Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    Unavailable
    Hallucinations
    Unavailable
    Hallucinations
    Unavailable
    Hallucinations
    Audiobook9 hours

    Hallucinations

    Published by Penguin Random House Audio

    Narrated by Dan Woren

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Have you ever seen something that wasn't really there? Heard someone call your name in an empty house? Sensed someone following you and turned around to find nothing?

    Hallucinations don't belong wholly to the insane. Much more commonly, they are linked to sensory deprivation, intoxication, illness, or injury. People with migraines may see shimmering arcs of light or tiny, Lilliputian figures of animals and people. People with failing eyesight, paradoxically, may become immersed in a hallucinatory visual world. Hallucinations can be brought on by a simple fever or even the act of waking or falling asleep, when people have visions ranging from luminous blobs of color to beautifully detailed faces or terrifying ogres. Those who are bereaved may receive comforting "visits" from the departed. In some conditions, hallucinations can lead to religious epiphanies or even the feeling of leaving one's own body.

    Humans have always sought such life-changing visions, and for thousands of years have used hallucinogenic compounds to achieve them. As a young doctor in California in the 1960s, Oliver Sacks had both a personal and a professional interest in psychedelics. These, along with his early migraine experiences, launched a lifelong investigation into the varieties of hallucinatory experience.

    Here, with his usual elegance, curiosity, and compassion, Dr. Sacks weaves together stories of his patients and of his own mind-altering experiences to illuminate what hallucinations tell us about the organization and structure of our brains, how they have influenced every culture's folklore and art, and why the potential for hallucination is present in us all, a vital part of the human condition. 

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateNov 6, 2012
    ISBN9780307967336
    Unavailable
    Hallucinations

    Related to Hallucinations

    Related audiobooks

    Medical For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Hallucinations

      Nov 7, 2020

      Hallucinations
      5 min read

    • Article

      Building A Fortean Library

      Aug 12, 2021

      There’s a standard, somewhat dismissive, sceptical explanation of anomalous phenomena that characterises them all as the product of misperceptions, hoaxes or hallucinations. Certainly there are plenty of reports of strange phenomena that can be accou

      7 min read

    • Article

      Seeing Is Believing… Or Is It?

      Jul 15, 2021

      SEND FORUM SUBMISSIONS TO THE EDITOR: DRSUTTON@FORTEANTIMES.COM Sceptics often dismiss ghosts, fairies and UFOs as people “just seeing things”. If you hear a poltergeist knocking, you’re “just hearing things”. The sulphurous smell of a demonic presen

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Neurologist Who Diagnoses Psychosomatics

      Sep 22, 2021

      Our brains can play the worst tricks on us. They are always looking to explain and categorize incoming stimuli, sometimes perceiving threats out of the flimsiest bits of information gleaned from our bodies and our environment. Every so often they go

      13 min read

    • Article

      A Mental Disease by Any Other Name: For Frank Russell, reinterpreting his schizophrenia as shamanism helped his symptoms.

      Sep 15, 2016

      It starts without warning—or rather, the warnings are there, but your ability to detect them exists only in hindsight. First you’re sitting in the car with your son, then he tells you: “I cannot find my old self again.” You think, well, teenagers say

      14 min read

    • Article

      A Mental Disease by Any Other Name

      Mar 1, 2018

      It starts without warning—or rather, the warnings are there, but your ability to detect them exists only in hindsight. First you’re sitting in the car with your son, then he tells you: “I cannot find my old self again.” You think, well, teenagers say

      14 min read

    • Article

      Stricken By Sleep

      Aug 12, 2021

      and Other Stories of Mystery Illness Suzanne O’Sullivan Picador 2021 Hb, 336pp, £16.99, ISBN 9781529010558 Forteans are fascinated by culture-bound syndromes, outbreaks of functional neurological disorder (previously called mass hysteria) and exotic,

      2 min read

    • Article

      Behind YOU!

      Dec 21, 2021

      Behind YOU!
      2 min read

    • Article

      Who you GONNA CALL?

      Mar 16, 2021

      Who you GONNA CALL?
      4 min read

    • Article

      Let’s Dream Talk

      Oct 1, 2019

      I had a weird dream in which my two goldfish had died, and I had to remove them from the fish tank. Only, when I did, I found that they had tiny cats’ heads! And they had really bright, staring eyes too. Isabella Charlesworth, 31, London Goldfish s

      3 min read

    • Article

      The Hour Between Dog and Wolf

      Dec 12, 2018

      The Hour Between Dog and Wolf
      9 min read

    • Article

      Beware! You Are Hallucinating Right Now!

