Basically just a long list of case studies. Interesting stories but little context or insight. ( )

After the disappointment of the author's 'An Anthropologist on Mars' I was pleasantly surprised to find this volume far more interesting, entertaining and devoid of outdated notions towards disability etc.

The book considers the different reasons why people experience hallucinations, which are often visual, but may also be auditory, tactile or even the smelling of something not really there. Some can be caused by problems with vision and hearing, especially as part of the ageing process, where the brain seems to 'make up' for the deficiency in question. Others are associated with conditions that affect many people, such as migraines or epilepsy. And some are commonly experienced when falling asleep.

The more frightening of these sleep-related ones include the phenomena of sleep paralysis. The author makes a case for this being responsible for a lot of the ancient tales of incubus/succubus and other evil presences besetting people as they lay in bed, lying on them and nearly suffocating them. It reminded me of a haunted house short story read as a child but which I've not been able to track down.

There are also types of hallucination which may have led to the worldwide phenomena of ghosts or religious epiphanies and out-of-the body experiences. The sections are all illustrated with brief case studies of particular anonymised patients or people who responded to surveys requesting information about particular conditions. One of the most valuable things Sacks did for his patients was to assure them that they were not going mad, a common fear shared by many.

Altogether I found this a fascinating read and would award it five stars. ( )

Breezy and skips from case study to case study like a frog from one pond leaf to the next, never quite dipping in the waters and getting some depth on any one issue. This is Sacks' style for which he is well liked, but much like a series of interesting magazine articles you start wanting to dig into the meat of the issue at some point and it never really gets there.
What it does do really well is articulate all the variety of hallucinations from a plethora of points of view, (supposedly) real patients with real stories about living with different forms of hallucinations and the impact its had on their lives. From auditory to sensory to visual, the blind seeing visions to hallucinating music to the brain miscoding information making you think everyone you know is a stranger, there's certainly a good spectrum of the scope of possibilities here. Sacks even includes an aside about his personal experiences with hallucinations, mostly derived from drug use - something that could probably have been a fertile book on its own with the renaissance of psychedelics as a therapeutic. ( )

At first I enjoyed this book immensely, but as the chapters proceeded I grew less and less interested. It's not that the material stopped being interesting, it's that I just stopped caring about hallucinations. Also, the writing style wore on me a bit. At first the use of snippets of case studies was nice - a new person mentioned in each paragraph! - but eventually it felt very disjointed and choppy; he didn't flesh out any of the people he talked about, they were just supporting evidence for the fact he was stating.

Fun fact: my copy of this book jumped from page 268, doppelgängers, to page 301, the D section of the bibliography. I had to check out the ebook version from the library to finish, although at the time I seriously considered not bothering. ( )

I had no idea how common hallucinations were – or maybe I just hadn’t really thought about it. From Charles Bonnet syndrome to Anton's syndrome, hypnagogic hallucinations to phantom limb pains, this book walks readers through different types of hallucinations as recounted by the individuals who experience them. Though the stories and situations were interesting, I’m left with the same feeling I have whenever I finish any Oliver Sack’s book: I wish there had been more science. ( )