In Meige and Feidel’s great Les Tics et leur traitement (1902), brilliantly translated by Kinnier Wilson in 1907, there is a wonderful opening personal memoir by a patient, “Les confidences d’un ticqueur,” which is unique of its kind.
As with Tourette’s syndrome, we must go back to the older literature to find full clinical descriptions. Kraepelin, Freud’s contemporary, provides many striking vignettes of neurosyphilis. The interested reader might consult: Kraepelin, E., Lectures on Clinical Psychiatry (Eng. tr. London: 1904), in particular chs. 10 and 12 on megalomania and delirium in general paralysis.
See Luria (1976).
See Luria (1966).
See above under Chapter 10.
Alajouanine, T. “Dostoievski’s epilepsy.” Brain (1963) 86: 209-21.
Critchley, M. and Henson, R. A., eds. Music and the Brain: Studies in the Neurology of Music. London: 1977. Esp. chs. 19 and 20.
Penfield, W. and Perot, P. “The brain’s record of visual and auditory experience: a final summary and discussion.” Brain (1963) 86: 595-696. I regard this magnificent 100-page paper, the culmination of nearly thirty years’ profound observation, experiment, and thought, as one of the most original and important in all neurology. It stunned me when it came out in 1963 and was constantly in my mind when I wrote Migraine in 1967. It is the essential reference and inspiration to the whole of this section. More readable than many novels, it has a wealth and strangeness of material which any novelist would envy.
Salaman, E. A Collection of Moments. London: 1970.
Williams, D. “The structure of emotions reflected in epileptic experiences.” Brain (1956) 79: 29-67.
Hughlings Jackson was the first to address himself to “psychical seizures,” to describe their almost novelistic phenomenology and to identify their anatomical loci in the brain. He wrote several papers on the subject. Most pertinent are those published in Volume 1 of his Selected Writings (1931), pp. 251ff. and 274ff., and the following (not included in that volume):
Jackson, J. H. “On right- or left-sided spasm at the onset of epileptic paroxysms, and on crude sensation warnings, and elaborate mental states.” Brain (1880) 3: 192-206.
----------. “On a particular variety of epilepsy (‘Intellectual Aura’).”
Brain (1888) I J: 179-207.
Purdon Martin has provided an intriguing suggestion that Henry James met Hughlings Jackson, discussed such seizures with him, and employed this knowledge in his depiction of the uncanny apparitions in The Turn of the Screw. “Neurology in fiction: The Turn of the Screw,” British Medical]. (1973)4:717-21.
Marr, D. Vision: A Computational Investigation of Visual Representation in Man. San Francisco: 1982. This is a work of extreme originality and importance, published posthumously (Marr contracted leukemia while still a young man). Penfield shows us the forms of the brain’s final representations—voices, faces, tunes, scenes—the “iconic”: Marr shows us what is not intuitively obvious, or ever normally experienced—the form of the brain’s initial representations. Perhaps I should have given this reference in Chapter 1—it is certain that Dr. P. had some “Marr-like” deficits, difficulties in forming what Marr calls a “primal sketch” in addition to, or underlying, his physiognomonic difficulties. Probably no neurological study of imagery, or memory, can dispense with the considerations raised by Marr.
Jelliffe, S. E. Psychopathology of Forced Movements and Oculogyric Crises of Lethargic Encephalitis. London: 1932. Esp. p. 114ff. discussing Zutt’s paper of 1930.
See also the case of “Rose R.” in Awakenings. London: 1973; 3rd. ed. 1983.
I am not acquainted with the literature on this subject I have, however, had personal experience of another patient—also with a glioma, with increased intracranial pressure and seizures, and on steroids—who, as she was dying, had similar nostalgic visions and reminiscences, in her case of the Midwest.
Bear, D. “Temporal-lobe epilepsy: a syndrome of sensory-limbic hy-perconnection.” Cortex (1979) 15: 357-84.
Brill, A. A. “The sense of smell in neuroses and psychoses.” Psychoanalytical Quarterly (1932) 1: 7-42. Brill’s lengthy paper covers much more ground than its title would indicate. In particular it contains a detailed consideration of the strength and importance of smell in many animals, in “savages,” and in children, the amazing powers and potentials of which seem to have been lost in adult man.
I am not acquainted with any precisely similar accounts. I have, however, in rare cases of frontal-lobe injury, frontal-lobe tumour, frontal-lobe (anterior cerebral) “stroke” and (not least) lobotomy, seen the precipitation of obsessional “reminiscence.” Lobotomies, of course, were designed as a “cure” for such “reminiscence”—but, on occasion, caused it to become very much worse. See also Penfield and Perot, op. cit.
Singer, C. “The visions of Hildegard of Bingen” in From Magic to Science (Dover repr. 1958).
See also my Migraine (1970; 3rd ed. 1985), esp. ch. 3, on Migraine Aura.
For Dostoievski’s epileptic transports and visions, see Alajouanine, op. cit.
Introduction to Part Four
Bruner, J. “Narrative and paradigmatic modes of thought,” presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, August 1984. Published as “Two Modes of Thought,” in Actual Minds, Possible Worlds (Boston: 1986), pp. 11-43.
Scholem, G. On the Kabbalah and its Symbolism. New York: 1965.
Yates, F. The Art of Memory. London: 1966.
Bruner, J. Ibid.
Peters, L. R. “The role of dreams in the life of a mentally retarded individual.” Ethos (1983): 49-65.
Hill, L. “Idiots savants: a categorisation of abilities.” Mental Retardation. December 1974.
Viscott, D. “A musical idiot savant: a psychodynamic study, and some speculation on the creative process.” Psychiatry (1970) 33 (4): 494-515.
Hamblin, D. J. “They are ‘idiots savants’—wizards of the calendar.” Life 60 (18 March 1966): 106-8.
Horwitz, W. A. et al. “Identical twin ‘idiots savants’—calendar calculators.” American /. Psychiat. (1965) 121: 1075-79.
Luria, A. R. and Yudovich, F. la. Speech and the Development of Mental Processes in the Child. Eng. tr. London: 1959.
Myers, F. W. H. Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death. London: 1903. See ch. 3, “Genius,” esp. pp. 70-87. Myers was in part a genius, and this book is in part a masterpiece. This is evident in the first volume, which is often comparable to William James’ Principles of Psychology—he was a close personal friend of James. The second volume, “Phantasms of the Dead,” etc., is to my mind an embarrassment.
Nagel, E. and Newmann, J. R. Godel’s Proof. New York: 1958.
Park, C. C. and D. See below under Chapter 24.
Selfe, L. Nadia. See below under Chapter 24.
Silverberg, R. Thorns. New York: 1967.
Smith, S. B. The Great Mental Calculators: The Psychology, Methods, and Lives of Calculating Prodigies, Past and Present. New York: 1983.
Stewart, I. Concepts of Modern Mathematics. Harmondsworth: 1975.
Wollheim, R. The Thread of Life. Cambridge, Mass.: 1984. See especially ch. 3 on “iconicity” and “centricity.” I had just read this book when I came to write of Martin A., the Twins, and Jose; hence, reference to it appears in all three of these chapters (22, 23, 24).