      Apr 6, 2022

      The tiny people are around 30cm tall, and they wear brightly coloured suits as they follow Mr. B around his home. He can hear their feet tapping on the floor. Mr. B has never seen them before – he is a well-educated 25-year-old married man, although

      8 min read

    • Article

      Far Out, Man

      Dec 5, 2021

      Far Out, Man
      13 min read

    • Article

      Tales Of Memory And Forgetting

      Mar 1, 2023

      In 2010, when she was 25 years old, Dasha Kiper abandoned her pursuit of a PhD in clinical psychology to move in with a man she calls Mr. Kessler, a 98-year-old Holocaust survivor who was succumbing to Alzheimer's. Kiper did this, she writes, not onl

      4 min read

    • Article

      Mysterious Maladies

      Jun 6, 2021

      Mysterious Maladies
      9 min read

    • Article

      Sleep On It

      Mar 23, 2020

      HOW SERIOUSLY do you take your dreams? Would you consider yourself to be a potential oneirologist? Alice Robb, the author of Why We Dream: The Science, Creativity and Transformative Power of Dreams, sees dreams as a key part of our mental and physica

      1 min read

    • Article

      Death Becomes You

      Aug 7, 2022

      Death Becomes You
      13 min read

    • Article

      Let’s Dream Talk

      Jun 11, 2019

      I dreamt I had a super-posh new bathroom with the most amazing bath. It was huge, with all kinds of special fittings. The whole bathroom looked like it was from some sort of luxurious, futuristic spaceship. I woke with a smile, but what does it mean?

      2 min read

    • Article

      BODY OF Knowledge

      Feb 19, 2019

      BODY OF Knowledge
      4 min read

    • Article

      You Little Wonder!

      Feb 17, 2023

      You Little Wonder!
      5 min read

    • Article

      What It Feels Like to Die

      Sep 9, 2016

      What It Feels Like to Die
      6 min read

    • Article

      In your Dreams

      Oct 31, 2021

      In your Dreams
      13 min read

    • Article

      The Tricky Problem with Other Minds

      Aug 29, 2019

      Human “exceptionalism” is for many people an unquestioned assumption. For the religious, it is a God-given fact; for humanists, it is a celebration of our unique mental capacities. No other species has created music, art, literature, or built skyscra

