Hallucinations, by Oliver Sacks

[rachelmanija]

A book on hallucinations which are not caused by schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. (It also doesn’t deal much with culturally normal hallucinations, which is too bad.) Hallucinations - sensory perceptions which occur during waking and are not based on consensus reality - are surprisingly common, and include many experiences which

Comments

[naomikritzer]

Does the book talk at all about synesthesia, and the ways that it can intersect with hallucination? I have an online friend who gets tastes for names, and from what I understand, she actually experiences the taste in her mouth, briefly.

"Naomi" is canned green beans, FWIW. Every now and then people will remember this particular talent and bombard her with names to have her say the flavors for, and Naomi was green beans the first time, canned green beans the second time, so this stuff is noticeably consistent. (And yeah, I asked again not because I'd forgotten but because with a five-year gap I was curious if it would stay consistent.)

Her husband found the picking-a-name process frustrating as hell, because so many names got vetoed on the grounds that she didn't like the taste. And then there were names that tasted good, but she still didn't like the name.

[rachelmanija]

How cool!

I think Sacks mentions synesthesia but doesn't get into it. It deserves its own book.

The thing about the names is hilarious. Now I want to know what "Rachel" tastes like, and if it's different from "Rachael."

[naomikritzer]

Well, I looked through the threads and sadly she never did the name Rachel. I would guess Rachel and Rachael would taste the same, because Erin and Aaron taste the same.

The technical term for her kind is lexical-gustatory synasthesia. Her own kids have names that taste like cotton candy, and Cocoa Pebbles. A random sampling of some of the names people threw at her, and what she said they tasted like:

Rob/Robert - a bean burrito
Hudson - pumpkin seeds
Avery - biscuit (wow, there is a lot of biscuits on this thread, lol)
Carter - wax lips!!
Jaylen - very strong one!!! Toast w/strawberry jam
Melody - marshmallow
Hernan - nothing
Isaac - green pepper
Hannah - tater tots. But soft ones, not crunchy. Almost like a tater tot casserole. lol

[naomikritzer]

And I totally think a book about synesthesia is warranted. I think the problem is that it hasn't been investigated all that much because it's one of those neurological novelties that's cool but neither a superpower nor a major problem, so while everyone finds it interesting, not a lot of people study it in depth.

I find synesthesia so fascinating I put it in one of my books (the synesthetic character has an artistic process that is loosely based on Elise Matthesen's artistic process, although the character is not nearly as nice as Elise is. Elise is a synesthete.)

[telophase]

There are very few people who I will allow to shorten my first name, but I think that if my full first name tasted bad to her, I'd be fine with her using the shortened version!