An Anthropologist On Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales

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Customer Reviews:

Brilliant, But Blind To Childhood And Prenatal Emotional Trauma [Posted on 2006-12-16]
Although I don't agree with many of Oliver Sacks's conclusions, I found this fascinating book a worthwhile read. It is packed with superior case material - and largely presented in a very readable format (and unlike in some of his other books, he reins in his footnotes!). Some of the chapters, like "Prodigies" or "An Anthropologist On Mars" or "To See Or Not To See," are downright brilliant and provide wonderful and unusual insights into the workings of the human brain - and the universals of human experience. Other chapters (such as "The Colorblind Painter" and "The Landscape Of His Dreams") are weak and drag on, rehashing the same relatively minute points ad nauseum.

Overall, however, Sacks's main weakness is his lack of understanding of emotions, particularly the emotional dynamics between parents and children. He does occasionally wax eloquent about emotional states and spirituality, but this comes across more as an intellectualization of emotions than a truly deep grasp of them. He has little respect for their power to mold neurological development, and sidesteps his own data that point in this direction. To me this is shoddy science, and he failed to convince me of his foregone conclusion that disorders like autism and Tourette's syndrome are neurological in origin.

In his chapter on Tourette's, Sacks presents a surgeon who appears to be acting out a huge degree of repressed hostility through his unconsciously motivated peculiarities. Sacks even opens the door a crack into why the surgeon might do it - that he was adopted and painfully isolated as a child, and it's not hard to speculate that he might be totally enraged at his rotten lot in early childhood life, and yet unable to express this appropriate anger through healthy avenues of expression, because that would only earn him MORE rejection. So instead (my gut tells me, though I lack the data to take it further) he acted it out through Tourette's. But Sacks never touches this one with a ten foot pole, or even speculates as to this possibility, and instead just idealizes this man for his bizarre outbursts, his violence, his hostility toward his own children, his terrible boundaries, and his occasional ability to rein in his symptoms and function super-normally. Had the surgeon not been so high functioning, and people not put up with his oddness and general offensiveness, I highly doubt Sacks would be putting him on such a pedestal.

But I really question Sacks's confidence in stating that autism has nothing to do with childhood trauma. My gut tells me that at least some autistic children were emotionally traumatized in early childhood or in the womb, and were reacting on a primal level to their mothers' emotional pathology. Every fetus reacts to maternal emotional pathology - and emotional health - at some level, and I feel the autistic response is just an ultra-extreme one, like the crème de la crème of a schizoid response, so much so that the parts of the fetal brain that develop healthy emotional relating and expression and self-reflection become stunted or dead. My viewpoint might be difficult to prove, but I see it as less difficult to prove than Sacks's neurological etiology, which he defends in the most convenient way of all - by not even considering any opposing points of view.

But in a world hell-bent on minimizing the blame on mothers for their children's problems, it makes sense why Sacks can get away with turning such a blind eye.

An Anthropologist on Mars [Posted on 2007-03-08]
If you are interested at all in brain research, you will find this book fascinating.
The author celebrates the human strength to overcome disabilities and the true creative drive that may be buried in each of us. I highly recommend this book for learning and also for inspiration.

Amazing [Posted on 2008-01-04]
This book introduces the reader to a collection of weird neurological conditions accompanied by stories and supplemental background information relating to each example. Its focus is on the stories of patients encountered by the author during the course of his career.

Sacks has a great eye for the details that make his characters interesting; his descriptions of his patients bizarre behavior are spot on. His tone is warm, friendly and has a touch of humor to it which I find most endearing. All of the stories are really page turners and I literally couldn't put this or its prequel (man who mistook his wife for a hat) down till I had devoured them both.

The other thing that makes this book amazing is the way sacks presents the background information for each of his cases. For example, the artist who lost the ability to see in color. Sacks does a great job of mixing case history with philosophy and physics in his efforts to explain how the human brain deals with color. The real art of this is that he manges to do it in the middle of the story without killing the readers interest.

Buy it now!

amazingly inspirational [Posted on 2008-04-26]
AMAZING book. Hands down, one of my favorites!
The book is so incredibly inspirational! Everyone has a 'disability' one way or another, in this book, Sacks explores some of the extreme cases, and takes their life story to show how he/she has overcome with 'not being normal'. Sacks does a great job writing the book for people not in the medical field -- he takes the time to explain the situation without coming close to making the reader fall asleep.

I never get sick of this book. It is truly inspirational.

Incredible experiences [Posted on 2008-06-14]
These are seven stories of people with some neurological aberration. These are all stories of real people, everyday difficulties, of denial & acceptance, of the indomitable human spirit.

A painter's colorful world goes gray with impeccable tonality. A monk revels in a Grateful Dead concert & has no memory of it the day after as he awaits his deceased father. An autistic child paints in breathtaking detail from memories that formed within seconds. A blind man cannot adjust to the gift of sight. A surgeon with tics; a painter compulsively obsessed with his childhood village.

These stories reveal the constant struggle against, in most cases, an unsurpassable odd. And yet, quite a few of them are about making the very best of this aberration, & translating what would be a handicap in a normal everyday world to a differentiating ability.

Sacks writes with sincerity & pathos.

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