causing acute pain -- is this not pretty 'real'? Reality is only what we perceive. Hallucination is only realised as such (by and large) in retrospect, when the person experiencing the delusion realises, through force of logic, that it cannot have been true, or alternatively, if a second person with 'normal' brain function is present in the room and able to confirm that the yellow man is not actually there. Or not there to them. Oh dear. I was reminded, while reading this book, time and time again of Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper", and indeed she could have been another case study. Sensory deprivation - being shut up and not allowed access to normal stimulation - can lead to hallucination.
I like that the hallucinations are not necessarily visual. They can be aural, tactile or have the properties of smell. And of course one sits up smartly at parts of the book that tie in with personal experience. It has happened to me three or four times that I've woken at night smelling something burning so strongly that I've got up, wandered up and down the house looking for the cause (there has never been one). At one point I was slightly worried because I read somewhere that such phenomena can be associated with brain tumours. But the tumour didn't appear, and often years go past between the experiences. Once I woke in my parents' house (they were away) in absolute terror. I heard someone bang loudly and rattle the front door. Why? Who? Shaking, I crept downstairs. There was no-one there. It seems likely (after reading this book) that this was a case of a hallucination carried out of sleep into waking, much in the way one carries the emotion of a dream into waking life.
I have experienced 'holy' hallucinations too: a powerful and almost overwhelming sense of goodness. I don't talk about this much (Sacks says people don't) and I found I didn't mind it explained in terms of delusion. But that's because hallucinations are so intense that they ARE real to those people who have them. There are certain types of unreality I'd like to continue to have.
He doesn't deal with the interesting issue of group hallucination (i.e. several people seeing one 'ghost') except in passing, where he does bring in the delightful example of a whole French village who went dotty and had all sorts of strange experiences after the bread was contaminated with 'ergot', which effectively acts as a hallucinatory drug. (People on magic mushrooms, though, don't have group experiences, so far as I know. In fact, their mental experiences seem to isolate them in a way that alarms fellow experimenters.)
Towards the end, Sacks talks about the doppelganger, the sense of a second self -- perhaps a comfort, perhaps a threat -- which can become the "biological basis for religious passion and conviction, where the 'other', the 'presence', becomes the person of God." In fact, that's the last sentence of the book. He suggests that the "primal, animal sense of 'the other' . . may have evolved for the detection of threat". Indeed it might. But it might be a whole lot less explicable than that.
When I got to the end of the book, the sense I was left with -- yet again after reading Sacks -- was that of astonishment. The human brain -- the experiences we have of being alive -- are absolutely extraordinary. This book effectively discusses magical experiences. It doesn't explain them away so much as describe them in operation. Even tracking them to specific parts of the brain doesn't diminish the marvel that such things happen, and the even greater marvel of our consciousness.
I am a vivid dreamer, though I don't hallucinate much. (This book is not about dreams at all.) I have had experiences in my dreams that make me vividly glad to be alive, and some of those reminded me of some of the hallucinations Sacks describes. Not that long ago I found myself in an extraordinary country. I was very high up, on a flat grassy plain that ended like a shelf in a sheer drop, a steep cliff dropping for several miles below. It was dizzying and I had to lie down on the grass to be able to look over the edge. At the bottom there was a marvellous country, with waterfalls and mountains and forests and lakes and rivers. The colours were absolutely stunning and it was all incredibly detailed. The air was bright and clear and invigorating. I could see it much more clearly than I can see when I'm awake; it took my breath. I can't remember it properly now -- I can only remember the acuteness of my response to the scene. It was realler than real.
What amazing creatures we are that we have such things in our head! The Kingdom of Heaven is within us. Unfortunately, the Other Place seems to manifest in some cases too.
January 28, 2023
Did you ever hear someone speak your name or say a phrase when there is no one there to speak it? Or you see something out of the corner of your eye but there is nothing there? It has happened to all of us at one time or another. We usually pass it off and would never think about calling it an hallucination.
The word "hallucination" evokes madness, schizophrenia, or other mental aberrations. But as Dr. Sacks explains, that is not the case. Hallucination has a broader definition and may be caused by such things as physical illness,blindness, loss of hearing, hypothermia, lack of food, etc. The author shares the experiences of many of his patients and some are particularly frightening. Seeking help, these individuals discovered that they were indeed not insane, although many had to learn to live with and adapt their lifestyle to the continuing "visions" and "voices". This is a fascinating book and it does help to have some clinical background as the author does touch on medical issues and brain function. Recommended.
The word "hallucination" evokes madness, schizophrenia, or other mental aberrations. But as Dr. Sacks explains, that is not the case. Hallucination has a broader definition and may be caused by such things as physical illness,blindness, loss of hearing, hypothermia, lack of food, etc. The author shares the experiences of many of his patients and some are particularly frightening. Seeking help, these individuals discovered that they were indeed not insane, although many had to learn to live with and adapt their lifestyle to the continuing "visions" and "voices". This is a fascinating book and it does help to have some clinical background as the author does touch on medical issues and brain function. Recommended.
September 1, 2018
One sentence review: Sacks gives a survey of the neurology of hallucinations - visual, auditory, olfactory, and tactile - sharing his years of clinical experience, and many of his own experiences with hallucinatory states.
I've read several of Sacks' books, and this one (from 2012) may be my favorite of them all. All of his books are inherently interesting as he explores the human brain, but this one also had more structure than some of his earlier works.
It included many anecdotes like his other books about many (many) patients, but this one was grouped into different hallucinatory phenomena surrounding Charles Bonnet Syndrome, epilepsy, migraines, a lengthy and interesting peek into Sacks' own mind-altering drug experimentations, and several other hallucination-inducing / prone illnesses or states.
Have you ever experienced a hallucination? Sacks shares just how common hallucinations are, and he mentions several that I've experienced myself, specifically "grief" hallucinations, following the death of a loved one, and seeing/hearing/smelling/feeling them again after death. This occurred for me after both the death of my beloved dog, and several years later, after my dear cat passed away. I heard, saw, felt, and sensed them several times for weeks afterward.
He references several of his earlier works in this book, and it reminds me how much he published in his life.
I've read several of Sacks' books, and this one (from 2012) may be my favorite of them all. All of his books are inherently interesting as he explores the human brain, but this one also had more structure than some of his earlier works.
It included many anecdotes like his other books about many (many) patients, but this one was grouped into different hallucinatory phenomena surrounding Charles Bonnet Syndrome, epilepsy, migraines, a lengthy and interesting peek into Sacks' own mind-altering drug experimentations, and several other hallucination-inducing / prone illnesses or states.
Have you ever experienced a hallucination? Sacks shares just how common hallucinations are, and he mentions several that I've experienced myself, specifically "grief" hallucinations, following the death of a loved one, and seeing/hearing/smelling/feeling them again after death. This occurred for me after both the death of my beloved dog, and several years later, after my dear cat passed away. I heard, saw, felt, and sensed them several times for weeks afterward.
He references several of his earlier works in this book, and it reminds me how much he published in his life.
April 8, 2013
I have on my desk a drawing by Oliver Sacks of two octopi. He made it in my kitchen in the mid-90s in Germany to prevail in a discussion with my then ten-year-old son about the disposition of optical nerves in octopi. This tells you a lot about Oliver Sacks and Nick. I would suppose Sacks was right, but Nick wasn't having it. He'd looked into the question and Nick could see Oliver, as he called him, was all wrong, or at least part of him was wrong. Neither would give in. They stayed at it all through the breakfast my wife served them, Oliver being in the house because my wife had arranged for Oliver to have his morning swim, about which he was fanatical.
