But, in his journal, Sacks wrote that “a sense of hideous criminality remains (psychologically) attached” to his work: he had given his patients “powers (starting with powers of speech) which they do not have.” Some details, he recognized, were “pure fabrications.” He tried to reassure himself that the exaggerations did not come from a shallow place, such as a desire for fame or attention. “The impulse is both ‘purer’ — and deeper,” he wrote. “It is not merely or wholly a projection — nor (as I have sometimes, ingeniously-disingenuously, maintained) a mere ‘sensitization’ of what I know so well in myself. But (if you will) a sort of autobiography.” He called it “symbolic ‘exo-graphy.’”
Sacks had “misstepped in this regard, many many times, in ‘Awakenings,’” he wrote in another journal entry, describing it as a “source of severe, long-lasting, self-recrimination.”
Now, the claim you made about certain kinds of temporal lobe damage removing your ability to recognize objects may still be true. If you have another source or if it’s common medical knowledge, I would be interested in seeing it.
Oliver Sacks has now been revealed (by self admission) to have made up many of the details in his case studies, including the titular case of the man who mistook his wife for a hat (twitter thread by cognitive scientist Steven Pinker about the previously linked article). Here’s an excerpt about a supposed quote from his journal:
Now, the claim you made about certain kinds of temporal lobe damage removing your ability to recognize objects may still be true. If you have another source or if it’s common medical knowledge, I would be interested in seeing it.