Oliver Sacks was an eminent neurologist responsible for exploring strange and beautiful behaviors of the mind with exceptional empathy and heart. He self-described his books as “neurological novels,” and he simplified and humanized the odd conditions of the brain, so well that his books sold millions of copies. In an obituary of sorts he penned in the New York Times, he described himself as “a man of vehement disposition, with violent enthusiasms, and extreme immoderations in all [his] passions.”
Sacks was born in London in 1933, and he had an early exposure to the domain of science from his parents, who were both doctors. He immersed himself in chemistry, which served as a refuge from a tumultuous childhood. He realized he was gay in his late teens, and his mother never quite accepted him. After a few very brief relationships, he became celibate until he was 74, when he fell in love with his partner till death, Billy. Despite difficulties in his personal life as well as widespread acclaim from the books he sold, he continued to see clinical patients because he loved interacting with people so much. https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/03/07/oliver-sacks-notebooks/
Sacks had an interesting philosophy on creativity. In her blog Brain Pickings, Maria Popova outlines his opinions on creativity and his creative process as a whole. Published after his death, Sacks’s essay anthology The River of Consciousness contained an essay titled “The Creative Self.” Frenetic notes on a series of napkins, hotel notepads, and yellow legal pads about the functioning of the brain, culminating in the idea of “buzzing, blooming chaos” of the creative brain. In that essay, he comes up with two concepts: making and birthing. He describes making as “primitive, juvenile, and pathological” whereas he describes birthing as “deep, motivated, and personal.” Sacks does not characterize one form of creation as superior to the other, he states instead that the first form of creativity is meant for learning and the other form is self-driven, or intrinsically motivated. Sacks cites an example from essayist Susan Sontag, who expanded her worldview and desires through reading, and she discovered her passion for the written word. Sacks argues that in finding what we love, we understand our own minds more, and then we feel a drive to imitate what we learn. Out of that learning experience comes mastery of some sort and then original creation. Sacks also noted the difference between technical mastery and genius, or as Kaufmann would put it, pro-C vs. Big-C. He argues that “it takes a special energy, over and above one’s creative potential, a special audacity and subversiveness, to strike out in a new direction once one is settled.” Sacks also claims that a long gestational period is necessary for peak creativity, as does T.S. Eliot. Gardner states that Eliot engaged in revision after revision of his works before he was pushed to publish them by his contemporaries. Sacks stated that this period was necessary to “allow subconscious assimilation and incorporation of one’s influences and sources, to recognize and synthesize them into something of one’s own.” Sacks’s entire career is filled with his insight and poignant thoughts about the brain, and one sees the profound humanity in everything he writes.
References
Gardner, Howard. Creating Minds. Basic Books, 1993.
Kaufman, J. C., & Beghetto, R. A. (2009). Beyond Big and Little: The Four C Model of Creativity. Review of General Psychology, 13(1), 1–12.
It's so interesting to hear more about someone who influenced his scientific field so much! His perspective on the two forms of creative processing, and how both are equally as valid rather than favoring one over the other, was especially compelling to read, since we haven't learned about a lot of creatives who adopt that kind of duality in their thinking.
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