Now…to Oliver's latest book, Hallucinations. It's not the best book as a book because it is a kind of compendium. As such, it is doesn't present marvelous mysteries that are solved or a grand story that is revealed. What it does it anatomize the species of hallucinations we human beings experience: we hallucinate when we suffer Charles Bonnet Syndrome, when we are in drug withdrawal, when we are about to die, when we have lost a limb, when we have suffered post-traumatic stress disorder, when we have consumed hallucinogenic drugs, and when we have conditioned ourselves to be susceptible to visions, voices, and the presence of others, sometimes an "other" self, who is passive or relatively autonomous. Oh, I forgot epilepsy. Can't do that.
But Hallucinations is an important book because it sysnthesizes all these ways in which we experience that which does not occur because of the way parts of our brain interact. Let me offend some of you: there is no God, there are no ghosts, there is no phantom limb, there are no witches, no patterns in gold and blue on the surface of your mind…or actual voices…or actual fingers on your back…or most of what we categorize as religion, magic, the supernatural, or the inexplicable.
Time and again Sacks points to a study that demonstrates these phenomena are brain-based. They are not "imagination," which is voluntary; they are involuntary. They "happen," but they are as remote from reality as the eyes are from sight. Didn't you know that the eyes don't see? The brain does.
I had hoped Sacks would find a direct link between the artistic imagination and the "other world." Nope. I sit here at this desk every day imagining things without really knowing how as I write fiction, but I am not recording, if I may put this awkwardly, experienced experience.
William Blake apparently did experience such experience and write it down, but most folks who do are not artists, they are normal people….lots of normal people. If you add up all the populations Sacks cites as susceptible to hallucinations, you will find yourself included. At some point you will have seen or heard or felt something outside yourself that had no basis in fact, only in your brain. You will have had an out of body experience, or you will have heard a voice, or seen a loved one, long dead, in the garden. Sacks goes into all this: it's not a matter of will or reality, it's a matter of how your brain expresses enigmas and offers you modes of intepretation.
I can tell you, with relative surety, that neither Nick nor Sacks believes in the epiphenomenonal sparks of fiery vision cast off by the common brain. There is no logical reason not to believe God is behind all this. Really, He could have been, He may have been. But more likely we are experiencing the peculiarities of brain-based phenomena.
If you deprive someone of sleep, of physical contact with the world, of someone to talk to, of sight, or many other common things…that someone is likely to hallucinate. This is why, in my opinion, torture and extreme stress are dubious interrogation techniques. You can drive someone "crazy" but what he tells you in that state won't stand up in court...or shouldn't.
I don't want to underplay the power of hallucinations. They are not to be lightly taken. I have a friend who served in combat in Vietnam. From 1968 to today, 2013, he has not slept more than twenty or thirty minutes without being jolted awake by what happened to him almost fifty years ago. Think about that.
Last week President Obama announced a $100 million initiative to map the brain, or some such thing. Not enough money. Really. Not nearly enough. The virtue of Sacks' book is that it points out the multiple ways that the brain duplicates and disdorts reality. Because of the brain, I might see witches, angels, demons, and octopi eyes some day.
This is worth considering…and reading.
For more of my comments on contemporary thought and writing, see Tuppence Reviews(Kindle).
September 19, 2013
Updated: I accidentally deleted this review, so re-posting. I must've been Hallucinating.
Herm, well. Disappointing. It was just so...clinical. I guess, what did I expect? Apparently, neuroscientists have figured out that hallucinations are triggered by parts of the brain being over or under stimulated. Thanks for that.
The most interesting tidbit to me within the book is that there is a scientist named Dominic ffytche (yes, lower case). It kind of freaked me out every time I read his name. Dominic ffytche. How is it possible someone could have a last name that isn't capitalized? And a double f? What next, someone with the same first and middle name?
Hallucinations was rather a survey of many of the different medical conditions that can cause hallucinations and the types of hallucinations. With one exception, the chapter about Sacks's experimentation with drugs. It seemed somewhat out of place with all the rest of the content, but I appreciated his generally positive attitude about psychedelics. I found the beginning of that chapter rather insightful:
He goes on to reference William James's book The Varieties of Religious Experience and his transcendent experiences with nitrous oxide and then follows that with:
Another element of this book that was of particular interest to me was the brief discussion of mass hallucinations. In reflecting on both the "...demonic possessions that swept over the French village of Loudun in 1634," and the Salem witch trials, Sacks writes about how, "A deeply superstitious and delusional atmosphere can also foster hallucinations arising from extreme emotional states, and these can effect entire communities." When religion takes on a fanatical character, it can drive groups to such extreme fear and stress that they can be lead to experiences hallucinations that pass like a communicable disease through the power of suggestion.
In a similar vein, he makes frequent references to how common it is for various mild hallucinations to occur for individuals who are not afflicted with any particular extreme conditions. Sleep deprivation, concussions, partial blindness, and many other moderate conditions can trigger a variety of visual and auditory hallucinations and "feelings" such as paranoia, calm, someone being in the room with you whom you can't see, and so on. He goes on to note how individuals who "see God" or "ghosts" are simply experiencing undiagnosed conditions that trigger hallucinations.
In total, Hallucinations will appeal to those who enjoy reading about medical science, and it had its moments, but overall, I felt it was too dry.
Herm, well. Disappointing. It was just so...clinical. I guess, what did I expect? Apparently, neuroscientists have figured out that hallucinations are triggered by parts of the brain being over or under stimulated. Thanks for that.
The most interesting tidbit to me within the book is that there is a scientist named Dominic ffytche (yes, lower case). It kind of freaked me out every time I read his name. Dominic ffytche. How is it possible someone could have a last name that isn't capitalized? And a double f? What next, someone with the same first and middle name?
Hallucinations was rather a survey of many of the different medical conditions that can cause hallucinations and the types of hallucinations. With one exception, the chapter about Sacks's experimentation with drugs. It seemed somewhat out of place with all the rest of the content, but I appreciated his generally positive attitude about psychedelics. I found the beginning of that chapter rather insightful:
Humans share much with other animals—the basic needs of food and drink or sleep, for example—but there are additional mental and emotional needs and desires which are perhaps unique to us. To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation; we need to see overall patterns in our lives. We need hope, the sense of a future. And we need freedom (or at least the illusion of freedom) to get beyond ourselves, whether with telescopes and microscopes and our ever-burgeoning technology or in states of mind which allow us to travel to other worlds, to transcend our immediate surroundings. We need detachment of this sort as much as we need engagement in our lives.
We may search, too, for a relaxing of inhibitions that makes it easier to bond with one another, or for transports that make our consciousness of time and mortality easier to bear. We seek a holiday from our inner and outer restrictions, a more intense sense of the here and now, the beauty and value of the world we live in.
He goes on to reference William James's book The Varieties of Religious Experience and his transcendent experiences with nitrous oxide and then follows that with:
Many of us find the reconciliation that James speaks of and even Wordsworthian "intimations of immortality" in nature, art, creative thinking or religion, some people can reach transcendent states through meditation or similar trance-inducing techniques or through prayer and spiritual exercises. But drugs offer a short cut, they promise transcendence on demand. These shortcuts are possible because certain chemicals can directly stimulate many complex brain functions.Although I believe he underestimates how our "needs" are generated by culture (c.f. The Society of the Spectacle I agree that there seems to be a natural desire to transcend and achieve a state of universal love, oneness or harmony with all things, but that desire is warped, moderated, stunted, rejected, or resisted by many people. Every mind is rather unique of course and will have varying reactions to such an abstract quality. When you reflect on those who are cruel and violent, it's easy to believe that such a desire is merely an affection of the privileged. But the native people who partake of Ayahuasca to commune with forest spirits give validity to the general sentiment. And it's not a stretch to suppose that cruel and violent people are frequently raised in a state of ignorance and blindness and their openness to the possibilities of life is stunted. And I do believe that my psychedelic experiences led me to "open my mind" and throw off certain mental conventions. To discover a greater level of creativity within myself. And they have perhaps helped lead me eventually to Zen Buddhism and meditation practice as well. I think there is a commonality between the psychedelic experience of the oneness and nothingness of all things and the Zen experience of oneness and nothingness.
