Article archive / December 1, 2012
Originally published: . Volume 4, No. 4. Source pages: 12, 13.
John Fanning, PhD Neuropsychologist, New Orleans President Elect, LPA Awakenings by Oliver Sacks
“Awakenings initially published in 1973, is perhaps the strangest nonfiction book I have ever read. I think it is also safe to say that it is probably the only book ever published with praise blurbs from both Alexander Luria and Doris Lessing. The years shortly after the World War I saw an epidemic of a particularly strange neurologic disorder, von Economo's encephalitis. A significant population of survivors of the illness were left in a deeply lethargic state, with very marked parkinsonism. In the 1960s quite a number of such survivors in New York resided in a state institution where a young neurologist named Oliver Sacks worked. When l-dopa was introduced for treatment of Parkinson's disease, he decided to try the drug on these patients. The effects were dramatic, but uncontrollable. Patients were thrust abruptly into the world–and into action–after several decades of immobile neurologic oblivion. This near- miraculous development had a dark side, however. Patients swung wildly between immobility (too little dopminergic activity) and psychosis and ticcing (too much), and it proved virtually impossible to adjust dosages to strike the right balance. As he has in his subsequent books, Sacks focuses on the experiences of the patient themselves and on the quest of people with afflicted with a wide range of disorders to attain and maintain a balance in living in deeply disrupted circumstances. These patients are people, not cases.
“Sacks has since written numerous quite popular books (Hallucinations being the most recent), but Awakenings remains my favorite, and the most challenging for the reader. The breadth of concepts and material is very striking. Awakenings was made into a film some years later, but the film seemed almost conventional in comparison with the book on which it was based.”
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