Letters, p.67
Letters, page 67
For myself I cannot conceive (nor have ever been able to, nor wished to) a “real” world, that is a Primary World, other than the one we live in (your “consensual” world). I am, of course, (or hope I am) sensitive to the inner worlds, the Secondary Worlds, of poetry and art and dreams and myths, and of my patients and friends, and of people I meet; but I cannot imagine taking them for another Primary World. But you, apparently, feel free to posit or believe in another Primary World. This comes out very clearly on pp. 221–2 where your friend Robert speaks of having been visited by mushroom beings: “I asked myself whether I believed Robert’s stories, and I decided that I did. I don’t mean that I believed he believed them; I mean I believed the things he described had actually taken place.” This goes beyond imaginative sympathy; it is crossing the line into (identification and) belief. And if you allow a belief in mushroom-spirits, you open the door to everything—Archons, Elves, what you will—a whole world, or worlds, of phantastic beings which a non-believer, a “rationalist,” would find physically, biologically and ontologically impossible (nor can recourse to novel physical concepts like superstrings or supersymmetry allow them). I have to ask myself: do you really believe (in) all of this? And, if so, what should we understand by “belief”? […]
I should say that I find the subject of hallucinogens, psychedelia, whatever you wish to call it, deeply interesting, and not in a merely academic way. I have tried many things myself—tho’ not DMT!—and I did so in the hope of recapturing that sense of wonder which I had felt so strongly as a boy, but which seemed to desert me when I was about fifteen. I think I had some drug-visions which “inspired” me—as when, “stoned,” in 1967, I saw the neurological heavens open before me, and migraine shining like a beautiful constellation. I felt then that I should become “an astronomer of the inward,” and this led me to write my first book (Migraine) and others. This vision had the reality, or irreality, or super-reality, of a dream; but I did not believe, when I came down, that there was actually such a heaven. On another occasion (jumbled by artane, nasty stuff) I had a long (philosophical) conversation with a fly on the wall—the fly had a tiny but very clear, rather Bertrand Russell–like voice—but I do not now believe in articulate flies. I can appreciate how a brilliant chemist (like Kary Mullis) might find his chemical insights sharpened by LSD (as Kekulé, after pondering for years on the structure of benzene, had a symbolic dream of snakes in a ring, and waking realized that benzene had a closed ring). I think there are real insights and illuminations which can come from drugs (as from dreams, and all “primary process” thinking), but which then need to be assessed, interpreted, carefully, by one’s critical mind when one comes down. And, more to the subject of your book, I can imagine (to some extent, and your book has increased the extent) how a culture and its mythology and sacred symbols and rites and religion may be deeply and crucially dependent on (“sacramental”) drugs. This seems to me fine and deeply interesting in your book—whereas I find your own “psychedelic journey” sometimes suggestive of “shamanistic regression” (as you put it)—or something more.
But it is not my function to sit in judgement (and on the very rare occasions when I write reviews they are always in the mode of appreciation). I don’t think that I am the right person to review a book like yours—altho’ it would be interesting to compare it with many of the other books you cite (you have read very widely!), with John Horgan’s forthcoming (or perhaps just published) Rational Mysticism, etc. etc.
We all have Journeys, and mine is not yours. I have, I hope, some intellectual curiosity and playfulness, but very little in the way of metaphysical need or hunger. I do not crave Belief. (Perhaps this has something to do with our different bringings-up and backgrounds.) But I can admire your adventurousness and boldness and sincerity, and am glad you wrote to me and sent me your book,
My best wishes to you and to it,
Oliver Sacks
PS: A tiny factual correction: speaking of ergotism you say “St. Vitus’ Dance”—this should be “St. Anthony’s Fire.”
To Dave Draper
Bodybuilder
December 11, 2002
2 Horatio St., New York
Dear Dave,
How very unexpected—and nice!—to get your two inscribed books, and to see (forty-odd years later) how good you look, and how well you write.
I leafed through Brother Iron, Sister Steel straightaway, and felt very nostalgic at your descriptions of “The Dungeon” as it was in the early Sixties. I was more of a power-lifter myself, but I remember Hugo Labra very well, Zabo, and some of the others you mention. I vividly remember the enormous, unwieldly (and dangerous!) dumbbells—but the biggest of all you do not mention and that was the 375 lb dumbbell which I once saw Charlie (Chuck) Ahrens side-press in the yard of his own gym—he and Steve Merjanian, both with 60+" chests, completely filled a VW beetle. I have vivid memories of the lifting platform at POP—it was here that I challenged Dave Ashman to a front-squat contest, and beat him (I did 575 to his 560)—but he was a wonderful Olympic lifter, and I couldn’t snatch to save my life. Then there was Sidney’s down on the beach at Santa Monica—it was here that I met Dave Sheppard, Jim Hamilton and others, who all became good friends; then, up in Venice, there was old Mac Batchelor, with the strongest hands in the world.