Every culture has found chemical means of transcendence and at some point the use of such intoxicants becomes institutionalized at a magical or sacramental level, the sacramental use of psychoactive plant substances has a long history and continues to the present day in various shamanic and religious rites around the world.
Another element of this book that was of particular interest to me was the brief discussion of mass hallucinations. In reflecting on both the "...demonic possessions that swept over the French village of Loudun in 1634," and the Salem witch trials, Sacks writes about how, "A deeply superstitious and delusional atmosphere can also foster hallucinations arising from extreme emotional states, and these can effect entire communities." When religion takes on a fanatical character, it can drive groups to such extreme fear and stress that they can be lead to experiences hallucinations that pass like a communicable disease through the power of suggestion.
In a similar vein, he makes frequent references to how common it is for various mild hallucinations to occur for individuals who are not afflicted with any particular extreme conditions. Sleep deprivation, concussions, partial blindness, and many other moderate conditions can trigger a variety of visual and auditory hallucinations and "feelings" such as paranoia, calm, someone being in the room with you whom you can't see, and so on. He goes on to note how individuals who "see God" or "ghosts" are simply experiencing undiagnosed conditions that trigger hallucinations.
In total, Hallucinations will appeal to those who enjoy reading about medical science, and it had its moments, but overall, I felt it was too dry.
May 11, 2018
"An hallucination is a strictly sensational form of consciousness, as good and true a sensation as if there were a real object there. The object happens to be not there, that is all."
- Wiliam James
People hallucinate for a lot of different reasons, and neurologist Oliver Sacks explores a number of them in this book. Hallucinations can signify a neurological condition (Parkinson's, migraine, epilepsy, narcolepsy), fill an absence (blindness, deafness, intentional sensory deprivation), or be brought on by other experiences (fever, drug use, psychological trauma). Sacks covers each of these with his characteristic compassion and humor.
The hallmarks of a Sacks book are all here, from the fascinating case studies to the rambling footnotes; from the incisive personal anecdotes to the extraordinary glimpses into the workings of our own cerebral hardware.
While this book isn't as thoroughly fascinating as The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat or Musicophilia, it's worth a read if only for the chapter on drug use. After discussing historical references to altered states and delving a bit into the mechanics of a drug trip, Sacks launches into stories about his own experiences in this vein. They're bizarre and darkly hilarious.
For instance, he recounts once deliberately taking a cocktail of amphetamines, LSD, and cannabis for the express purpose of experiencing the color indigo (for reasons that probably made sense in the 60's). "About twenty minutes after taking this, I faced a white wall and exclaimed, 'I want to see indigo now -- now!'" And sure enough indigo appears, there on the wall.
Fully enraptured, he proceeds to spend the next several months trying to find the color again, but he only catches a glimpse of it once, shining through some ancient Egyptian jewelry in a museum. And never again after that.
In another incident, Sacks shoots himself up with multiple vials of morphine and ends up staring at a painting of Napoleon for what felt like a few minutes, only to turn to the clock and realize it had been twelve hours.
Finally, at one point while out of his mind on hallucinogenic morning glory seeds, he accuses a visiting psychoanalyst friend of being a decoy, a realistic replica of herself. Once he's sobered up, she tells him (in true shrink fashion) that his delusion had been "a complex form of defense, a dissociation which could only be called psychotic." Sacks disagrees, and instead "maintained that my seeing her as a duplicate or impostor was neurological in origin, a disconnection between perception and feelings." The friend wins the argument by pointing out that "whatever view was correct, taking mind-altering drugs every weekend, alone, and in high doses, surely testified to some intense inner needs or conflicts, and that I should explore these with a therapist."
TOUCHÉ.
While autobiographical anecdotes are common in Sacks's books, I'd never pictured him as a young acid head with a singularly methodical, scientific approach to tripping balls. It's oddly endearing. In any case, it is while high on amphetamines that he decides to write neurological literature in the first place, and so here we are.
The rest of the book is somewhat hit-or-miss, some chapters more interesting than others, but overall it's an interesting look at some of the varieties of hallucinations, their neurological foundations and their subjective manifestations - from euphoric to terrifying, from sacred to meaningless.
(On a personal note, the only significant hallucination I remember experiencing was when I was about six or eight years old. I had a giant Raggedy Ann doll that was as tall as I was, and she sat on top of a bookshelf about eye level across the room from my top-bunk bed. One night, while trying to get to sleep, I remember looking over at her and she was sitting there swinging her legs - slowly, deliberately, one after the other, all the way up and all the way down. With her frozen cloth grin gazing at me out of the gloom, it was the most unsettling, terrifying thing I have ever seen.
Even as young as I was, some part of me knew it wasn't real, but I still threw that fucking doll into the back of the closet the next morning. Just thinking of it still freaks me out.)
(Original review date: 24 February 2014)
- Wiliam James
People hallucinate for a lot of different reasons, and neurologist Oliver Sacks explores a number of them in this book. Hallucinations can signify a neurological condition (Parkinson's, migraine, epilepsy, narcolepsy), fill an absence (blindness, deafness, intentional sensory deprivation), or be brought on by other experiences (fever, drug use, psychological trauma). Sacks covers each of these with his characteristic compassion and humor.
The hallmarks of a Sacks book are all here, from the fascinating case studies to the rambling footnotes; from the incisive personal anecdotes to the extraordinary glimpses into the workings of our own cerebral hardware.
While this book isn't as thoroughly fascinating as The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat or Musicophilia, it's worth a read if only for the chapter on drug use. After discussing historical references to altered states and delving a bit into the mechanics of a drug trip, Sacks launches into stories about his own experiences in this vein. They're bizarre and darkly hilarious.
For instance, he recounts once deliberately taking a cocktail of amphetamines, LSD, and cannabis for the express purpose of experiencing the color indigo (for reasons that probably made sense in the 60's). "About twenty minutes after taking this, I faced a white wall and exclaimed, 'I want to see indigo now -- now!'" And sure enough indigo appears, there on the wall.
Fully enraptured, he proceeds to spend the next several months trying to find the color again, but he only catches a glimpse of it once, shining through some ancient Egyptian jewelry in a museum. And never again after that.
In another incident, Sacks shoots himself up with multiple vials of morphine and ends up staring at a painting of Napoleon for what felt like a few minutes, only to turn to the clock and realize it had been twelve hours.
Finally, at one point while out of his mind on hallucinogenic morning glory seeds, he accuses a visiting psychoanalyst friend of being a decoy, a realistic replica of herself. Once he's sobered up, she tells him (in true shrink fashion) that his delusion had been "a complex form of defense, a dissociation which could only be called psychotic." Sacks disagrees, and instead "maintained that my seeing her as a duplicate or impostor was neurological in origin, a disconnection between perception and feelings." The friend wins the argument by pointing out that "whatever view was correct, taking mind-altering drugs every weekend, alone, and in high doses, surely testified to some intense inner needs or conflicts, and that I should explore these with a therapist."
TOUCHÉ.
While autobiographical anecdotes are common in Sacks's books, I'd never pictured him as a young acid head with a singularly methodical, scientific approach to tripping balls. It's oddly endearing. In any case, it is while high on amphetamines that he decides to write neurological literature in the first place, and so here we are.
The rest of the book is somewhat hit-or-miss, some chapters more interesting than others, but overall it's an interesting look at some of the varieties of hallucinations, their neurological foundations and their subjective manifestations - from euphoric to terrifying, from sacred to meaningless.
