The mind looks different from inside

Sacks describes individual experiences of altered perception, memory, and neurological difference in short clinical tales. The compact cases establish his approach to writing about the mind, using the clinical language of their period.

Seven extended case narratives allow Sacks to spend longer with unusual neurological experiences. Their scope gives a different sense of his clinical storytelling from the shorter pieces in The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat.

Music provides the thread through Sacks's case histories of memory and neurological conditions. The book concentrates the selection's questions about perception on the particular experiences of hearing and responding to music.

Sacks examines hallucinations across neurological conditions and circumstances, drawing together clinical and historical accounts. A shared experience organizes these chapters, rather than the broader range of cases in his other collections.

Sacks moves from memory and consciousness to evolution and the history of scientific ideas. The essay form lets him range more widely than the individual clinical narratives in this selection.

Wang examines mental illness through her own experience of diagnosis, institutions, and representation. Her personal and cultural essays place the person receiving a diagnosis at the center of the account.