The man who thought his wife was a hat

The man who thought his wife was a hat by Oliver Sacks ... this book is truly unique, written by the neurologist who examined patients in New York hospitals, and the internationally renowned author of many works that study the cases and behaviors of individuals suffering from a disorder or functional impairment in their brains. "Patients form the core of my work and my life," he says in this book, defining his professional and humanitarian scope of work which forces him to live daily and constantly with the disease that raises in him "fundamental questions by nature," and with his patients who constantly lead him "to ask" a question that in turn constantly leads him back to them. Therefore, the reader will find "in the following stories and studies a continuous movement from this direction to that." Strange stories from another strange reality different from our usual reality, and characters each living in their own unique and "real" world because it stems from the truth of a mind considered "disordered" because its structure has become different from our usual mind structure. The author recounts strange tales of people "whom we can say are travelers to lands that cannot be imagined" — lands we cannot, otherwise, have any idea or conception of. Like the lost sailor who has lost his sense of time, living as a prisoner of a specific moment repeated forever, or the mentally retarded twin who has the extraordinary ability to perform calculations at an incredible speed, or the old lady who observes the movements of passersby on the street and exaggerates them to become frightening and terrifying, or the man who thinks he is a dog, or the musician who has lost the ability to distinguish shapes and thought the hat was his wife's head, and others of the characters whose stories the author narrates in the four sections of the book. The author emphasizes the complex relationship between the body, mind, and brain, and affirms that the unity of these elements is what makes a human being, thus raising the issue of the need for a new, more integrated medicine, which does not treat the body in isolation from the mind and spirit. A book that must be read to gain rare knowledge and facts — but what facts! And what stories! And how will we compare them? We may not have any existing models, metaphors, or myths. Perhaps, is it time for new symbols and new myths?