Psychology and Literature

I was speaking with my RA and she suggested I look up Oliver Sacks and his books since I’m interested in both psychology and writing.

So I picked up his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. I read about this case study in one of my classes and thought it would be interesting to see Sacks’ take on it. Apparently Sacks takes psychology studies and writes about them in an interesting literary way, as opposed to the dense textbook like writing you find in Journals.

I started reading the book and WOW! Professors should really consider making this book a required reading. In just a few pages I got everything I needed to know about the case study without having to filter through a slew of unnecessary words and descriptions.

The great thing about this particular book is that it presents a wide variety of case studies, not just this one man. So you get to learn about quite a few disorders and they way they are manifested. ALSO you read about them in a way that makes you sympathize with the person. You’re not just seeing it from a scientific perspective. Which I’m grateful for because I’m interested in the clinical aspect of psychology and obviously sympathy and the understanding of thehumanisticside of the disorder is important for that career/field.

I’m only a few pages into the book but if you’re interested in psychology or disorders I definitely recommend you read this book and look into all the others he’s written.