(On a personal note, the only significant hallucination I remember experiencing was when I was about six or eight years old. I had a giant Raggedy Ann doll that was as tall as I was, and she sat on top of a bookshelf about eye level across the room from my top-bunk bed. One night, while trying to get to sleep, I remember looking over at her and she was sitting there swinging her legs - slowly, deliberately, one after the other, all the way up and all the way down. With her frozen cloth grin gazing at me out of the gloom, it was the most unsettling, terrifying thing I have ever seen.
Even as young as I was, some part of me knew it wasn't real, but I still threw that fucking doll into the back of the closet the next morning. Just thinking of it still freaks me out.)
(Original review date: 24 February 2014)
May 4, 2016
I prefer it when Dr Sacks focuses more closely on one or three people and tells their stories in depth, but this is a fine and entertaining collection of anecdotes in a kind of catalogue of non-schizophrenic hallucinogenic experiences, including his own sometimes drug-induced experiences in the sixties.
The feeling you get as you read this book is that the brain is not a very precise instrument for perception, and that auditory, visual and other sensory hallucinations are less commonly to be associated with the "insane" than those who do not have psychiatric diagnoses. How can you get them? If you go blind or deaf, 20-30 % chance you will have them; grief; drugs (many artists did and do take drugs to find creative inspiration); head trauma and other accidents, sensory deprivation (some surrealists deliberately deprived themselves of food, water, sleep so they would hallucinate..), epilepsy (once considered a 'sacred" disease), migraines, fever, on the edge of sleep or waking. . .
Seeing ghosts or people you have loved intensely after they have died he sees as common, but he sees these things as hallucinations and not psychic phenomena (though the line seems pretty thin there). I have a son and sister and other family members who claim (and I believe have) psychic "powers," and another son (now 13) who has had some psychotic episodes, and I am interested in the relationship between insight, vision, and madness. This book touches on these issues for me, and I'll keep reading, but this was, as always for me with Dr. Sacks, an enlightening and entertaining collection of stories that opened up my perspective on the bizarre and unpredictable and amazing human brain.
The feeling you get as you read this book is that the brain is not a very precise instrument for perception, and that auditory, visual and other sensory hallucinations are less commonly to be associated with the "insane" than those who do not have psychiatric diagnoses. How can you get them? If you go blind or deaf, 20-30 % chance you will have them; grief; drugs (many artists did and do take drugs to find creative inspiration); head trauma and other accidents, sensory deprivation (some surrealists deliberately deprived themselves of food, water, sleep so they would hallucinate..), epilepsy (once considered a 'sacred" disease), migraines, fever, on the edge of sleep or waking. . .
Seeing ghosts or people you have loved intensely after they have died he sees as common, but he sees these things as hallucinations and not psychic phenomena (though the line seems pretty thin there). I have a son and sister and other family members who claim (and I believe have) psychic "powers," and another son (now 13) who has had some psychotic episodes, and I am interested in the relationship between insight, vision, and madness. This book touches on these issues for me, and I'll keep reading, but this was, as always for me with Dr. Sacks, an enlightening and entertaining collection of stories that opened up my perspective on the bizarre and unpredictable and amazing human brain.
March 27, 2013
This book is a comprehensive review of all types of hallucinations. It is packed with case histories of people with a relatively common condition called the Charles Bonnet Syndrome, as well as hallucinations induced by Parkinson's, migraines, deliriums, narcolepsy, sensory deprivation, and hauntings. The multitude of descriptions of hallucinations gives the reader the idea that hallucinations are not all that rare--and this might be true. It is clear that hallucinations are under-reported, because of some stigmas attached to them.
Where the book is lacking, is a thorough analysis of the causes of most of these hallucinations. Perhaps they are not understood--but only a limited amount of research is described here. Even negative results of studies would be of some interest. Nevertheless, the book is certainly entertaining, if only from the sheer variety of hallucinations.
Where the book is lacking, is a thorough analysis of the causes of most of these hallucinations. Perhaps they are not understood--but only a limited amount of research is described here. Even negative results of studies would be of some interest. Nevertheless, the book is certainly entertaining, if only from the sheer variety of hallucinations.
October 27, 2023
I was driving and listening to an audiobook as usual on my way to work and then suddenly I remembered Sacks other book that I read which is The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. I remember enjoying that one and at that moment I decided to listen to the audiobook of Hallucinations.
I checked my review for the first book after finishing this one and I think I forgot that I had a problem with the book which is its heavy medical jargon and that it reads like a textbook more than a non-fiction book to have some fun with. Again, Hallucinations was an interesting read with many weird kinds of hallucinations whether they relate to vision, hearing, smell, drugs, doppelgangers and out of body experiences.
The book however doesn't provide much that I did not know from my neurology and psychiatry courses. In fact, it felt like listening to those lectures again which is not the most interesting thing when you are driving to work. So, partially I am to blame for choosing the not perfect formula for consuming this book, but I think it still defeats the purpose as I usually listen to non-fiction books with no problems.
I checked my review for the first book after finishing this one and I think I forgot that I had a problem with the book which is its heavy medical jargon and that it reads like a textbook more than a non-fiction book to have some fun with. Again, Hallucinations was an interesting read with many weird kinds of hallucinations whether they relate to vision, hearing, smell, drugs, doppelgangers and out of body experiences.
The book however doesn't provide much that I did not know from my neurology and psychiatry courses. In fact, it felt like listening to those lectures again which is not the most interesting thing when you are driving to work. So, partially I am to blame for choosing the not perfect formula for consuming this book, but I think it still defeats the purpose as I usually listen to non-fiction books with no problems.
February 26, 2017
I love Oliver Sacks (I know I am not alone in his sentiment). He represents to me the coming together of western medicine and compassion, humane curiosity, intelligence, insight (things I don't tend to associate with western allopathic medicine). He has become such a beloved cultural and medical figure and it is only now that I am listening to his memoir "On The Move" that I understand how hard he worked and the enormity of the challenges and setbacks he faced before he became a public figure.
Over the years I've read many of his anthologized essays but it is only in the last few months I've been reading his books (listening to is more accurate).
Before starting "On The Move" a few days ago (which I am about half-way through), I listened to "Hallucinations" and "The Mind's Eye", alternating between the two, finishing them both around the same time. I also own "Hallucinations", which makes it a bit easier to write a review of it (harder when I don't have the text in front of me.)
The book starts out with a short reflection on the word hallucination--its definition of and evolution.
"When the word 'hallucination' first came into use in the early sixteenth century, it denoted only 'a wandering mind.' It was not until the 1830s that Jean-Etienne Esquirol, a French psychiatrist, gave the term its present meaning--prior to that, what we now call hallucinations were referred to simply as 'apparitions.' Precise definitions of the word 'hallucination' still vary considerably, chiefly because it is not always easy to discern where the boundary lies between hallucination, misperception, and illusion. But generally, hallucinations are defined as percepts arising in the absence of any external reality--seeing things or hearing things that are not there."
Not to mention smelling and tasting and touching things that are not there...I hadn't thought before reading this book that there were so many kinds of hallucination, nor had I thought about the fascinating and unclear lines between the perception of what exists on a more collective sphere and perception of what only exists for a party of one.
The first time I recall hearing people talk of hallucinations is when my best childhood friend got chicken pox and had a high fever and hallucinations. I was likely somewhere between the age of 7 and 10. His hallucinations were spoken of with real reverence. It was a big deal. Enough so that I remember it. But I hadn't thought about it in years until reading about a similar experience in this book. In fact, if I remember correctly, Sacks himself had chicken pox in adulthood (from treating a patient with shingles) and came down with a fever and had hallucinations. (Though I believe it's in "On the Move" that he writes about his own experience of chicken pox. He does describe a chicken pox related delerium in this book, but it's not his own.)
