Book Review

The word anthology here is a misnomer: it would have been more accurate to call it a starter kit. Since it is a sampler, one cannot expect it to be consistent any more than one would expect a box of chocolates to have the same yummy filler for each piece. Some stories in this volume seem straightforward case history full of useful and medically accurate information. On the other hand, the fictional accounts do not all track exactly with what is medically known about amnesic syndromes. Fair enough, amnesia can be a metaphor.

"The Last Hippie" begins with the description of symptoms which go with amnesia. Most cases of amnesia result from neurological injury. Others may be psychogenic in origin. People sometimes have an indifference to what has happened to them or fail to see anything wrong (la belle indifference). Sacks says this is often present in frontal lobe damage. His patient Greg doesn't know he is blind. Sacks speculates that "perhaps he had lost the very idea of seeing" (p. 202). In the absence of actual sight be comes to believe he is seeing what are actually his fantasies. He invents sights to go along with the TV. Greg makes up plausible explanations for things and believes they are true. This is called confabulation. He seemingly cannot acquire new meaning. A few exceptions are noted. In the hospital he habituates, learning his way around. He can learn music and songs. Sacks says he is "immured without knowing it in a motionless, timeless moment" with no "remembered past" (p. 203).

Greg also has deficits in his ability to recognize the identity of others. Putting things in the wrong context, he decides one staff member is actually two separate people. Lacking an identity within himself, he is passive when not impinged upon by others. Consciousness itself is disjointed and tangential. Memory for episodic events is disrupted. One cannot have a life if one has no identity. No picaresque tales for Greg. If consciousness is disrupted, identity is disrupted.

The things he can remember are fascinating. In addition to finding his way around, he is able to acquire a sense of whether or not he likes someone. Greg loved the Grateful Dead, so Sacks arranges to take Greg to a concert. No time seems to have passed for Greg in the last ten years and he seems unaware that he is in a hospital. They go to the concert, but the next day Greg cannot remember having gone. He does retain fragments of the new songs he heard.

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