The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: "The Possessed"

by Oliver Sacks
In this classic collection of "clinical tales," neurologist Oliver Sacks explores a range of neurological conditions and phenomena.

Here are links to our lists for the collection: Part One Introduction; The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat; The Lost Mariner; The Disembodied Lady; The Man Who Fell out of Bed; Hands; Phantoms; On the Level; Eyes Right!; The President's Speech; Part Two Introduction; Witty Ticcy Ray; Cupid's Disease; A Matter of Identity; Yes, Father-Sister; The Possessed; Part Three Introduction; Reminiscence; Incontinent Nostalgia; A Passage to India; The Dog Beneath the Skin; Murder; The Visions of Hildegard; Part Four Introduction; Rebecca; A Walking Grove; The Twins; The Autist Artist
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Full list of words from this list:

words only definitions & notes
  1. phantasmagoric
    characterized by fantastic and incongruous imagery
    Tourette himself, and many of the older clinicians, used to recognise a malignant form of Tourette's, which might disintegrate the personality, and lead to a bizarre phantasmagoric, pantomimic and often impersonatory form of ‘psychosis' or frenzy.
  2. qualitative
    involving distinguishing attributes
    This form of Tourette's—‘super-Tourette's'—is quite rare, perhaps fifty times rarer than ordinary Tourette's syndrome, and it may be qualitatively different, as well as far more intense than any of the ordinary forms of the disorder.
  3. singular
    unusual or striking
    This ‘Tourette psychosis', this singular identity-frenzy, is quite different from ordinary psychosis, because of its underlying, and unique, physiology and phenomenology.
  4. underlying
    in the nature of something though not readily apparent
    This ‘Tourette psychosis', this singular identity-frenzy, is quite different from ordinary psychosis, because of its underlying, and unique, physiology and phenomenology.
  5. affinity
    inherent resemblance between persons or things
    None the less, it has affinities, on the one hand, to the frenzied motor psychoses sometimes induced by L-Dopa and, on the other, to the confabulatory frenzies of Korsakov’s psychosis.
  6. florid
    elaborately or excessively ornamented
    The day after I saw Ray, my first Touretter, my eyes and mind opened, as I mentioned earlier, when, in the streets of New York, I saw no less than three Touretters—all as characteristic as Ray, though more florid.
  7. vignette
    a small illustrative sketch
    It was a day of visions for the neurological eye. In swift vignettes I witnessed what it might mean to have Tourette’s syndrome of ultimate severity, not only tics and convulsions of movement, but tics and convulsions of perception, imagination, the passions—of the entire personality.
  8. extravagant
    unrestrained, especially with regard to feelings
    What could be better, for this purpose, than a street in New York—an anonymous public street in a vast city—where the subject of extravagant, impulsive disorders can enjoy and exhibit to the full the monstrous liberty, or slavery, of their condition.
  9. antecedent
    anything that precedes something similar in time
    'Street-neurology’, indeed, has respectable antecedents.
  10. inveterate
    habitual
    James Parkinson, as inveterate a walker of the streets of London as Charles Dickens was to be, forty years later, delineated the disease that bears his name, not in his office, but in the teeming streets of London.
  11. delineate
    describe in vivid detail
    James Parkinson, as inveterate a walker of the streets of London as Charles Dickens was to be, forty years later, delineated the disease that bears his name, not in his office, but in the teeming streets of London.
  12. convulse
    contract involuntarily, as in a spasm
    Was she having a fit? What on earth was convulsing her—and, by a sort of sympathy or contagion, also convulsing everyone whom she gnashingly, ticcily passed?
  13. pallid
    lacking in vitality or interest or effectiveness
    She was imitating the passers-by—if ‘imitation' is not too pallid, too passive, a word.
  14. caricature
    represent a person with comic exaggeration
    She was imitating the passers-by—if ‘imitation' is not too pallid, too passive, a word. Should we say, rather, that she was caricaturing everyone she passed?
  15. parody
    humorous or satirical mimicry
    Every mirroring was also a parody, a mocking, an exaggeration of salient gestures and expressions, but an exaggeration in itself no less convulsive than intentional—a consequence of the violent acceleration and distortion of all her motions.
  16. salient
    conspicuous, prominent, or important
    Every mirroring was also a parody, a mocking, an exaggeration of salient gestures and expressions, but an exaggeration in itself no less convulsive than intentional—a consequence of the violent acceleration and distortion of all her motions.
  17. farcical
    broadly or extravagantly humorous
