The River of Consciousness by Oliver Sacks 2018-02-05 It is a little bit haunting to think about reading one more Oliver Sacks book but it is also comforting to think that we get to spend a little more time with an old friend. I was worried that, this being a series of almost finished essays he was working on before his passing, there would not be so much continuity between the papers. Instead though, there is Sacks' love of science blended perfectly with his overwhelming compassion for his subjects. He also has an amazing ability to pick new ways to look at old topics. His section on Freud is fascinating in that it looks at the 20 years before he started writing about psychoanalysis and instead was quite a good neurologist, both as a clinician and as a researcher. Sacks writes about Freud's struggles to find anatomical loci of psychological issues, showing when and how he learned to depart from descriptive neurology and plunge into a mind-only explanatory framework. Sacks always surprises me with his insights and connections and I found this book to be no different. This is a thoroughly enjoyable read! --Karl The River of Consciousness
by: Karl |