American Masters

I first saw my analyst of 66. We are now in our 50th year and we're beginning to get somewhere. Please welcome Dr. Oliver Sacks. (People clapping) He was the first major intellectual Newell spoke about diseases for the general public in a way that they could understand. His writing Brought back a central aspect of medicine, to treat the person and not the disease. Life threw so many things at him some of which he brought on himself he was the first to admit. It was at that time, they discovered that he was gay. Where do you go when your mother calls you an abomination? You go to San Francisco and stop writing home. From an early age, it was understood that I was going to be a doctor. My brother Michael, Was diagnosed As Schizophrenic. I became terrified for him. Michael was one of the reasons Oliver did what he did. Much of my life has been spent trying to imagine what it's like to be another human being? His great gift was storytelling about the human condition in a medical context, emphasizing the fact that they saw the world in different ways. He would tell these stories so well that people who are brave, lonely and left out are storied back into the world. Oliver was absolutely dismissed by fellow neurologists. He had his critics. For someone to say he exploited his patients, I think that is absolutely wrong. Are you a doctor first and then a writer? The real answer is the timing in both. And in important ways they blend together. Oliver never lost that sense of wonder. 10 days before he died, he was writing. I didn't tell you what I did thinking. He was think.. he was saying.. Look at the others. He's not saying that. He's seeing look at us.