Many of Sacks's books are more focused on 'case studies' or in-depth explorations of the experiences of specific patients. There is still some of the intimacy of the 'case-study' in here, but it is less focused on specific 'case-studies' and more focused on describing many types of hallucinations. Those from different illnesses and injuries, from drugs, from loss and trauma. From migraines. Epilepsy. Medications and supplements gone awry.
In addition to describing various forms of hallucinations and their causes, he considers the changing social and psychiatric/neurological understandings of hallucinations and the influence of cultural and psychological states on the experience and intensity of hallucination.
As a person with an illness that is known for vivid, intensely sensory dreams and nightmares as well as hypnogogic and hypnopompic incidents (I won't go so far as to say hallucinations, though that may be the case for some), it was fascinating to read about hypnogogic and hypnopompic hallucinations in this book. (In fact, since I've been ill to the degree that I am [its possible I've had a milder version of the illness for well over a decade] I have recurring, though usually no more than once every few months, hypnogogic sound hallucination. I hear a very loud explosion as I am starting to fall asleep. It sounds like gun-fire or cannon-fire. At first it was terrifying. With a bit of research I discovered it's not harmful aside from the anxiety it can cause. But the name is worrisome. It's called exploding head syndrome.)
I find reading Sacks's work adds richness to my experience of being a human animal. It's wonderful to think about the wildness and complexity of our systems of perception, and the uniqueness and resilience of Sacks himself and the people he comes into contact with.
Also this book puts some illness/hallucination inspired novels into context that I now want to read or re-read. (By Dostoyevsky and Waugh, for example).
I found this article with a video of Sacks talking about hallucinations. Very interesting and enjoyable and a little taste of what is in this book.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/ar...
Over the years I've read many of his anthologized essays but it is only in the last few months I've been reading his books (listening to is more accurate).
Before starting "On The Move" a few days ago (which I am about half-way through), I listened to "Hallucinations" and "The Mind's Eye", alternating between the two, finishing them both around the same time. I also own "Hallucinations", which makes it a bit easier to write a review of it (harder when I don't have the text in front of me.)
The book starts out with a short reflection on the word hallucination--its definition of and evolution.
"When the word 'hallucination' first came into use in the early sixteenth century, it denoted only 'a wandering mind.' It was not until the 1830s that Jean-Etienne Esquirol, a French psychiatrist, gave the term its present meaning--prior to that, what we now call hallucinations were referred to simply as 'apparitions.' Precise definitions of the word 'hallucination' still vary considerably, chiefly because it is not always easy to discern where the boundary lies between hallucination, misperception, and illusion. But generally, hallucinations are defined as percepts arising in the absence of any external reality--seeing things or hearing things that are not there."
Not to mention smelling and tasting and touching things that are not there...I hadn't thought before reading this book that there were so many kinds of hallucination, nor had I thought about the fascinating and unclear lines between the perception of what exists on a more collective sphere and perception of what only exists for a party of one.
The first time I recall hearing people talk of hallucinations is when my best childhood friend got chicken pox and had a high fever and hallucinations. I was likely somewhere between the age of 7 and 10. His hallucinations were spoken of with real reverence. It was a big deal. Enough so that I remember it. But I hadn't thought about it in years until reading about a similar experience in this book. In fact, if I remember correctly, Sacks himself had chicken pox in adulthood (from treating a patient with shingles) and came down with a fever and had hallucinations. (Though I believe it's in "On the Move" that he writes about his own experience of chicken pox. He does describe a chicken pox related delerium in this book, but it's not his own.)
Many of Sacks's books are more focused on 'case studies' or in-depth explorations of the experiences of specific patients. There is still some of the intimacy of the 'case-study' in here, but it is less focused on specific 'case-studies' and more focused on describing many types of hallucinations. Those from different illnesses and injuries, from drugs, from loss and trauma. From migraines. Epilepsy. Medications and supplements gone awry.
In addition to describing various forms of hallucinations and their causes, he considers the changing social and psychiatric/neurological understandings of hallucinations and the influence of cultural and psychological states on the experience and intensity of hallucination.
As a person with an illness that is known for vivid, intensely sensory dreams and nightmares as well as hypnogogic and hypnopompic incidents (I won't go so far as to say hallucinations, though that may be the case for some), it was fascinating to read about hypnogogic and hypnopompic hallucinations in this book. (In fact, since I've been ill to the degree that I am [its possible I've had a milder version of the illness for well over a decade] I have recurring, though usually no more than once every few months, hypnogogic sound hallucination. I hear a very loud explosion as I am starting to fall asleep. It sounds like gun-fire or cannon-fire. At first it was terrifying. With a bit of research I discovered it's not harmful aside from the anxiety it can cause. But the name is worrisome. It's called exploding head syndrome.)
I find reading Sacks's work adds richness to my experience of being a human animal. It's wonderful to think about the wildness and complexity of our systems of perception, and the uniqueness and resilience of Sacks himself and the people he comes into contact with.
Also this book puts some illness/hallucination inspired novels into context that I now want to read or re-read. (By Dostoyevsky and Waugh, for example).
I found this article with a video of Sacks talking about hallucinations. Very interesting and enjoyable and a little taste of what is in this book.
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/ar...
August 12, 2014
Sadly, I actually didn't enjoy this book very much. I love Oliver Sacks, and have read everything that he has ever written. Seeing Voices is one of my favorite books. However, his last three books -- Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain, The Mind's Eye and now Hallucinations -- I have not enjoyed as much.
This book seemed like a list of descriptions of case studies illustrating the varying causes of hallucinations. A few of the descriptions were quite interesting, notably those of sleep paralysis and narcolepsy. However, I need some kind of overarching reason for reading the descriptions, whether that be implications for the medical field, implications for the functioning of the healthy human brain, something. A theme tying the different descriptions together. This book was lacking that.
Actually, more than that, what I liked about The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat & Other Clinical Tales and An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales is that they were case-study-by-case-study romps through the amazing things our mind can do. Yes, they were voyeuristic, but they felt more comfortable (and interesting) to me because each one was different and succinct, and they were unified by the simple theme of "look at the amazing things people's brains do! would you ever have thought?"
The theme of this book, on the other hand, was essentially "here are some things people hallucinate." And while I'm very interested in *why* people hallucinate - the fact that people hallucinate with CBS (Charles Bonnet Syndrome) or because of the above-mentioned sleep paralysis is fascinating. However, I don't need a detailed description of exactly what they hallucinate, and Sacks includes many lengthy descriptions taken from either his own interviews or other people's articles of the content of people's hallucinations, and while I read those (at least for the first 50% of the book -- I confess I may have skimmed the later long quoted bits), they really were not very interesting to me.
So, I'm very sad to say that this book was 2.5 stars for me. I'm rounding it up to three, because if it were by any other author I think I would have judged it less harshly, but I have such high expectations of Sacks! I'm going to go back and reread some of his classic works.
This book seemed like a list of descriptions of case studies illustrating the varying causes of hallucinations. A few of the descriptions were quite interesting, notably those of sleep paralysis and narcolepsy. However, I need some kind of overarching reason for reading the descriptions, whether that be implications for the medical field, implications for the functioning of the healthy human brain, something. A theme tying the different descriptions together. This book was lacking that.
Actually, more than that, what I liked about The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat & Other Clinical Tales and An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales is that they were case-study-by-case-study romps through the amazing things our mind can do. Yes, they were voyeuristic, but they felt more comfortable (and interesting) to me because each one was different and succinct, and they were unified by the simple theme of "look at the amazing things people's brains do! would you ever have thought?"
