Judgment is the most important faculty we have. An animal, or a man, may get on very well without ‘abstract attitude’ but will speedily perish if deprived of judgment. Judgment must be the first facul...
In Korsakov’s, or dementia, or other such catastrophes, however great the organic damage and Humean dissolution, there remains the undiminished possibility of reintegration by art, by communion, by to...
Had been so damaged emotionally by isolation (and in one case institutionalization as well) that they had become withdrawn and inaccessible, had turned against communication, and were no longer open t...
Being.
Why is it that of every hundred gifted young musicians who study at Juilliard or every hundred brilliant young scientists who go to work in major labs under illustrious mentors, only a handful will wr...
While most of the flowers in the garden had rich scents and colors, we also had two magnolia trees, with huge but pale and scentless flowers. The magnolia flowers, when ripe, would be crawling with ti...
When traditional figures—devils, witches, or hags—are no longer believed in, new ones—aliens, visitations from a previous life—take their place. Hallucinations,
When I was twelve, a perceptive schoolmaster wrote in his report, Sacks will go far, if he does not go too far, and this was often the case.
We think of science as discovery, art as invention, but is there a third world of mathematics, which is somehow, mysteriously, both?
We may see very clearly how the wrong sound, or anti-music, is pathogenic and migrainogenic; while the right sound—proper music—is truly tranquillising, and immediately restores cerebral health. These...
We have seen that there are two forms of stimulus which are particularly prone to evoke migrainous reactions in predisposed individuals: inordinate excitations or arousals, and inordinate inhibitions...
Tranquilizers have little or no effect on the negative symptoms of schizophrenia—withdrawal, flattening of affect, etc.—which, in their insidious, chronic way, can be more debilitating, more undermini...
Tourette’s syndrome is seen in every race, every culture, every stratum of society; it can be recognized at a glance once one is attuned to it; and cases of barking and twitching, of grimacing, of str...
To live on a day-to-day basis is insufficient for human beings; we need to transcend, transport, escape; we need meaning, understanding, and explanation; we need to see overall patterns in our lives....
This state is thus one of an excruciating overall sensitivity, patients being assaulted by sensory stimuli from their environment, or
This gave me a feeling of what seemed wrong with American medicine, that it consisted more and more of specialists. There were fewer and fewer primary care physicians, the base of the pyramid. My fath...
The situation changed for Michael and for millions of other schizophrenics, for better and worse, around 1953, when the first tranquilizer—a drug called Largactil in England, Thorazine in the United S...
The pleasure we obtain from music comes from counting, but counting unconsciously. Music is nothing but unconscious arithmetic.
The amorality of nature is accepted, whether it takes the form of a monsoon, an elephant in musth, or a disease; but being subjected helplessy to the will of of others is not, for human behavior alway...
Temple is a hero now to many in the autism community around the world, widely admired for forcing all of us to see autism and Asperger’s not as neurological deficits so much as different modes of bein...