      20 min read

    • Article

      A Guide to the Believing Brain

      Oct 1, 2022

      A Guide to the Believing Brain
      5 min read

    Reviews for Hallucinations

    3.5/5

    263 ratings43 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

    • 4/5
      Many people think hallucinations only happen to people with schizophrenia and other psychological disorders. In truth, hallucinations occur in 'healthy' minds, as well. With this book, Oliver Sacks provides data on diseases that can cause hallucinations, such as Parkinson's and migraines. He also talks about a variety of other causes, such as sleep deprivation and medications. Through it all, he shares anecdotes from history, his patients, and his own life.I found the subject fascinating. Sacks, a neurologist, has spent much of his life researching the mind and, in these pages, he shares some of what he has learned along the way. The language used is easy to understand. Medical terms are clarified and explained. The average person should have no problem reading this.While I did find the examples interesting, after a while it all became a bit repetitive. Information was often repeated in various chapters. And the book didn't have much of a conclusion. Despite that, I'd recommend the book to everyone. What you'll learn is well worth the time you'll spend reading.
    • 3/5
      Fascinating as most of Sack's material is. A little to dry.
    • 4/5
      Excellent Oliver Sacks as usual. Fascinating cases, insightful hypotheses.
    • 4/5
      Fascinating account of the wonders of the brain. Had no idea the brain could offer so much emotional and physical protection to the human body in the form of hallucinations. Also, very intrigued by Oliver Sacks's curiosity and found narratives. First book I've ever read Sacks's, and I will surely read more.
    • 3/5
      Not the best Sacks I've ever read, but still interesting. Learned some new things, that's always a plus.
    • 4/5
      Oliver Sacks describes in this book many of the varied physiological causes for hallucinations (as opposed to the psychiatric causes). His style of meandering through a subject with the aid of numerous examples is very readable, and I found it utterly fascinating. I particularly enjoyed the section on migraine and now understand a lot more about my own migraine aura.
    • 3/5
      More about hallucinations than you ever wanted to know. It starts out kind of neat, learning about the hallucinations brought on by sensory loss or drug use, but it gets very repetitive.
    • 3/5
      Oliver Sacks is a neurologist who's written a number of other books that I haven't read. Through the course of Hallucinations, I was reminded that I hadn't read these other books, since from time to time he would mention a case and then follow up with "which I described in more detail in my book ____." I appreciate that he didn't want to retread ground that was covered elsewhere, but sometimes it felt a little like I was reading a bibliography, or listening to a series of movie trailers. Aside from that, this was an interesting look at a large range of things that can be classified as hallucinations. You know how sometimes when you're laying in bed at night with your eyes closed and you'll start to see patterns? Mine are usually kind of like an optical illusion - they'll be a series of shapes that seem to be moving toward me or away from me. I didn't realize those are hallucinations, but they are. The ones we typically think of are covered, of course, including ones induced by drugs and hallucinations that involve each of our different senses. The occurrence of phantom limbs is talked about, and I thought this was one of the more fascinating sections. The relationship between what the eyes see and the brain knows is complicated, and although the brain has a long memory for things it hasn't seen in a while, it does eventually forget. This seems to be a cause for pain in a phantom limb or for feeling like a body part that has been immobile and invisible to you for a long time no longer belongs to you. It wasn't extremely in depth about any particular type or cause of hallucinations, but instead provides a good overview. I stopped the audio a number of times to look up more information about occurrences he described just because some of them seemed too wild to be true, but of course they were true. What more can you really ask for in a book about hallucinations than to be entertained and left with a little wonder and head-shaking at the odd and amazing things that our brains can do?
    • 4/5
      I've read The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and this was along the same lines. Rather than being a series of case studies, this book looks at hallucinations topically. Different chapters cover scent hallucinations, hallucinations that occur during and around sleep, drug-induced hallucinations, phantom limbs, visual hallucinations in patients that have gone blind, have different types of brain injuries, different types and feelings for hallucinations, etc.I loved the way the topics and chapters were organized. Sacks is also great at covering interesting topics and providing just enough of an explanation without getting too technical. And he uses cases to illustrate each topic and chapter, with accounts from different doctors and patients.A very interesting book. I read it over the course of a few months, but it was always easy to pick back up and get into, since the chapters read like their own separate topics. I plan on reading Awakenings next.
    • 4/5
      Oliver Sacks helps us see ourselves transformed into magical beings who can recreate the very fabric of our lives. When we see that what we have always done is actually the mind at variance with itself in some aspect, it can become pretty heavy. In a good way. Fun investigation into how many of us can be in thrall to these either pesky [or enthralling] apparitions.
    • 4/5
      Very educational but sometimes the technical / medical terms need to be read more than once. This was the first Oliver Sacks book I have read and I some times got the impression it was a drawing together of his other works all of which are referenced numerous times. Also the number and frequency of medical terms mean that some people may be put off entirely.
    • 4/5
      I've been intrigued by Oliver Sacks when I first saw his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat. I still haven't read it yet but I will. The reason I read Hallucinations was because it was for one of my book clubs. Thank Goodness for that book club.

      In Hallucinations, Dr. Sacks explains that hallucinations are not by-products of people inflicted with dementia and psychosis alone. The very sane and the very mentally stable can have them too. There are various ailments and disorders that can cause them such as Charles Bonnet Syndrome (CBS), Parkinson's, Narcolepsy. Also, certain drugs can cause altered states that can lead to hallucinations.

      Sacks also went into the different types of hallucinations: visual, auditory, and tactile. Also, afflictions that really wouldn't be consider a hallucination, at least by me, like phantom limbs, migraines and certain sleep disorders. Infused within are brief history lessons about when was the first occurrence of the disorder or syndrome, etc.

      Also, Sacks also gives personal insights like when he momentarily became addicted to drugs and had a very bad trip with hallucinations galore. It was funny. I really enjoyed this book and will definitely read more.
    • 4/5
      Hallucinations is a fascinating book but is the first of Sacks' works to, in my humble opinion, overstep scientific bounds. Hallucinations are tricky things and to lay out a history of hallucination by disorder based in large part on completely anecdotal evidence grates my skeptic's soul. At one point he even describes the hallucination of loved ones after death as a normal "neurological response to grief" but then fails to tie this to any empirical data. Or I was hallucinating at that point.

