The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales by Oliver Sacks review

Title: The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Other Clinical Tales

Author: Oliver Sacks

My Rating:3.5/5

Part of a series? : No

Genre(s):  Psychology, Non-fiction, Medicine, Anthology

Description/Blurb:

Oliver Sacks's The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents. 

My review: 

This is an interesting collection of one man’s experiences with patients with various neurological disorders. Some of them happen to be quite humorous while others are simply stories of interest to those who are interested in human behaviour. I would love to give it a higher star writing but I felt that some of the editing was below par with a few of the sentences not making complete sense (yes I know I have that problem too but I don’t have an editor!).  Also sometimes Sacks uses terms which somebody with no previous experience of psychology may struggle to understand without a quick google though I do admit most of the time you can just skim over the term without understanding it as the detail would only be of interest to somebody with an interest in psychology, if you’re just reading the collection for some unusual real life stories then you won’t really lose anything by just skipping over it, I’d recommend doing the same for some of the explanations of the disorders as again they can be a bit confusing for somebody who hasn’t really looked into psychology before though some of Sacks’ explanations and theories are really quite interesting.