Author of "Seeing Voices" and "Awakenings"

December 05, 2000

Through his numerous books of case studies and essays, Dr. Oliver Sacks explores the mysteries of both neurology and the human condition. In "Seeing Voices," he examines deaf culture and education from neurological, linguistic, and historical perspectives. The resulting book is a fascinating exploration of language.

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NetCafeLive: Welcome to NetCafeLive! Tonight we are chatting with Dr. Oliver Sacks, author of "Awakenings," "An Anthropologist on Mars," and, most recently, "Seeing Voices." NetCafeLive is presented by Borders, Inc. and Talk City, Inc. Welcome, Dr. Sacks!

Dr. Sacks: Hello people. It's nice to be in the same virtual space as all of you, and I look forward to our conversation, which I hope will be real as well as virtual.

Kayla TX: What made you decide to write about your experiences as a doctor?

Dr. Sacks: I grew up in an atmosphere of medical story-telling, Both my parents were doctors and both of them loved talking about their patients and the clinical stories they told would turn into human stories and complete biographies sometimes. So, I do in writing what my parents did in conversation; but I believe that narrative and the way people experience illnesses and injuries and ways they adapt to them and all their feelings are an essential part of medicine, and one has to tell their stories.

Dr. Bob: Which of your books was most difficult to write?

Dr. Sacks: The second most difficult to write was my book called "A Leg to Stand On." I think because this was a book about my own experiences and not my patient's and because it involved reliving an accident and an injury and a period of great distress. So I fiddled with that book for nine years. However, I think equally difficult and challenging, I should say, is the book I've just completed now, which is an autobiography of my early life growing up as a boy in England in the War, being evacuated and my first passion which was for chemistry. This autobiography takes me up to the age of 13 and then stops. This has been a great challenge to try and put together. It's really been an exercise of memory and perhaps emotional memory, trying to remember and communicate what it was like. Henry James says one cannot visit what he calls the unvisitable past, but I've had a try.

MKT65: Do you think that deaf education is on track in this country? What about internationally?

Dr. Sacks: Deaf education has been a subject of tremendous controversy for the last 300 years. Between those who are in favor of an oral approach in trying to teach deaf people speech and those who are in favor of letting them acquire sign language which comes much more easily and naturally to them. The essential thing is that language of some sort, whether it is spoken or signed, be acquired by the age of 3 or 4 or 5. That is the age when the brain is perfectly fitted to acquire language. In this country, there is now an increasing recognition of the importance of acquiring language early and of giving deaf children access to sign language at a very early age. With the understanding that once this has been acquired, they could then go on to become fluent writers of English and perhaps speakers of it. The general notion is that this would be best for deaf children to become bilingual and bicultural, equally at home in their own sign language, and in the language of the country in which they live. Some countries, in particular Sweden and Denmark and Uruguay and Venezuela, have been pioneers in such a bilingual, bicultural education. But this country is moving along in the same direction, though unfortunately not as fast as one might have hoped after the revolution of the deaf in 1989--the time when the deaf students of Gallaudet University insisted that they have a deaf person as a president, one of their own. But in general, there is a positive move in this country as elsewhere in the world to allow deaf children to become fluent in their own sign language, and then hopefully equally fluent in written and perhaps spoken language as well.

Topaz: Dr. Sacks, how has your experience with the deaf community changed since your first explorations, as written in the original "Seeing Voices?"

Dr. Sacks: Topaz, how nice. Greetings to Topaz. I wonder if you're a mineralogist. I'm fond of Topaz. In regards to your question, I think the experience, which has especially moved me and interested me since "Seeing Voices" was first published has been with regard to the community of the deaf-blind. These are usually people who are born deaf and who subsequently lose their sight as well and due to a hereditary condition Usher's Syndrome. It so happens that Seattle has been very hospitable to the deaf-blind community, and there are more than 200 deaf-blind people in Seattle, many of whom are married, many of whom work, all of whom are computer literate, and most of whom have a feeling of living quite a rich worthwhile life even though one might think that being deaf and blind would be horribly lonely and constrictive and impoverishing. I think what has especially impressed me has been the strength of the community in Seattle and also the importance of computers in allowing easy communication between people who are both deaf and blind. When I first visited these people in 1990, they asked me if I might write another book called "Feeling Voices." I never did this, but I did make a film with them, which was shown on public television. As a neurologist and someone interested in language, I have been fascinated to see how complete a communication is possible entirely by touch. One speaks of sign language usually as a visual language, but, of course, for the deaf-blind, it is entirely a touch language. One sees that the human need and capacity for language is so great that language is created even if the people are both deaf and blind.

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