      His chapters on hallucination as a consequence of illness, prescription side-effects, sensory deprivation, sleep paralysis and grief are very interesting. Chapters on hallucinations as caused by psychedelic drugs are much less interesting, almost self-serving. Pages and pages of descriptions of trips that all sound like Jefferson Airplane lyrics are for the most part, only of interest to the author.

      Still, the book is well worth reading if you have an avid interest in neurosciences (Sacks assumes the reader has a working knowledge of the main parts of the brain and their functions and does not slow down for expositions in this area) and if you are fascinated by the blurry line between reality and dreams and dreams and hallucinations.
    • 3/5
      In this book, Oliver Sacks talks about many types of hallucinations. We first think of visual or audial hallucinations, but any sense can be suspect. He also covers disease-based, fatigue-based, phantom limbs, narcotics, shell shock/trauma, and others. Much of the book is case studies, he throws in some historical context and a little neurology. In some cases he discusses brain imaging relating to the hallucinations. The book seemed long, the case studies didn't really offer a lot of variety in many cases. Yet at times it became very interesting, but it wasn't sustained. There is a lot of information, but it isn't one of his better books.
    • 3/5
      He's lost his touch a bit - this was much drier than his earlier work. Most interesting and juicier chapter was, of course, the one about the effects of the prodigious quantities of drugs he took in his student days! Found myself skimming by the end; it was all quite repetitive.
    • 3/5
      This book is a one beat drummer. When you first read it you think this is fascinating but then by chapter nine or ten if feels like you have read it all before. Dr. Sacks gives hundreds of examples of hallucinations and he divides them up based on their causes like loss of eyesight, sensory deprivation and brain injury for example. His sources include, himself, his patients, people who have written to him and other people experiences that he has read about. But the hallucinations start to sound the same and so after initial excitement my interest tailed off. Perhaps if I or my immediate family suffered from this I would have had a more sustained interest..
    • 4/5
      In his newest book Oliver Sacks, a practicing physician known for such books as The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat and Musicophilia, turns his attention to hallucinations. While in popular culture we tend to think of hallucinations as being psychoses and in the realm of insanity, he focuses primarily on the sort of neurological disorders that sane people have. In fact, hallucinations may not be as odd as we think - haven't we all felt like there was someone behind us, or heard our name even when no one was around?Primarily organized around types of hallucinations - visual, aural, parkinsonian, phantom limbs, etc. - the book is a fascinating blend of history and case study. Perhaps I was most fascinated to discover the types of hallucinations that I've had, mostly as a child, when I was in that state between sleep and wakefulness and "saw" someone by my bed or in my room. There are other, less common, hallucinations explored, too, and I really enjoyed when he brought up the results of fMRI scans done during hallucinations. The connections between what one experiences and what goes on the brain intrigues me, and I'll definitely be looking to read some of Sacks' earlier works.
    • 4/5
      Using fascinating case histories, personal experience with drugs, and stories from other cultures, Sacks tells us about the organization and structure of our brains by describing visual, auditory, and olfactory hallucinations and visions produced by illness, fevers, sleep deprivation, drugs, grief, trauma and exhaustion.
    • 3/5
      I'll confess that this is the first Oliver Sacks book I have read, although I have seen his work mentioned all over and have always been intrigued. I was not disappointed with Hallucinations, an engaging book that covers hallucinations not caused by psychosis, such as seen in schizophrenia.

      The hallucinations Sacks covers are diverse and cover an array of causes: from Charles Bonnet syndrome to sensory deprivation, from sleep paralysis to phantom limb syndrome. Together with a variety of historical sources and patient accounts, he has pulled together a book that covers everything but psychosis. Some hallucinations have roots inside the brain, such as the prelude to an epileptic seizure, while others come from more nebulous sources, like grief or trauma. He even delves into intentional hallucinations, the kind caused by taking psychadelic drugs, which he apparently has ample experience with.

      Sacks writes fluidly and has a wry sense of humor that crops up every now and again; though he occasionally delves into decidedly more than "pop" neuropsychology, I never felt bored reading it.

