An Anthropologist from Mars, Seven Paradoxical Tales

Methods of Investigations

            Sacks presents a strange clinical and poetical approach by challenging the basic assumptions about the scenery of human reality to explain neurological disorders. His approach is fascinating in that he attempts to empathize with patients suffering conditions that cannot be explained in normal terms. He seeks to determine how pathology outlines awareness and the concept of self. According to Sacks, a patient is more an inhabitant of an unacquainted world than a broken machine. Sacks uses extended and sympathetic case studies in an artistic way to present the fundamental problems that people may fail to naturally understand. Sacks uses his subjects to demonstrate how human spirit adapts following the sensory loss. He presents varying cases where patients had to manage neurological disorders from birth, while others had to re-program after the occurrence of uncertain events, mostly accidents (Sacks 3).

Reasons for Approaching His Investigations in this Way

Sacks main reason for his approach in investigations is to weave captivating patient stories and knowledge in neurology for the layperson. He makes it possible for individuals with little or no knowledge about inexplicable behavior about brain experience real situations through his encounters with patients, thus making science very portable. Sacks attempts to enable people to explore daily life and thinking processes of seven different individuals who have taken advantage of their cognitive hiccups. The use of case studies presents a real-life phenomenon to the readers thus inducing interest to understand how the victims of the uncertain occurrences (mostly accidents) had to deal with their misfortunes (Sacks 5). The research conducted by Sacks is in a humanistic spirit that enables him to show compassion and respect to his patients and subject  (Sacks). This approach is devised to avoid treating patients as guinea pigs or curious oddities, as it is in most medical and psychological case studies.

 Sacks also upholds a sense of curiosity throughout all his work. Here, he attempts to prove that individuals who suffer detachment from their daily experience can still live fulfilling life, and in certain cases, experience a cognitively more appealing lives than the perceived ‘normal’ individuals. He presents normal individuals as persons who are unconstrained by physical or neurological challenges. Sacks’ approach to his investigations can, therefore, be viewed as an encouragement to people with physical or neurological challenges, as he presents similar cases where individuals do not view themselves as victims of uncertain happenings (Sacks 13).

How Sacks “discover” the Individuals Discussed in the Essays

As a biologist, neurologist, psychologist and an author, Sacks’ interest in neurological conditions exposes him to individual whom he believes are as a result of living in different world. His experience with the first patient (case of a colorblind painter) was as a result of a letter he received from the patient from where he developed an interest in gathering more insight in the case  (Sacks 2).  Sacks’ research on ‘Mr. I’ case which he had developed interest in later exposed him to similar cases where other persons had experienced neurological challenges but had in various ways managed to have fulfilling lives. Interactions with other specialists in the field during his research also enable Sacks to identify cases of neurological challenges that had been under the attention of other neurologists. In this case, Sacks incorporates the medical activities that had been put in place in an attempt to address the conditions of the patients in his research.

Are the people he studies “patients” or “subjects” or both?

Sacks presents the people in his study as both patients and subjects. In the case study of the colorblind printer, Sacks identifies that Mr. I had sought medical assistance following his accident. In the letter addressed to Sacks, Mr. I described the various medical procedures he had undertaken uncomfortable with his condition  (Sacks 2). First, he had undergone an eye examination where he discovered his inability to distinguish color or letters. He later visited an ophthalmologist, neurologist and also taken all sorts of tests. In this case, Sacks presents Mr. I as a patient. Sacks’ narration after that describes Mr. I’s progress through his sense of great loss, to a huge liberation, after discovering his feet again as an artist, and finding ways to cope with the unexpected “disability”. In this case, Sacks presents Mr. I as a subject.

How “Disease” Affect the Ways in which Individuals Know and Understand Themselves

Sacks’ essays demonstrate how individuals adapt to sensory loss. He explains how these losses affect how the victims visualized their abilities in their daily lives  (Sacks 7). In the case study of the colorblind printer, Sacks expounds how the artist achieves a reformed creative identity. He perceives his recently acquired gray vision as pure rather than preoccupied with color. Following a period of extreme depression, the subject comes to think of his condition as a strange gift. The second encounter with Virgil describes a situation where his comfortable life as a blind person is irrevocably over after his sight is restored. This case demonstrates disruption to a perceived contented blind person life.

In other case studies dealing with autism and epilepsy, Sacks presents Aspergers’ syndrome case and that of a painter with splendidly detailed visions of his childhood town. The discussions by the author in regard to the different abilities that these people may develop reveals flat characteristics that are not completely ‘human.’ Sacks’ case studies describe the change in the behavior of the subjects following the uncertain events that allow them to experience the physical world in a unique manner (Sacks 39). These changes make it possible for the individuals with uncertain neurological challenges change how they view themselves from disadvantaged persons to people with unique abilities.

How has reading these essays informed your understanding of such concepts as “normality” and “handicap”?

This essay identifies the concept normality and handicap as a relationship rather than a property. According to Sacks, the handicap can be viewed not regarding a person but the relationship between the individual and his/her environmental context. Therefore, normality or handicap develops from how well individuals can freely relate to the environment that surrounds them. This view is essential in that it informs against the ideological constraints whereby people are doomed to no-way-out disability or where the society is subjected to stigmatization concerning the receptacle of its ills. Sacks’ essay establishes how the interests of the disabled and the society as a whole may become feasible due to flexible discovery and understanding of the relationship between the subjects and the environment, and the establishment of inventive and creative approaches to normality  (Sacks 38). 

Work Cited

Slacks, O. An Anthropologist from Mars; The Case of the Colorblind Painter. New York: Vintage, 1995.