The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat

Sacks believed working with patients with delayed intellectual development would be dreary until Luria wrote to him about how he feels warmly toward these patients. Sacks makes a comparison between the minds of the “simple,” the “savage,” and the “child,” though he is careful to note that “savages” are neither children nor simple and vice versa.

The world of the “simple” person is more concrete, not “unified by abstraction” (85). Many neurologists believe that this concrete, “simple” state of mind is a less valuable state than that of the neurotypical person. For Kurt Goldstein, losing the abstract attitude makes a person “subhuman” (85), but Sacks points out that humans also need the concrete. Dr. P. lost the concrete, and only his abstract attitude remained. A contrasting case is that of Luria’s Zazetsky. Although Zazetsky lost much of his ability to think abstractly, he possessed morality and a “rich, deep, and concrete reality” (85). Sacks maintains that because Zazetsky’s “being” remained intact, unlike in the case of Dr. P., Zazetsky is not truly “shattered,” or less than a whole person.

Sacks compares these two cases to draw an important conclusion: “We find ourselves entering a realm of fascination and

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