      Definitely interesting to those who are curious about the brain and its often strange workings.
    • 2/5
      I found the descriptions of hallucinations to be repetitive and boring, which caused me to skip through the book and read some interesting bits. I would have hoped for more science and less description of hallucinations, which while fascinating to those experiencing them, are less fascinating to the rest of us.
    • 4/5
      As always Oliver Sachs writes fascinating books with really interesting neurological stories. This also adds his usage of drugs which I had never heard of before. My only difficulty was that by the end I was getting a bit bored. The hallucinations I found more interesting were in the beginning of the book.
    • 3/5
      I can only take Oliver Sacks in small doses. This book was ok, but it read as strung together case histories (drawn from letters from his extensive correspondence) rather than as a coherent whole. i was disappointed in Sacks' decision to write about hallucinations caused by brain damage, drugs or other physical conditions (such as blindness) only, and not consider hallucinations brought on by mental illness.
    • 5/5
      Sachs is always mindful of our souls, anything he writes about can touch the reader in a personal way. When I finished Hallucinations, some philosophical questions remained unanswered. The variety of experiences described, however, is wonderful. Doubles of oneself appear, always in mirror image; phantom limbs can be trained to behave, and Jesus really saves. Much of the book consists of quoted reports by patients and others, so by the end the question of personality is addressed indirectly. Some people react with fear, others with joy. Many report amusement, some have too much of a good thing. Which came first, the attitude or the feeling? I'm glad Sacks doesn't hypothesize about this, but respects each individual, and leaves doubts hanging, as doubt must do.
    • 3/5
      The individual cases of various patients provided a robust and varied picture or hallucinations from a neurological perspective. However, the best part of the book was the author's own accounts of psychotropic drub use. Over all, I enjoyed the subject and gained some insight to something I had previously thought of strictly in terms of mental disorders.
    • 4/5
      Neurologist Oliver Sacks turns his attention to the topic of people who see (or hear, or, occasionally, smell or feel) things that aren't actually there. There's a little bit of overlap here with some of his earlier books, but I'd say there's more than enough that's new to make it worthwhile even if you've read everything else he's written. It's not an exhaustive look at the topic of hallucinations, because he doesn't really get into hallucinations that come with psychosis, such as schizophrenia -- a topic that seems like it could well fill another whole book by itself. He talks about a huge variety of other things that can cause hallucinations, though. Indeed, I had no idea there were so many things that could cause hallucinations! There's blindness (total or partial) or sensory deprivation, which can lead to the brain inventing images to fill the nothingness. There's drugs such as LSD, of course. And a number of diseases, including some I never would have associated with hallucinations. Migraines, which often come with visual auras, but can sometimes get even weirder. Fever delirium. Brain damage. Perfectly ordinary brains getting confused on waking up or falling asleep. And lets not forget phantom limbs...As usual with Sack's books, there are a lot of fascinating descriptions of things his patients and others have experienced, intermixed with some layman's-level explanations about what's going on in the brain when this stuff happens, at least as far as it's actually understood. There are also some relevant accounts of the author's own personal experience; among other things, Sacks took a surprising amount of drugs back in the 60s. In the end, also as usual, I'm left with a bemused appreciation of how incredibly complex our brains are and just how deeply weird things can get when they go a bit wrong. I also keep expecting to start hallucinating myself any moment, but hopefully that will pass.
    • 5/5
      I pretty routinely love Sacks' books, and this one is no exception. Even though I myself have had no hallucinations, induced or otherwise, I have always been fascinated with the topic. I do have lucid dreams, which are sort of related to hallucinations, but still are dreams, nevertheless. Fascinating book.
    • 3/5
      All the ways people can experience hallucinations. One of the most interesting cases was for me the first one. a blind woman who was experiencing hallucinations, but turned out to actually have a disease that caused this. Also the history behind the various facets of this phenomena. A little to dry and to many facts and figures. Tended to skip around a bit but some it was very interesting so I am glad I read this.
    • 4/5
      A fascinating insight into the experiences and causes of hallucinations in people who are not suffering from schizophrenia or other similar illnesses. This includes hallucinations that are seen, heard or smelt and are often triggered by trauma, grief or stress, or are chemically induced. It is amazing how the brain can provide a substitute reality when our senses are altered, such as in blindness, or the loss of a limb.I found this book very easy to read as well as highly informative.
    • 4/5
      Excellent Oliver Sacks as usual. Fascinating cases, insightful hypotheses.
    • 4/5
      Better than I expected.