ie They are NOT coming from overseas !!
HALLUCINATIONS
- By Oliver Sacks -
ISBN: 9781447224518
Publisher: Picador, London, UK
Published: 2012
Binding: SOFTcover 322 pages
Condition: UNread & displayed condition! HERE in MELBOURNE! A retired display
copy as illustrated!
Edition: FIRST EDITION: 1st printing
TIGHT, SCARCE SOFTCOVER ~ IN MELBOURNE ...
WHY do ebayers buy from US?
Because you KNOW what you're getting. My close up photos are of the actual item!!
Remains UNread - it was the display copy instore . It is Tight - neat, no inscriptions or marks within. Appears as in my photos - this is the exact copy!! A nicely preserved copy - superb!
No discernible shelf wear, the interior is tight and spotlessly clean with 322 pages. THIS copy is the FIRST EDITION: First printing from 2012 - the Australian publishing by Picador, Australia.
SCARCE title - this is an UNread copy!!
In original illustrated SOFTcover binding, in publisher's glossy covers which are in excellent condition.
(Stored with 2021!)
Measures approx. 9¾ x 6¾ inches or 25 x 17cms
SYNOPSIS ....
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 organisation 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.
About the Author
Oliver Sacks was a neurologist, writer, and professor of medicine. Born in London in 1933, he moved to New York City in 1965, where he launched his medical career and began writing case studies of his patients. Called the poet laureate of medicine by The New York Times, Sacks is the author of thirteen books, including The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, Musicophilia, andAwakenings, which inspired an Oscar-nominated film and a play by Harold Pinter.He was the recipient of many awards and honorary degrees, and was made a Commander of the British Empire in 2008 for services to medicine. He died in 2015.
Very Interesting read!
Reviews
“Dr. Sacks conjures apparitions in language that has an easy, tactile magic. . . . He illuminate[s] the complexities of the human brain and the mysteries of the human mind.” — Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
“Beguiling. . . . Sacks presents a field guide to our quirky operating system’s powers of deception with storytelling that makes readers feel like medical insiders.” — Chicago Tribune
“Elegant. . . . An absorbing plunge into a mystery of the mind.” — Entertainment Weekly
“Humane, compassionate. . . . These tales are at turns delightful, entertaining, bizarre and sometimes downright terrifying.” — Minneapolis Star Tribune
“This doctor cares deeply about his patients' experiences—about their lives, not just about their diseases. Through his accounts we can imagine what it is like to find that our perceptions don’t hook on to reality—that our brains are constructing a world that nobody else can see, hear or touch. . . . Sacks has turned hallucinations from something bizarre and frightening into something that seems part of what it means to be a person. His book, too, is a medical and human triumph.” — The Washington Post
“[Sacks] covers a broad range of sensory disturbances. . . . One of the pleasures of reading Hallucinations is understanding how complex human reality often trumps attempts to categorize it.” — The New York Times Book Review
“Sacks’ science writing is always revelatory, and there are moments in Hallucinations when seeing things can feel downright life-affirming.” — Time
“The greatest living ethnographer of those fascinating tribes who live on the outer and still largely uncharted shores of the land of Mind-and-Brain.” — The Guardian (London)
“Fascinating and engaging. . . . Sacks uses the unique mixture of patient anecdote, memoir, scientific information, and broad reference to literature, art, music, history, and philosophy that has characterised all his work.” — The Boston Globe
Reader reviews
One of the most interesting neuroscience books I have read. ... All of Sacks' book are great, but this is better than most. I would classify this book as a natural history of hallucinations.
FIVE STARS!! ... 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.
Hallucinations is a fascinating book - it takes a look at how people perceive things that aren't there. Auditory, visual, and tactile; with and without emotional significance; with and without the insight that the perception doesn't conform to objective reality. Sacks examines hallucinations caused by sensory deficits such as blindness; brain misfirings as in epilepsy and migraines; illness; trauma; therapeutic and recreational drugs; and more. He includes common experiences like sleep paralysis as well as perceptions that many would consider psychic or spiritual, such as near death experiences. It turns out that hallucinations are far more common than one might expect--for example, hearing voices is most often NOT associated with schizophrenia.
There is not a lot of new information in this book; Sacks himself has covered much of the material before. The value is in his viewpoint and analysis. Some of the phenomena the book examines aren't what people would generally consider hallucinations, and I very much like how he pulls them all together into that category. For someone who hasn't read much about misperceptions the brain can produce, I think the book would be a lovely overview. I recently read, and loved, V. S. Ramachandran's Phantoms in the Brain. Sacks' writing is less technical; he mentions parts of the brain that produce effects when stimulated, but doesn't go into detail. Which makes the book almost as informative, but in a more general, more literary, and less scientific way. In fact, Sacks makes many references to writings by novelists, philosophers, and scientists of the last several centuries, which didn't interest me much but which many people probably like a lot. This helps him place current scientific thinking in a historical perspective. That perspective is one thing that makes this a wonderful book. But some of those references, some interpretations, and his use of some older terms made me see how quaint some of the material in this book will look in fifty or a hundred years.
With those quibbles, I still give the book five stars, because it excited me and made me think (and because, hello? It's Oliver Sacks). I particularly liked two sections. First, the "Altered States" chapter, where Sacks talks about his not-inconsiderable experimentation with drugs, including LSD, opiates, and amphetamines. I haven't seen anything by him about this before, and found it endearing. (While reading Ramachandran's book, I kept thinking that if he just took some drugs, it would add a valuable dimension to his understanding.) Second, the material in the later part of the book dealing with altered perceptions that are often interpreted as supernatural visitations, visions, and spiritual experiences (good and bad). It is fascinating how scientists can pinpoint parts of the brain that are active during these experiences, and how stimulating those areas can produce the experiences. For historical perspective, among other things, Sacks notes the witch hysteria of several centuries ago, and notes that "...witch-hunting and forced confession have hardly vanished from the world; they have simply taken other forms."
Marvellous Reading!
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