Tumult and Sympathy: The Letters of Oliver Sacks

8 apollinaire 1 9/8/2025, 4:47:55 AM commonwealmagazine.org ↗

Comments (1)

robocat · 12h ago
I highly recommend this to anyone who admires his writing.

I read this a few months back (random find in local library) and it was fascinating to get a glimpse of the man behind the books (my favorite of which is Seeing Voices).

The weirdest part is when he talks about his psychiatric help - I recall he talks about spending all his disposable income on it, and it must have taken a huge amount of his time and energy too.

Reading between the lines it felt like there was a lot of processing about his childhood and his parents. Maybe the genesis of the childhood trauma industry started way back. I don't recall him mentioning anything outrageously shocking from his childhood.