Man Who MIstook His Wife for a Hat (34 page)

   Macrae, D. and Trolle, E. "The defect of function in visual agnosia."
Brain
(1956)
77:
94-110.

   Kertesz, A. "Visual agnosia: the dual deficit of perception and recognition."
Cortex
(1979) J 5: 403-19.

   Marr, D. See below under Chapter 15.

   Damasio, A. R. "Disorders in Visual Processing," in M. M. Mesulam (1985), pp. 259-88. (See below under Chapter 8.)

   
2. The Lost Mariner

   Korsakov's original (1887) contribution and his later works have not been translated. A full bibliography, with translated excerpts and discussion, is given in A. R. Luria's
Neuropsychology of Memory
(op. cit.), which itself provides many striking examples of amnesia akin to that of "The Lost Mariner." Both here, and in the preceding case history, I refer to Anton, Potzl, and Freud. Of these only Freud's monograph-a work of great importance-has been translated into English.

   Anton, G. "Uber die Selbstwarnehmung der Herderkrankungen des Gehirns durch den Kranken."
Arch. Psychiat.
(1899) 32.

   Freud, S. Zur
Auffassung der Aphasia.
Leipzig: 1891. Authorized English tr., by E. Stengel, as
On Aphasia: A Critical Study.
New York: 1953.

   Potzl, O.
Die Aphasielehre vom Standpunkt der klinischen Psychiatrie: Die Optische-agnostischen Storungen.
Leipzig: 1928. The syndrome Potzl describes is not merely visual, but may extend to a complete unawareness of parts, or one half, of the body. As such it is also relevant to the themes

   of Chapters 3, 4, and 8. It is also referred to in my book
A Leg to Stand On
(1984).

   
3. The Disembodied Lady

   Sherrington, C. S.
The Integrative Action of the Nervous System.
Cambridge: 1906. Esp. pp. 335-43.

   –----.
Man on His Nature.
Cambridge: 1940. Ch. 11, esp. pp.

   328-9, has the most direct relevance to this patient's condition.

   Purdon Martin, J.
The Basal Ganglia and Posture.
London: 1967. This important book is more extensively referred to in Chapter 7.

   Weir Mitchell, S. See below under Chapter 6.

   Sterman, A. B. et al. "The acute sensory neuronopathy syndrome."
Annals of Neurology
(1979) 7: 354-8.

   
4. The Man Who Fell out of Bed

   Potzl, O. Op. cit.

   
5.
Hands

   Leont'ev, A. N. and Zaporozhets, A. V.
Rehabilitation of Hand Function.
Eng. tr. Oxford: 1960.

   
6. Phantoms

   Sterman, A. B. et al. Op. cit.

   Weir Mitchell, S.
Injuries of Nerves.
1872; Dover repr. 1965. This great book contains Weir Mitchell's classic accounts of phantom limbs, reflex paralysis, etc. from the American Civil War. It is wonderfully vivid and easy to read, for Weir Mitchell was a novelist no less than a neurologist. Indeed, some of his most imaginative neurological writings (such as "The Case of George Dedlow") were published not in scientific journals but in the
Atlantic Monthly
in the 1860s and 1870s, and are therefore not very accessible now, though they enjoyed an immense readership at the time.

   
7.
On the Level

   Purdon Martin, J. Op. cit. Esp. ch. 3, pp. 36-51.

   
8. Eyes Right!

   Battersby, W. S. et al. "Unilateral 'spatial agnosia' (inattention) in patients with cerebral lesions."
Brain
(1956) 79: 68-93.

   Mesulam, M. M.
Principles of Behavioral Neurology
(Philadelphia: 1985), pp. 259-88.

   
9. The President's Speech

   The best discussion of Frege on "tone" is to be found in Dummett, M.,
Frege: Philosophy of Language
(London: 1973), esp. pp. 83-89.

   Head's discussion of speech and language, in particular its "feeling-tone," is best read in his treatise on aphasia (op. cit.). Hughlings Jackson's work on speech was widely scattered, but much was brought together posthumously in "Hughlings Jackson on aphasia and kindred affections of speech, together with a complete bibliography of his publications of speech and a reprint of some of the more important papers,"
Brain
(1915) 38: 1-190.