I read (with mixed feelings) your excellent sections on Injuries, Aging, etc. I managed to get complete quad tendon ruptures on both legs (in ’74 and ’84, first left, then right)—an unusual injury—and couldn’t help wondering if I had overdone it years earlier with squats (I had a routine of fives—5 sets of 5 reps with 555 lbs every 5th day)—but I had good surgery, and the old legs are still powerful. Have also had rotator cuff surgery—should have done the rotator cuff exercises, but in the old days one never thought of them.
I was intrigued to see how young you were when you started handling iron, and dreaming of the-body-to-come. I had a relatively late start—in my twenties (23) and had been inspired especially by photos of Reg Park (whom I later met at the Empire Games in ’58). But I was equally (or more) drawn to Olympic and power-lifting—especially after seeing Bennie Helfgott at the Maccabi gym in London (he had two Olympic medals[*61]—and the most beautiful technique: he never pushed himself unduly, knew his own body, and never suffered the repetitive injuries which so many lifters—Dave Sheppard, Shemansky etc. had. He is still in great shape in his early seventies, and I see him whenever he comes to New York). My other training buddy was Ken McDonald (now back in Australia). But (to my lasting regret) Ken introduced me to that most lethal of lifts—the stiff-legged deadlift—when I was pretty much of a novice. I did 525 lbs (I had only been lifting for six months or so), but three days later got an excruciating backache—and continued to get these, at intervals, for the next forty years (now, oddly, in the late sixties, they seem to have let up).
My chief activity now is swimming, which I adore—I try to swim 2000–2500 yards each morning—but I also do some (relatively) light weight-training at a gym twice a week. I have boiled myself down from the 270+ I used to be in “Dungeon” days to about 200, and try to keep in fair shape. So I guess that I too am a veteran of the Iron Game, in a small way. And, mercifully, I have had no real health problems (touch wood!) outside some injuries, and the slow changes that go with aging.
I take the liberty of enclosing a copy of my (most personal!) book Uncle Tungsten (ever thought of having weights made of tungsten? it’s 2½ times denser than steel—a 16 lb tungsten shot is no bigger than a tennis ball). I think my fondness for metals, especially very heavy metals, goes with the fondness for weights. Enough said. Lovely to hear from you, and my very best regards to you (and anyone else who may remember me from those far-off days—I think George Butler would be one of them).
Oliver
To Paul J. Kiell
Psychiatrist, Athlete, and Author
December 12, 2002
2 Horatio St., New York
Dear Dr. Kiell,
Many thanks for your article(s), which I enjoyed, and which I think especially valuable as a counter-actor of the notion that there is something wrong, “unJewish,” in physical activity and prowess. It is a common enough misapprehension, not least among Jews themselves.
For me (besides parental models—my mother had been a champion jumper at school, as my father was a swimmer) a very important contact, in my early twenties, was with the Maccabi Club in London—(I don’t know whether the Maccabi had/have branches here, even whether they still exist). It was there that I met Bennie Helfgott and Laurie Levine […] and many other Jewish athletes. We had a good power-lifting team (I was their mid-heavyweight), and enjoyed contests with other teams all over London.
I have two “ultraorthodox” cousins, but both of these have a passion for nature, hiking, climbing etc. One of them—a mathematician-Talmudist who lives in Jerusalem[*62]—still skis and climbs high mountains in his early seventies: he describes the amazement of Tibetans at seeing someone with a long white beard as active as a mountain-goat at altitudes of 20,000 feet or more. They see no contradiction between their orthodoxy and their love of nature and physical activity.
I think the stereotype of the sickly, intellectually precocious, but physically feeble Jew needs to be contested—and, among its other excellencies, your article does just this.
Thanks again!
With best wishes,
Oliver Sacks
To Peter Edwards
Chemist
December 30, 2002
2 Horatio St., New York
Dear Peter,
It has been a longish time since we corresponded (still longer since we saw each other), but this time of year is a time for sending and receiving things. […]
I wonder if you have been picking up anything special in the superconducting line with these extraordinary silver fluorides—I still have vivid memories of magnetic levitation with liquid nitrogen in your lab in Birmingham. […]
Now I have a question. Kate got me some gallium for Christmas, which I keep in a smooth hemispherical glass (it makes a gorgeous mirror). But when it melts there is a strange illusion of transparency—as if one were seeing a transparent colorless fluid moving around above the background of silvery, unmelted metal (Roald saw this too). I wondered if this was an edge phenomenon, it seems to have a concave meniscus (unlike Hg’s convex one), but I am (probably very stupidly) perplexed. From other angles, it seems that the liquid has a skin on it, with fine lines, textured, like the skin on milk.
It seems to supercool, so that once melted it stays molten for hours in quite a cool room. But then when it finally solidifies, it seems to do so in shallow quadrangles layered in strata, or odd zigzags like the fortifications of a medieval fort. I am not sure whether these are patterns of crystallization, or stratification patterns as one has with drying mud.
I am sure this is all childish stuff, but you must be patient with me, and explain what I am seeing. You might even have fun playing with gallium yourself.
(I sometimes dream of the 200 tons of ultrapure liquid gallium in a solar neutrino detector under the Caucasus. My love of metals and my love of swimming come together in the phantasy of swimming in, or on, this great pool of liquid gallium. There was an attempted heist a few years ago—thieves came with a truck and a siphon; but it was foiled at the last moment.)