The theme of this book, on the other hand, was essentially "here are some things people hallucinate." And while I'm very interested in *why* people hallucinate - the fact that people hallucinate with CBS (Charles Bonnet Syndrome) or because of the above-mentioned sleep paralysis is fascinating. However, I don't need a detailed description of exactly what they hallucinate, and Sacks includes many lengthy descriptions taken from either his own interviews or other people's articles of the content of people's hallucinations, and while I read those (at least for the first 50% of the book -- I confess I may have skimmed the later long quoted bits), they really were not very interesting to me.
So, I'm very sad to say that this book was 2.5 stars for me. I'm rounding it up to three, because if it were by any other author I think I would have judged it less harshly, but I have such high expectations of Sacks! I'm going to go back and reread some of his classic works.
April 14, 2019
This book was an absolutely incredible read! Oliver Sacks has quickly become one of my favorite science literature authors. Neuroscience can be a really difficult and a dry subject to read about. But not this book. Oliver Sacks explores hallucinations in all its forms, those mediated by - vision degeneration, neurodegenerative disorders, drugs, genetic/birth defects in brain, and trauma. He talks of his personal experiments with drugs to experience and document his hallucinations; which is frankly terrifying.
The book is rife with real examples of patients talking about their experiences. Ever wonder if that ghost you thought you saw was real or just a neural quirk? Or that someone is present but just outside the periphery of your vision, but you turn around, and no one is there? A dream that inspires religious enlightenment? You would be glad to know you are not alone in this.
I give this book a 4.5/5. I hold back that 0.5, because I really wished that the book discussed the case examples. I was left feeling wanting to know more about their diagnosis and treatments.
The book is rife with real examples of patients talking about their experiences. Ever wonder if that ghost you thought you saw was real or just a neural quirk? Or that someone is present but just outside the periphery of your vision, but you turn around, and no one is there? A dream that inspires religious enlightenment? You would be glad to know you are not alone in this.
I give this book a 4.5/5. I hold back that 0.5, because I really wished that the book discussed the case examples. I was left feeling wanting to know more about their diagnosis and treatments.
August 3, 2016
Okay, first and foremost I need to acknowledge that I can understand why not everyone would love this book. It’s not an Everyone Book, but it’s totally an Annie book.
Now, look. If there’s a cause of hallucination, it’s happened to me. Let me explain.
1) I have temporal lobe epilepsy, and have hallucinated mildly during auras prior to seizures.
2) I have hallucinated as a reaction to delirium (bad reaction to prescription drug).
3) I have hallucinated as a result of serious sleep deprivation.
4) Like most people apparently, I’ve occasionally experienced hypnogogic hallucinations (had while falling asleep).
5) I have sleep paralysis and, connected with that, hypnopompic hallucinations upon waking up. Frequently. (I wasn’t even aware of the word hypnopompic prior to this book, so it’s interesting to put a name to it.) It was surprising how similar my hallucinations were to those of some of Sacks’ patients! I’ve woken up to seeing corpses on the floor, to hearing my old apartment neighbor banging the wall and screaming “You fucking whore!” (he was an eccentric man who was never anything but polite to my face, so I’m fairly certain this was a hallucination though I suppose I can’t confirm), to having upsetting conversations and vicious arguments via text with loved ones that never happened, to seeing angels of death coming to collect me, maliciously laughing goblin faces, police banging on my door demanding to be let in, and many more.
6) Finally, shall we say… I’ve hallucinated voluntarily.
So I’ve had a lot of personal experience with hallucinations, and I’m quite sure I will hallucinate again (in fact, I intend to guarantee it). If that’s not true of you, I can see why this book might hold less interest (indeed, the bits I didn’t have experience in- like phantom limbs- I found a bit plodding). As it was, I found it endlessly fascinating, clear, and a wealth of memorable facts (not to mention sparking dozens of Google searches). 10/10 would recommend to fellow hallucinatees.
Now, look. If there’s a cause of hallucination, it’s happened to me. Let me explain.
1) I have temporal lobe epilepsy, and have hallucinated mildly during auras prior to seizures.
2) I have hallucinated as a reaction to delirium (bad reaction to prescription drug).
3) I have hallucinated as a result of serious sleep deprivation.
4) Like most people apparently, I’ve occasionally experienced hypnogogic hallucinations (had while falling asleep).
5) I have sleep paralysis and, connected with that, hypnopompic hallucinations upon waking up. Frequently. (I wasn’t even aware of the word hypnopompic prior to this book, so it’s interesting to put a name to it.) It was surprising how similar my hallucinations were to those of some of Sacks’ patients! I’ve woken up to seeing corpses on the floor, to hearing my old apartment neighbor banging the wall and screaming “You fucking whore!” (he was an eccentric man who was never anything but polite to my face, so I’m fairly certain this was a hallucination though I suppose I can’t confirm), to having upsetting conversations and vicious arguments via text with loved ones that never happened, to seeing angels of death coming to collect me, maliciously laughing goblin faces, police banging on my door demanding to be let in, and many more.
6) Finally, shall we say… I’ve hallucinated voluntarily.
So I’ve had a lot of personal experience with hallucinations, and I’m quite sure I will hallucinate again (in fact, I intend to guarantee it). If that’s not true of you, I can see why this book might hold less interest (indeed, the bits I didn’t have experience in- like phantom limbs- I found a bit plodding). As it was, I found it endlessly fascinating, clear, and a wealth of memorable facts (not to mention sparking dozens of Google searches). 10/10 would recommend to fellow hallucinatees.
December 17, 2012
It's not you, it's me. Once I got halfway through the book, it was obvious that I was not as interested in the subject matter as that pretty cover had me believing. Additionally, this volume seemed to be quite heavy on the "what" and rather light on the "why."
August 13, 2023
کتاب توهمات اثر الیور ساکس ترجمه عهدیه عبادی و از نشر خوب سایلاو
یه کتاب میان رشته ای در مورد مغز و علوم اعصاب و بررسی انواع مختلف توهمات که شخصا چیزای زیادی ازش یاد گرفتم و چون متن سخت خوانی هم نداره به راحتی میشه کتاب رو فهمید.
سندرم شارل بونه
بوهای توهم آمیز
میگرن های دیداری
در آستانه خواب
حمله خواب و بختک
و اندام های خیالی
فقط چندتا از فصل های این کتاب رو تشکیل میدن
با توجه به اینکه کتاب مثال های زیادی در هر بخش میزنه یکم برای من حس تکراری پیدا کرد ولی واقعا کتاب خوبی بود و به هیچ پیش نیازی هم احتیاج نیست و همه میتونن این کتاب رو بخونن.
یه کتاب میان رشته ای در مورد مغز و علوم اعصاب و بررسی انواع مختلف توهمات که شخصا چیزای زیادی ازش یاد گرفتم و چون متن سخت خوانی هم نداره به راحتی میشه کتاب رو فهمید.
سندرم شارل بونه
بوهای توهم آمیز
میگرن های دیداری
در آستانه خواب
حمله خواب و بختک
و اندام های خیالی
فقط چندتا از فصل های این کتاب رو تشکیل میدن
با توجه به اینکه کتاب مثال های زیادی در هر بخش میزنه یکم برای من حس تکراری پیدا کرد ولی واقعا کتاب خوبی بود و به هیچ پیش نیازی هم احتیاج نیست و همه میتونن این کتاب رو بخونن.
January 15, 2021
In the Introduction of his Hallucinations, Oliver Sacks says that he conceived this book as “a sort of natural history or anthology of hallucinations”, and this is exactly what it is, a collection of first-hand testimonies from people whose common ground are hallucinations, either because of some medical condition (macular degeneration, migraine, epilepsy, narcolepsy, Parkinsonism etc.), or because of nightmares, shocks, use of some substances, or a combination of the two categories.