    Thus a slow smile, monstrously accelerated, would become a violent, milliseconds-long grimace; an ample gesture, accelerated, would become a farcical convulsive movement.
  18. frenetic
    fast and energetic in an uncontrolled or wild way
    In the course of a short city-block this frantic old woman frenetically caricatured the features of forty or fifty passers-by, in a quick-fire sequence of kaleidoscopic imitations, each lasting a second or two, sometimes less, and the whole dizzying sequence scarcely more than two minutes.
  19. resonance
    the ability to create understanding or an emotional response
    This grotesque, involuntary resonance, or mutuality, by which everyone was drawn into an absurdly amplifying interaction, was the source of the disturbance I had seen from a distance.
  20. repertoire
    a collection of works that an artist or company can perform
    And there, with all the appearances of a woman violently sick, she expelled, tremendously accelerated and abbreviated, all the gestures, the postures, the expressions, the demeanours, the entire behavioural repertoires, of the past forty or fifty people she had passed.
  21. genesis
    a coming into being
    It came to me in this moment that such ‘super-Touretters' must be placed, by an organic quirk, through no fault of their own, in a most extraordinary, indeed unique, existential position, which has some analogies to that of raging ‘super-Korsakov’s', but, of course, has a quite different genesis—and aim.
  22. acuity
    a quick and penetrating intelligence
    The Korsakovian, perhaps mercifully, never knows it, but the Touretter perceives his plight with excruciating, and perhaps finally ironic, acuity, though he may be unable, or unwilling, to do much about it.
  23. repudiate
    refuse to acknowledge, ratify, or recognize as valid
    For where the Korsakovian is driven by amnesia, absence, the Touretter is driven by extravagant impulse—impulse of which he is both the creator and the victim, impulse he may repudiate, but cannot disown.
  24. ambiguous
    having more than one possible meaning
    Thus he is impelled, as the Korsakovian is not, into an ambiguous relation with his disorder: vanquishing it, being vanquished by it, playing with it—there is every variety of conflict and collusion.
  25. vanquish
    defeat in a competition, race, or conflict
    Thus he is impelled, as the Korsakovian is not, into an ambiguous relation with his disorder: vanquishing it, being vanquished by it, playing with it—there is every variety of conflict and collusion.
  26. collusion
    secret agreement
    Thus he is impelled, as the Korsakovian is not, into an ambiguous relation with his disorder: vanquishing it, being vanquished by it, playing with it—there is every variety of conflict and collusion.
  27. inhibition
    the conscious exclusion of unacceptable thoughts or desires
    Lacking the normal, protective barriers of inhibition, the normal, organically determined boundaries of self, the Touretter's ego is subject to a lifelong bombardment.
  28. beguile
    attract; cause to be enamored
    He is beguiled, assailed, by impulses from within and without, impulses which are organic and convulsive, but also personal (or rather pseudo-personal) and seductive.
  29. poignant
    arousing powerful emotions, especially pity or sadness
    Can it develop, in face of such a shattering, such pressures—or will it be overwhelmed, to produce a 'Tourettized soul’ (in the poignant words of a patient I was later to see)?
  30. theological
    of or relating to or concerning the study of religion
    There is a physiological, an existential, almost a theological pressure upon the soul of the Touretter—whether it can be held whole and sovereign, or whether it will be taken over, possessed and dispossessed, by every immediacy and impulse.
  31. sovereign
    not controlled by outside forces
    There is a physiological, an existential, almost a theological pressure upon the soul of the Touretter—whether it can be held whole and sovereign, or whether it will be taken over, possessed and dispossessed, by every immediacy and impulse.
  32. dispossess
    deprive someone of something, especially property
    There is a physiological, an existential, almost a theological pressure upon the soul of the Touretter—whether it can be held whole and sovereign, or whether it will be taken over, possessed and dispossessed, by every immediacy and impulse.
  33. abiding
    unceasing
    This is clearly not the case with a normal human being, because he owns his own perceptions. They are not a mere flux, but his own, united by an abiding individuality or self.
  34. inalienable
    incapable of being repudiated or transferred to another
    The miracle is that, in most cases, he succeeds—for the powers of survival, of the will to survive, and to survive as a unique inalienable individual, are, absolutely, the strongest in our being: stronger than any impulses, stronger than disease.
  35. militant
    showing a fighting disposition
    Health, health militant, is usually the victor.
Created on Wed Sep 02 11:38:23 EDT 2020 (updated Wed Oct 28 13:16:34 EDT 2020)

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