Anyhow, write to me, if you have time, tell me about gallium, about silver fluorides (if this is not secret), and, in general, how you are and what you are doing,
My warmest good wishes for the New Year,
Oliver
To Harriett James
Speech Pathologist
February 25, 2003
2 Horatio St., New York
Dear Ms. James,
Many thanks for your letter and Tito’s book,[*63] which I find quite extraordinary.
It is unfortunate, as you say, that facilitated communication, so called, was such a mix of the genuine and the influenced.[*64] I like the way Tito himself says “I need mother or my class teacher to sit by my side not as facilitators, but as my environment” (this made me think of Winnicott’s phrase “the facilitating environment,” and it opens up a far broader and deeper picture of what goes on; and one needs someone as rare and insightful as Tito to bring this out). Certainly you are right to seize on this quality of presence as crucial (I do my own best work when my editor, and perhaps mother-figure, Kate, is in the next room—this sort of facilitating environment is needed by all of us).
I personally am in no position to explore these issues myself further, but they need to be explored, and at the highest and deepest level. I wish I knew who to suggest—it needs to be a (perhaps Winnicottian) psychiatrist. If I have any brainwaves I will let you know, but for the moment I can only endorse what you say, and hope that the genuine aspects of facilitation can be extricated from the cloud which has surrounded facilitated communication, and explored.
Sincerely,
Oliver Sacks
To [first name unknown] Godwin
Correspondent
March 20, 2003
2 Horatio St., New York
Dear Dr. Godwin
Many thanks for your fine and full letter—I never quite know what the post will bring me! […]
With regard to the (vexed question of) “repressed memory”—this is not something I have personally studied, nor one on which I would care to say anything publically. I did write about it, in a sense, in my case-history “Murder” (in The Man Who). […]
There is no doubt, psychologically, neurologically, about our enormous suggestability and impressionability (both for good and evil), and our inability, frequently, to distinguish primary experiences, primary memories, from apparent (or secondary) memories which have arisen from description or suggestion. I had to acknowledge this in myself, with regard to a (very vivid!) “memory” described in my autobiography Uncle Tungsten—of an incendiary bomb landing in our back garden (see p. 23 in UT). Another bomb memory—of a large, unexploded bomb—was confirmed by my (older) brother Michael, but regarding the incendiary bombs he said “You never saw it.” I was stunned, and said “But I can see it now, clearly, in my mind’s eye. Why?” “Because our brother David wrote us a letter,” Michael said, “a very vivid letter. And you were enthralled by it.” Yet learning that I never saw the incendiary bombs with my own eyes, but had only a constructed memory or image based on a description, did nothing to lessen its vividness. It still seems real—though it is not. Such “secondary” memories are common, or universal—and they may be, or become, indistinguishable—phenomenologically, and perhaps physiologically—from primary ones.
But this is somewhat different from “repressed” memories, for these are infused with a violent affect, unconscious conflict, trauma etc, which ordinary secondary memories (often quite bland and neutral) do not necessarily have. The whole business of repression, and repressed memories, has been a minefield of ambiguities, assertions, counter-assertions, retractions etc. since Freud first believed that many of his patients had been sexually abused in childhood (as they told him), but then came to dismiss such memories as phantasies. (No doubt he went too far both ways.) There are, alas, cases of sexual (and other) abuses of children sometimes—but with nowhere near the frequency which “memory” (and an atmosphere of accusation) might suggest. A veritable social hysteria seems to surround this subject—as well as the personal hysteria which sometimes generates such memories (“Hysterics suffer from reminiscence,” Freud remarked).
I am saying too much—and too little. Perhaps I should simply reiterate the fact that our minds are enormously suggestible and influencible (especially where such charged dynamics are involved), and that false (or secondary) memories may seem very real (and may perhaps come to have even the neurological underpinnings of genuine, primary memories). The whole subject is in need of the subtlest exploration.
I hope these thoughts—all very unsystematic—may be of interest to you.
With kind regards,
Oliver Sacks
Skip Notes
*1 An Unquiet Mind, Jamison’s memoir of her own bipolar illness. In an earlier book, Touched with Fire, she had explored the relationships between manic depression and creativity.
*2 Theroux’s 1991 essay was published in The Massachusetts Review and later included in his book Fresh Air Fiend.
*3 Frederic Bartlett, author of an influential 1932 book, Remembering.
*4 Miller.
*5 Though Miller indeed had a remarkable memory, this is almost certainly exaggerated for dramatic effect.
*6 OS was writing an introduction to a facsimile edition of Edward Liveing’s nineteenth-century work on migraine, which had inspired him to write his own Migraine.
*7 In September 1995, OS moved his Manhattan office to a larger apartment in the West Village, where he could stay over more frequently, avoiding a daily commute to his house on City Island.
*8 Heritage, a nine-part public television series on Jewish history and culture, was narrated by Eban and accompanied by a book version.
*9 Eban replied to this note a week later from the Hotel Delmonico, where he often stayed when in New York.