The author also hopes that the stories in this book “will help defuse the often cruel misunderstandings which surround the whole subject”, for although in many cultures hallucinations are a part of spiritual practices tried to be induced by meditation, drugs, or solitude, in modern Western culture, they are often stigmatized, considered either a sign of madness or of a grave illness of the brain.
This is the second book by Oliver Sacks I read after The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (here are my thoughts about it ) and once again I was fascinated both by the narrative and the medical lingo.
Thus, I learnt that:
• the actual meaning of the word “hallucination” was established in the 19th century by the French psychiatrist Jean-Étienne Esquirol, before that it simply meant “a wandering mind”, and this phenomenon was called “apparition”. Although its definition is not even today always clear, because of the confusion with misperception and illusion, “generally, hallucinations are defined as percepts arising in the absence of any external reality—seeing things or hearing things that are not there”;
• narcolepsy occurs to people who do not have the “wakefulness” hormones (orexins), secreted by the hypothalamus (this is why if the hypothalamus is damaged by a head injury or a tumor or a disease, it can cause narcolepsy later in life);
• nightmares were thought to be provoked by a “mare” (“Old Hag” in Newfoundland), that is a demonic woman who lay on the chest of a sleeping person suffocating him or her. Sometimes the word is written with a hyphen in the medical field (“night-mare”) to differentiate between bad or anxiety dreams and dreams when someone feels he is suffocating and cannot move;
• blind or almost blind persons can suffer from Charles Bonnet Syndrome, a brain reaction to the eyesight loss. The CBS hallucinations can be comforting or frightening, can occur once or for years, on and off;
• The Prisoner’s Cinema is a condition with the same effect that visual deprivation, a consequence of the visual monotony suffered by sailors looking at calm and infinite sea), travelers crossing the desert, pilots flying in an empty sky, truckers driving on an endless road;
• along with visual hallucinations, called phantopsia, there are hallucinations of smell, called phantosmia (and of vile smells – cacosmia), or of sound – phantacusis;
• hypnagogic hallucinations are involuntary images or quasi-hallucinations many people can experience before sleep. Hypnopompic hallucinations (upon waking, with open eyes, in bright illumination), are very different from hypnagogic ones, seen with closed eyes or in darkness, one’s room. “They sometimes give amusement or pleasure, but they often cause distress or even terror, for they may seem charged with intentionality and ready to attack the just-wakened hallucinator. There is no such intentionality with hypnagogic hallucinations, which are experienced as spectacles unrelated to the hallucinator.”;
• a painful past experience or a conversion disorder (formerly called hysteria), generated by severe stress accompanied by inner conflicts, can lead to a splitting of consciousness: “Hallucinations of ghosts—revenant spirits of the dead—are especially associated with violent death and guilt.”
Overall, the book shows that hallucinations are much more than “a neurological quirk”, for they have always been a part of our mental lives and culture, and a source of many folkloric, artistic and religious characters, myths and beliefs. Therefore it is quite possible that the geometric patterns seen during a migraine inspired some motifs of the Aboriginal art; that the Lilliputian hallucinations (pretty common) are partly responsible for the elves, imps, leprechauns, and fairies in fairytales and folklore; that the suffocating night-mare was the model for demons, witches or malignant aliens; that the “ecstatic” seizures (as Dostoevsky had), played a role in reinforcing our sense of the divine; that that lack of substance of such images generated the belief in ghosts and spirits.
The author also hopes that the stories in this book “will help defuse the often cruel misunderstandings which surround the whole subject”, for although in many cultures hallucinations are a part of spiritual practices tried to be induced by meditation, drugs, or solitude, in modern Western culture, they are often stigmatized, considered either a sign of madness or of a grave illness of the brain.
This is the second book by Oliver Sacks I read after The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat (here are my thoughts about it ) and once again I was fascinated both by the narrative and the medical lingo.
Thus, I learnt that:
• the actual meaning of the word “hallucination” was established in the 19th century by the French psychiatrist Jean-Étienne Esquirol, before that it simply meant “a wandering mind”, and this phenomenon was called “apparition”. Although its definition is not even today always clear, because of the confusion with misperception and illusion, “generally, hallucinations are defined as percepts arising in the absence of any external reality—seeing things or hearing things that are not there”;
• narcolepsy occurs to people who do not have the “wakefulness” hormones (orexins), secreted by the hypothalamus (this is why if the hypothalamus is damaged by a head injury or a tumor or a disease, it can cause narcolepsy later in life);
• nightmares were thought to be provoked by a “mare” (“Old Hag” in Newfoundland), that is a demonic woman who lay on the chest of a sleeping person suffocating him or her. Sometimes the word is written with a hyphen in the medical field (“night-mare”) to differentiate between bad or anxiety dreams and dreams when someone feels he is suffocating and cannot move;
• blind or almost blind persons can suffer from Charles Bonnet Syndrome, a brain reaction to the eyesight loss. The CBS hallucinations can be comforting or frightening, can occur once or for years, on and off;
• The Prisoner’s Cinema is a condition with the same effect that visual deprivation, a consequence of the visual monotony suffered by sailors looking at calm and infinite sea), travelers crossing the desert, pilots flying in an empty sky, truckers driving on an endless road;
• along with visual hallucinations, called phantopsia, there are hallucinations of smell, called phantosmia (and of vile smells – cacosmia), or of sound – phantacusis;
• hypnagogic hallucinations are involuntary images or quasi-hallucinations many people can experience before sleep. Hypnopompic hallucinations (upon waking, with open eyes, in bright illumination), are very different from hypnagogic ones, seen with closed eyes or in darkness, one’s room. “They sometimes give amusement or pleasure, but they often cause distress or even terror, for they may seem charged with intentionality and ready to attack the just-wakened hallucinator. There is no such intentionality with hypnagogic hallucinations, which are experienced as spectacles unrelated to the hallucinator.”;
• a painful past experience or a conversion disorder (formerly called hysteria), generated by severe stress accompanied by inner conflicts, can lead to a splitting of consciousness: “Hallucinations of ghosts—revenant spirits of the dead—are especially associated with violent death and guilt.”
Overall, the book shows that hallucinations are much more than “a neurological quirk”, for they have always been a part of our mental lives and culture, and a source of many folkloric, artistic and religious characters, myths and beliefs. Therefore it is quite possible that the geometric patterns seen during a migraine inspired some motifs of the Aboriginal art; that the Lilliputian hallucinations (pretty common) are partly responsible for the elves, imps, leprechauns, and fairies in fairytales and folklore; that the suffocating night-mare was the model for demons, witches or malignant aliens; that the “ecstatic” seizures (as Dostoevsky had), played a role in reinforcing our sense of the divine; that that lack of substance of such images generated the belief in ghosts and spirits.
Hallucinations often seem to have the creativity of imagination, dreams, or fantasy—or the vivid detail and externality of perception. But hallucination is none of these, though it may share some neurophysiological mechanisms with each. Hallucination is a unique and special category of consciousness and mental life.
February 10, 2013
UPDATE - 10-Feb-13: There's an essay in the Feb. 21, 2013 issue of the NYRB by Sacks. The telling paragraph is this:
_____________________________________
If there is one thing I’ve learned from my readings in the science of the mind, it’s that the brain is most definitely not a reliable organ of perception. If you don’t believe me, believe Oliver Sacks, who has some experience with brain science. In Hallucinations he explores the wide variety of delusional perceptions humans are prey to – and not alone humans who’ve suffered trauma or are in a situation where you might expect delusions (like sensory deprivation or drug use). Perfectly healthy people are susceptible as well, including myself.
