Sacks vs. Freud: Different Beliefs, Different Treatments
Whether Oliver Sacks had a desire to cure people suffering from strange mental illnesses, or whether he was simply studying the people for his own interest in the concept of illness itself is seemingly without question in, 'The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat'. From the Preface, when he states, 'the sick and their sickness drives me to thoughts which, perhaps, I might otherwise not have' (Sacks vii.) and throughout the collection of stories, Sacks is never so concerned with actually curing and diagnosing the person as much as…
