The Mind's Eye By Oliver Sack Summary

Due to flexible wiring, the brain is capable of learning new traits and habits. This predisposition to learn allows the brain to learn according to its surrounding environment. In Oliver Sack’s essay, “The Mind’s Eye”, emphasis is placed on the notion that the brain is capable of rewiring itself based on certain traumas. Sacks does so by evaluating the way in which people respond to the trauma of becoming blind later in life. Leslie Bell applies a similar ideology in her work, “Hard to Get: Twenty-Something Women and the Paradox of Sexual Freedom”. In her study, Bell found that the influences women experience, be it familial or societal, affect how women act out their sexual desires. “Immune to Reality” by Daniel Gilbert, also explores this

notion of outer influences contributing to neurological development. He does so by examining how negative experiences leave an impression on the brain, and therefore cause a person not to repeat the mistake.

Sacks’ study on blindness challenges the view of nature versus nurture through the examination of pain and pleasure in Gilbert’s work, familial influences in Bell’s work, and through how the brain rewires itself when faced with trauma.

Going through a trauma, such as becoming blind later in life, often conjures up feelings of pain and pleasure within a person. At first, a person experiences pain such as Gilbert discusses. Sometimes physical, but in Sacks’ case it is emotional. One must be able to muster up the strength to overcome the obstacles that accompany becoming blind. Sacks talks about such a scenario by stating, “Going blind, especially later in life, presents one with a huge potentially overwhelming challenge: to find a new way of living, of ordering one’s world, when the old way has been destroyed” (329). This statement insinuates a form of work hard and be rewarded type of mind set that would in turn create pleasure within the individual. Gilbert believes that this idea of pain and pleasure is human nature;

however, the experiences in which pain and pleasure derive from do have an effect on future actions and development. This influence on the future leads to a nurturing effect. He states, “The ability to associate pleasure or pain with its circumstances is so vitally important that nature has instilled that ability in every one of her creatures…” (Gilbert 139). Pain would be associated from the initial shock and disbelief of going blind, followed by the pleasure of being able to overcome the obstacles that arise. Such was the case for John Hull. Sacks states that Hull was able “to feel a sense of intimacy with nature, an intensity of being-in-the-world, beyond anything he had known when he was sighted” (330). The feeling of intimacy is often associated with the feeling of pleasure. When one feels intimate with something, they feel a sense of understanding and bliss with it. The feeling of pleasure and come up because of the traumatic experiences that originate from growing up; this in turns contributes to how a person acts in the future. One is not born having gone through every possible trauma that will happen to them; rather a person experiences these traumas as they go through life.
These influences not only come from the feelings of pleasure and pain, but also from external influences such as a person’s family background. Sacks discusses the case of Zoltan Torey. Zoltan lost his vision in an accident at the age of twenty-one. According to Sacks, Torey was able to develop:
…a remarkable power of generating, holding, and manipulating images in his mind, so much so that he had been able to construct a virtual visual world that seemed as real and intense to him as the perceptual one head lost—indeed, sometimes more real, more intense. (332)
Sacks later reveals that Torey had grown up with a father that owned a large motion-picture studio, his father would often give his son the scripts to read. Torey accredits his ability to create a “virtual visual world”, to his exposure to film as a child. Similarly, Bell discusses the idea that familial influences affect how a person reacts to the circumstances presented to them as they grow up. She states that, “…women developed varying ones [strategies of desire] based on the cultural tools available to them” and “…their family backgrounds” (Bell 29). Using this idea, Torey’s ability to create his “virtual visual world” reflects his exposure to high levels of creativity as a child. A similar situation presents itself with Bell’s patient, Jayanthi. Jayanthi went against what her family believed was correct; however, the instant Jayanthi experienced a traumatic event, she went back to her family’s traditional views. In Bell’s words, Jayanthi would, “…be a ‘goody-goody girl’ who toyed with her parents’ offer of an arranged marriage” (31). Her exposure to traditional Hindi beliefs growing up, affected how she reacted post the traumatic event. As Sacks mentions, the brain must maintain flexibility in order to be able react to future traumatic events.
From looking at how the brain deals with trauma, the implication that the brain must be able to rewire itself arises.

This flexibility is crucial because the brain must be able to withstand anything thrown at it. Sacks states that, “Cognitive scientists have known for the past few decades that the brain is far less hardwired than once was thought” (330). From this lack of hardwiring, the brain has the ability to grow and rewire itself in order to better suit its surroundings. It is because of this that people are able to adapt to their surroundings, and deal with trauma. Whenever a person goes through a traumatic experience, the brain rewires itself in such a way that it forgets the event and moves on from it. This is nurturing because this only happens when something occurs or when the person’s surroundings are constantly changing, which means that it is something that is learned rather than inherited. For instance, Gilbert states, “It is only when we cannot change the experience that we look for ways to change our view of the experience” (138). Using this excerpt, a similar theory is applicable. The brain takes the unchangeable experience, and rewires itself to see it differently. Just because rewiring occurs, does not mean that it is a drastic change. Something as small as changing one’s perspective on an experience, can assist the brain in making new connections. This is in a sense a rewiring through creation. In Bell’s studies, Jayanthi’s brain adapted the quickest out

of the two other women. Her brain had to be able to go from a “good girl” to a “bad girl”, and be able to distinguish in between them both. Jayanthi could not change her experiences; rather she looked at them through a different lens. Each time she went from “good girl” to “bad girl” she changed her perspective on how she felt about what she was doing. If it were not for the brain’s flexibility Jayanthi may have not been able to cope with everything that was happening to her. The flexibility of the brain is what allows it to benefit from familial influences and cope with pain and pleasure. If the brain were unchangeable, people would react to varying situations in the same way. There would be no variation because the brain would not have the ability to rewire itself when a new obstacle presented itself. All this is nurture because the rewiring of the brain is dependent on the experiences a person encounters during their upbringing. As they grow up, the individuals will experience a multitude of events that may cause the brain to react differently based on the event. The notion that the brain is ever changing is alarming because it means that people are indecisive. Therefore, it also may imply that people are irrational and unpredictable.
Flexibility allows for growth, this growth allows for personal development, and in turn allows people to rewire themselves. Sacks’ work on blindness connect with Gilbert’s ideas on pain and pleasure due to its cause and effect correlation. The trauma of blindness causes a person to feel both pain and pleasure. This switch from pain and pleasure is what causes the brain to rewire; in addition, it shows that the brain has more nurturing tendencies than natural tendencies because it pulls from events that have occurred from an individual growing up, rather than from genetic traits. This is because the brain rewires itself as it goes through life. As it goes through life, it benefits from a variety of influences, such as the familial ones that Bell presents in her study. These influences are what assist a person in determining how to act and how the brain should take in the trauma. Not only that, a person’s background heavily influences how the brain decides to rewire itself, such was the case with Zoltan Torey. Not all this would be possible if it were not for the fact that the brain must remain flexible. Flexibility allows for creativity, which leads to the ability to form new connections for each new experience. Sacks’ work on blindness does challenge the notion of nature versus nature because Sacks believes that the brain does have the capacity to change. Support for the statement comes from the works of both Gilbert and Bell because their patients were able to learn from their experiences and took their backgrounds and applied it to their new way of thinking.