At times, when I’m on the cusp of going to sleep and I’m reading in bed, I’ll hallucinate a page that doesn’t exist. I shake my head and come fully awake, and the illusory page will disappear but for that brief time, I will have been reading a perfectly legible and coherent story. Sometimes it will have some relationship to what I’m reading – characters will be the same; there will be some connection to the plot – but at other times, there will be none. I’ve also noticed that I’m prone to an olfactory hallucination most likely brought on by the fact that I currently live with six cats. Sometimes, I smell cat dootie (spelling?) when it doesn’t exist. It won’t happen when I’m in the room with the litter boxes so I know it’s not coming from there, but occasionally I’ll be sitting at the computer or come into a room and “smell” urine or kaka. When I search for its source, I can’t find it – no wet spots, no turds, and (once I’ve begun actively searching) no smell.
And there’s my friend, who suffers from migraines. When I asked her if she hallucinated before a headache, she described exactly what other migraine sufferers describe in Chapter 7, “Patterns: Visual Migraines.” She also described losing half of her visual field – i.e., if she were looking at me, half of me would disappear; an experience I can’t even begin to imagine.
The book is a collection of anecdotes. Sacks likes to tell stories but – in this book, at least – largely steers clear of asking “why,” which is why I’m giving this book two stars.
The stories are interesting, however.
One of my favorites is one he relates about Michael Shermer. For those who don’t know who Shermer is, he’s the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, executive director of the Skeptic Society and a prolific author, including books on brain science. He’s also a marathon runner and triathlete. During one competition, he had reached a point of severe dehydration and utter exhaustion and hallucinated that he was abducted by aliens, losing 90 minutes of consciousness. It happened that the “aliens” were his support crew, who had forced him to stop running, take some fluids and rest.
I also better understand the guests who show up on Coast to Coast AM with George Nouri, which I listen to on the drive home from work most nights. Most of the guests who claim to have seen, smelt and/or talked to angels, aliens, demons, ghosts, Loch Ness monsters, sasquatch, Star Children, etc., did.
And the brain’s delusional propensity would also explain the astonishing and contradictory variety of religious revelations.
I’d recommend Hallucinations as an entertaining, if rather hollow, diversion, but if you’re more interested in the why’s and how’s of brain science, this is not the book for you.
There is...no mechanism in the mind or the brain for ensuring the truth...of our recollections. We have no direct access to historical truth, and what we feel or assert to be true...depends as much on our imagination as our senses. There is no way by which the events of the world can be directly transmitted or recorded in our brains; they are experienced and constructed in a highly subjective way, which is different in every individual to being with, and differently reinterpreted or reexperienced whenever they are recollected.... Frequently, our only truth is narrative truth, the stories we tell each other and ourselves - the stories we continually recategorize and refine. Such subjectivity is built into the very nature of memory, and follows from its basis and mechanisms in the human brain. The wonder is that aberrations of a gross sort are relatively rare, and that, for the most part, our memories are relatively solid and reliable.
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If there is one thing I’ve learned from my readings in the science of the mind, it’s that the brain is most definitely not a reliable organ of perception. If you don’t believe me, believe Oliver Sacks, who has some experience with brain science. In Hallucinations he explores the wide variety of delusional perceptions humans are prey to – and not alone humans who’ve suffered trauma or are in a situation where you might expect delusions (like sensory deprivation or drug use). Perfectly healthy people are susceptible as well, including myself.
At times, when I’m on the cusp of going to sleep and I’m reading in bed, I’ll hallucinate a page that doesn’t exist. I shake my head and come fully awake, and the illusory page will disappear but for that brief time, I will have been reading a perfectly legible and coherent story. Sometimes it will have some relationship to what I’m reading – characters will be the same; there will be some connection to the plot – but at other times, there will be none. I’ve also noticed that I’m prone to an olfactory hallucination most likely brought on by the fact that I currently live with six cats. Sometimes, I smell cat dootie (spelling?) when it doesn’t exist. It won’t happen when I’m in the room with the litter boxes so I know it’s not coming from there, but occasionally I’ll be sitting at the computer or come into a room and “smell” urine or kaka. When I search for its source, I can’t find it – no wet spots, no turds, and (once I’ve begun actively searching) no smell.
And there’s my friend, who suffers from migraines. When I asked her if she hallucinated before a headache, she described exactly what other migraine sufferers describe in Chapter 7, “Patterns: Visual Migraines.” She also described losing half of her visual field – i.e., if she were looking at me, half of me would disappear; an experience I can’t even begin to imagine.
The book is a collection of anecdotes. Sacks likes to tell stories but – in this book, at least – largely steers clear of asking “why,” which is why I’m giving this book two stars.
The stories are interesting, however.
One of my favorites is one he relates about Michael Shermer. For those who don’t know who Shermer is, he’s the founding publisher of Skeptic magazine, executive director of the Skeptic Society and a prolific author, including books on brain science. He’s also a marathon runner and triathlete. During one competition, he had reached a point of severe dehydration and utter exhaustion and hallucinated that he was abducted by aliens, losing 90 minutes of consciousness. It happened that the “aliens” were his support crew, who had forced him to stop running, take some fluids and rest.
I also better understand the guests who show up on Coast to Coast AM with George Nouri, which I listen to on the drive home from work most nights. Most of the guests who claim to have seen, smelt and/or talked to angels, aliens, demons, ghosts, Loch Ness monsters, sasquatch, Star Children, etc., did.
And the brain’s delusional propensity would also explain the astonishing and contradictory variety of religious revelations.
I’d recommend Hallucinations as an entertaining, if rather hollow, diversion, but if you’re more interested in the why’s and how’s of brain science, this is not the book for you.
July 17, 2017
Between The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales, Robin Williams’ portrayal in “Awakenings,” and several NPR interviews, I’ve really come to admire Dr. Oliver Sacks, even though this is only the second book of his I’ve ever read. He writes with such love and respect about his patients, it’s impossible not to love and respect him in return. Accomplished a doctor as he is, he is never condescending. He portrays his patients as people, not quirky specimens.
He’s also open and honest about himself, and that’s especially true in this book in which he reveals that like so many others in the 60’s, he experimented with a pretty wide variety of mind-altering drugs. As a neuroscientist, it was literally experimentation – he felt he should know what his patients were going through – but as he also admits, his drug use also stemmed from the lesser motivations that drive so many people to drugs.
Drug-induced hallucinations are the topic of just one chapter of the book, though. It also covers the phantom limb phenomenon, visual hallucinations in the blind (which is sort of the equivalent of phantom limb), auditory hallucinations (the most common type and not necessarily a sign of madness), the migraine aura, and out-of-body experiences, just to name a few. Sometimes all the examples seemed repetitive, but mostly they were fascinating. Probably all readers will find at least one type of hallucination familiar. And thanks to Dr. Sacks’ rational and reassuring attitude, you’ll discover you’re perfectly normal after all.
He’s also open and honest about himself, and that’s especially true in this book in which he reveals that like so many others in the 60’s, he experimented with a pretty wide variety of mind-altering drugs. As a neuroscientist, it was literally experimentation – he felt he should know what his patients were going through – but as he also admits, his drug use also stemmed from the lesser motivations that drive so many people to drugs.
Drug-induced hallucinations are the topic of just one chapter of the book, though. It also covers the phantom limb phenomenon, visual hallucinations in the blind (which is sort of the equivalent of phantom limb), auditory hallucinations (the most common type and not necessarily a sign of madness), the migraine aura, and out-of-body experiences, just to name a few. Sometimes all the examples seemed repetitive, but mostly they were fascinating. Probably all readers will find at least one type of hallucination familiar. And thanks to Dr. Sacks’ rational and reassuring attitude, you’ll discover you’re perfectly normal after all.
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