SOURCE: Beehler, Rodger. “Madness and Method.” Philosophy 68, no. 265 (July 1993): 369-88.

In the following essay, Beehler finds similarities in the exploration of madness in Awakenings and R. D. Laing's The Divided Self.

The daily practice of clinical medicine, or so it seems to me, demands theoretical and even ‘philosophical’ viewpoints, and precisely guides one to the viewpoints one needs. That medicine provides a philosophical education … is a delightful discovery; it seems to me strange that this is not more generally recognized.

—Oliver Sacks, 1982

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The attention recently accorded to the writings of Oliver Sacks has once more recalled to a community wider than medical personnel the deeply-moving strangeness of human beings. I refer especially to Sacks' book The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and to his earlier book Awakenings (which last has inspired a current commercial film of the same title).¹ A comparison that comes immediately...