one time
a man murdered his girlfriend. He was on PCP and had no memory of it. Neither hypnosis nor drugs released any memory of the deed. The man served time in a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane and accepted his punishment, though he likely was not insane but instead, under the influence of PCP, had violent reactions similar to that during a seizure.
Years later, he suffered a bike accident - a severe head injury. Massive bilateral subdural hematomas and a severe contusion of both frontal lobes. And after coming out of a coma, he came to remember, vividly, with ‘almost hallucinatory detail,’ the murder.
This and many other super fascinating clinical stories* are recounted in the book I’m reading, The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, by Oliver Sacks.
*other fascinating clinical stories include:
- A pack of matches is thrown on the table and immediately two twin savants assert there are 111 matches. They do not “count” them, they “see” them.
- A somewhat deaf woman dreamt of singing and dancing in her childhood and awoke to find that the music would not turn off for three months.
- A man (who had been taking amphetamines) dreamt he was a dog with strong olfactory senses and woke up to have a significantly enhanced sense of smell for three weeks.
- A man lost his ability to identify objects - he could not recognize a glove as a glove, he even mistook his wife for a hat.