   On the complex and confused subject of the auditory agnosias, see Hecaen, H. and Albert, M. L.,
Human Neuropsychology
(New York: 1978), pp. 265-76.

   
10. Witty Ticcy Ray

   In 1885 Gilles de la Tourette published a two-part paper in which he described with extreme vividness (he was a playwright as well as a neurologist) the syndrome that now bears his name: "Etude sur an affection nerveuse caracterisee par l'incoordination motrice accompagnee d'echo-lalie et de coprolalie,"
Arch. Neurol. 9:
19-42, 158-200. The first English translation of these papers, with interesting editorial comments, is provided by: Goetz, C. G. and Klawans, H. L.,
Gilles de la Tourette on Tourette Syndrome
(New York: 1982).

   In Meige and Feidel's great
Les Tics et leur traitement
(1902), brilliantly translated by Kinnier Wilson in 1907, there is a wonderful opening personal memoir by a patient, "Les confidences d'un ticqueur," which is unique of its kind.

   
11
. Cupid's Disease

   As with Tourette's syndrome, we must go back to the older literature to find full clinical descriptions. Kraepelin, Freud's contemporary, provides many striking vignettes of neurosyphilis. The interested reader might

   consult: Kraepelin, E.,
Lectures on Clinical Psychiatry
(Eng. tr. London: 1904), in particular chs. 10 and 12 on megalomania and delirium in general paralysis.

   
12. A Matter of Identity
See Luria (1976).

   
13. Yes, Father-Sister

   See Luria (1966).

   
14. The Possessed

   See above under Chapter 10.

   
15. Reminiscence

   Alajouanine, T. "Dostoievski's epilepsy."
Brain
(1963)
86:
209-21.

   Critchley, M. and Henson, R. A., eds.
Music and the Brain: Studies in the Neurology of Music.
London: 1977. Esp. chs. 19 and 20.

   Penfield, W. and Perot, P. "The brain's record of visual and auditory experience: a final summary and discussion."
Brain
(1963)
86:
595-696. I regard this magnificent 100-page paper, the culmination of nearly thirty years' profound observation, experiment, and thought, as one of the most original and important in all neurology. It stunned me when it came out in 1963 and was constantly in my mind when I wrote
Migraine
in 1967. It is the essential reference and inspiration to the whole of this section. More readable than many novels, it has a wealth and strangeness of material which any novelist would envy.

   Salaman, E. A
Collection of Moments.
London: 1970.

   Williams, D. "The structure of emotions reflected in epileptic experiences."
Brain
(1956) 79: 29-67.

   Hughlings Jackson was the first to address himself to "psychical seizures," to describe their almost novelistic phenomenology and to identify their anatomical loci in the brain. He wrote several papers on the subject. Most pertinent are those published in Volume 1 of his
Selected Writings
(1931), pp. 251ff. and 274ff., and the following (not included in that volume):

   Jackson, J. H. "On right- or left-sided spasm at the onset of epileptic

   paroxysms, and on crude sensation warnings, and elaborate mental states." Brain (1880) 3: 192-206.

   –----. "On a particular variety of epilepsy ('Intellectual Aura')."

   Brain (1888) I J: 179-207.

   Purdon Martin has provided an intriguing suggestion that Henry James met Hughlings Jackson, discussed such seizures with him, and employed this knowledge in his depiction of the uncanny apparitions in
The Turn of the Screw.
"Neurology in fiction:
The Turn of the Screw," British Medical].
(1973)4:717-21.

   Marr, D.
Vision: A Computational Investigation of Visual Representation in Man.
San Francisco: 1982. This is a work of extreme originality and importance, published posthumously (Marr contracted leukemia while still a young man). Penfield shows us the forms of the brain's final representations-voices, faces, tunes, scenes-the "iconic": Marr shows us what is not intuitively obvious, or ever normally experienced-the form of the brain's initial representations. Perhaps I should have given this reference in Chapter 1-it is certain that Dr. P. had some "Marr-like" deficits, difficulties in forming what Marr calls a "primal sketch" in addition to, or underlying, his physiognomonic difficulties. Probably no neurological study of imagery, or memory, can dispense with the considerations raised by Marr.

   
16. Incontinent Nostalgia

   Jelliffe, S. E.
Psychopathology of Forced Movements and Oculogyric Crises of Lethargic Encephalitis.
London: 1932. Esp. p. 114ff. discussing Zutt's paper of 1930.

