Psychobiography Reading Group of the Psychohistory Forum – 14th Meeting
Oliver Sacks: Childhood, Neuroscience, and the Poetics of the Mind
Saturday, August 23, 2025 (11:00 AM – 1:00 PM EDT)
Virtual Live
Facilitator: Inna Rozentsvit
This meeting is free to attend, but RSVP is required.
Please RSVP by using the Registration Form below
At our 14th meeting of the Psychobiography Reading Group, we will explore the life and mind of Oliver Sacks (1933–2015), the renowned neurologist, writer, and humanist whose deeply empathic case histories redefined how we think about illness, identity, and the boundaries of the self. Through a psychohistorical lens, we will examine Sacks’s childhood in wartime London, his experiences at a brutal boarding school, his emotionally complex family life (with both parents being physicians), and the role early trauma and intellectual passion played in shaping his adult work as a physician-writer.
Sacks’s lifelong fascination with unusual minds — expressed in bestselling books like Awakenings, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and An Anthropologist on Mars — reveals not only his scientific curiosity but his profound need to understand the “why” behind individual suffering. We’ll consider how Sacks’s own identity struggles (including later-life reflections on sexuality, sensory loss, and mortality) contributed to his empathy for marginalized patients and fueled his poetic vision of neurology as a deeply human discipline.
This session will also reflect on Sacks’s ability to make visible the inner lives of those often considered “invisible” by medicine, and how his legacy fits within the broader aims of psychobiography: to uncover the personal and cultural forces that shape creativity, vocation, and meaning across the lifespan.
As always, our group encourages open discussion, integrative thinking, and respectful dialogue. We welcome returning and new participants from all disciplines interested in psychobiography, psychohistory, clinical work, literature, and the arts.
These are the required preparation materials, “listenings” and readings:
1. The selected autopsychobiographical video clips featuring Oliver Sacks on The Web of Stories that bring Oliver Sacks’s inner world to life. Please enjoy all 360 episodes (from 15 sec to 4 min each) on the The Web of Stories here:
https://webofstories.com/play/oliver.sacks/1. [NB: listening to all 360 episodes is not mandatory for participation]
2. Two essays from Oliver Sacks’s book Gratitude (A. Knopf, 2015): “My own life” (pp. 15-19) and “Sabbath” (pp. 33-36). Download the book from here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/z04x9g993l426ifnrpons/Gratitude-Oliver-Sacks.pdf?rlkey=iby0mwzxkdo19rh5cb5qpv29r&dl=1
3. The first chapter from Oliver Sacks’s autobiographical book On the Move: A Life: “On the move” (pp. 9-37). Download the book from here: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/d5anmfte5n3ux3fi5cbxx/On-the-Move-A-Life-Oliver-Sacks.pdf?rlkey=tcrkdiq9eg40f9q01z88c1oa1&dl=1
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The Psychobiography Research and Publication Group of the Psychohistory Forum created the virtual Psychobiography Reading Group in 2023. We meet in alternate months, with a summer break, and we work hard to keep it as a serious psychoanalytic approach to psychobiography. Going forward, our focus will be on classic works of psychodynamic psychobiography, using the bottom-up approach rather than one based on explicit underlying theories.
Please note that we choose short readings to ensure that they will be read ahead of time. Individuals who have not done the readings for this group will need to stay muted to establish this as a true discussion group.
Membership in the Psychohistory Forum is not required, although it is recommended, but your RSVP is required – see the form below.
You will get the response to your RSVP that includes the Zoom information. The Zoom link reminder will also be sent out the day before the meeting.