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May 07, 2013
Andrew Solomon wrote: "Oliver Sacks relates fascinating case histories and he writes fluently, but he treats his subjects with a tinge of the ringmaster’s bravado — an underlying tone of, 'Hey, if you think that’s weird, wait until you get a load of this one!' It is possible to have clinical rigor without such voyeuristic emotional deficits." As a popular science writer, Sacks patronizes the reader by omitting science and analysis. One of the goals seems to be to treat hallucinations as physical rather than psychological events, yet there is no discussion of neurological or biological causes. Psychological causes of some hallucinations on this list are almost completely ignored except in obvious comments like "a child may create an imaginary friend because he is lonely." The aim seems to be to distance hallucinations from the stigma of mental illness, not to destigmatize mental illness. The subtext seems to be to reassure himself and the reader that hallucinations don’t mean we/he is mentally ill. This book is organized as a list of types, without making any connection between the categories. Granted, this is a popular work. Some anecdotes would be fine, but there is almost no discussion of mechanisms – this isn’t popular science, there is no science. For a doctor, he seems remarkably uninterested in cause and effect and cure. Even for popular science writing, the basic terminology is pretty sloppy. All kinds of terms are interchangeably used for "hallucination," like “visions.”