   See also the case of "Rose R." in
Awakenings.
London: 1973; 3rd. ed. 1983.

   
17. A Passage to India

   I am not acquainted with the literature on this subject I have, however, had personal experience of another patient-also with a glioma, with increased intracranial pressure and seizures, and on steroids-who, as she was dying, had similar nostalgic visions and reminiscences, in her case of the Midwest.

   
18. The Dog Beneath the Skin

   Bear, D. "Temporal-lobe epilepsy: a syndrome of sensory-limbic hy-perconnection."
Cortex
(1979)
15:
357-84.

   Brill, A. A. "The sense of smell in neuroses and psychoses."
Psychoanalytical Quarterly
(1932)
1:
7-42. Brill's lengthy paper covers much more ground than its title would indicate. In particular it contains a detailed consideration of the strength and importance of smell in many animals, in "savages," and in children, the amazing powers and potentials of which seem to have been lost in adult man.

   
19. Murder

   I am not acquainted with any precisely similar accounts. I have, however, in rare cases of frontal-lobe injury, frontal-lobe tumour, frontal-lobe (anterior cerebral) "stroke" and (not least) lobotomy, seen the precipitation of obsessional "reminiscence." Lobotomies, of course, were designed as a "cure" for such "reminiscence"-but, on occasion, caused it to become very much worse. See also Penfield and Perot, op. cit.

   
20. The Visions of Hildegard

   Singer, C. "The visions of Hildegard of Bingen" in
From Magic to Science
(Dover repr. 1958).

   See also my
Migraine
(1970; 3rd ed. 1985), esp. ch. 3, on Migraine Aura.

   For Dostoievski's epileptic transports and visions, see Alajouanine, op. cit.

   
Introduction to Part Four

   Bruner, J. "Narrative and paradigmatic modes of thought," presented at the Annua] Meeting of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, August 1984. Published as "Two Modes of Thought," in
Actual Minds, Possible Worlds
(Boston: 1986), pp. 11-43.

   Scholem, G.
On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism.
New York: 1965.

   Yates, F.
The Art of Memory.
London: 1966.

   
21. Rebecca

   Bruner, J. Ibid.

   Peters, L. R. "The role of dreams in the life of a mentally retarded individual."
Ethos
(1983): 49-65.

   
22. A Walking Grove

   Hill, L. "Idiots savants: a categorisation of abilities.'
Mental Retardation.
December 1974.

   Viscott, D. "A musical idiot savant: a psychodynamic study, and some speculation on the creative process."
Psychiatry
(1970) 33 (4): 494-515.

   
23. The Twins

   Hamblin, D. J. "They are 'idiots savants'-wizards of the calendar."
Life
60 (18 March 1966): 106-8.

   Horwitz, W. A. et al. "Identical twin 'idiots savants'-calendar calculators."
American
/.
Psychiat.
(1965) 121: 1075-79.

   Luria, A. R. and Yudovich, F. la.
Speech and the Development of Mental Processes in the Child.
Eng. tr. London: 1959.

   Myers, F. W. H.
Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death.
London: 1903. See ch. 3, "Genius," esp. pp. 70-87. Myers was in part a genius, and this book is in part a masterpiece. This is evident in the first volume, which is often comparable to William James'
Principles of Psychology
-he was a close personal friend of James. The second volume, "Phantasms of the Dead," etc., is to my mind an embarrassment.

   Nagel, E. and Newmann, J. R.
Godel's Proof.
New York: 1958.

   Park, C. C. and D. See below under Chapter 24.

   Selfe, L.
Nadia.
See below under Chapter 24.

   Silverberg, R.
Thorns.
New York: 1967.

   Smith, S. B.
The Great Mental Calculators: The Psychology, Methods, and Lives of Calculating Prodigies, Past and Present.
New York: 1983.

   Stewart, I.
Concepts of Modern Mathematics.
Harmondsworth: 1975.

   Wollheim, R.
The Thread of Life.
Cambridge, Mass.: 1984. See especially ch. 3 on "iconicity" and "centricity." I had just read this book when I came to write of Martin A., the Twins, and Jose; hence, reference to it appears in all three of these chapters (22, 23, 24).

   
24. The Autist Artist