Thursday 2 June 2016

Sacks on memory

In desperation at Blogger's font sizing I have decided to split the previous post into two. So here's the late Oliver Sacks from his essay "The Lost Mariner":

'There are are no prescriptions,’ Luria wrote, ‘in a case like this. Do whatever your ingenuity 
and your heart suggest. There is little or no hope of any recovery in his  memory. But a man does not consist of memory alone. He has feeling, will, sensibilities, moral being— matters of which neuropsychology cannot speak. And it is here, beyond the realm of an impersonal 
psychology, that you may find ways to touch him, and change him. And the circumstances 
of your work especially allow this, for you work in a home, which is like a little 
world,  quite different from the clinics and institutions where I work. Neuropsychologically, there is little or nothing you can do; but in the realm of the individual, there may be much you can do'.