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Perhaps this account of a man who "saw" everything will play some part in the difficult course that lies ahead.
The Mind of a Mnemonist
This study explores the inner world of a rare human phenomenon―a man who was endowed with virtually limitless powers of memory. From his intimate knowledge of S., the mnemonist, gained from conversations and testing over a period of almost thirty years, A. R. Luria is able to reveal in rich detail not only the obvious strengths of S.’s astonishing memory but also his surprising weaknesses: his crippling inability to forget, his pattern of reacting passively to life, and his uniquely handicapped personality.
This book pioneered the field of humanistic clinical histories. There would be no Oliver Sacks, the British neurologist who published "Awakening" without Luria, a Russian neuropsychologist. Luria examined a journalist named Solomon Shereshevsky, or just "S," for 30 years. S was said to have a vacuum-cleaner memory. In fact, he appeared to recall everything. He was a poor writer who couldn't make a livelihood as anything other than a stage act — a memory freak. That, I believe, hints at something profound: forgetting is a vital aspect of learning because it trains us to abstract. S couldn't digest what he saw and couldn't find his place in the world because he recalled too much.
Perhaps this account of a man who "saw" everything will play some part in the difficult course that lies ahead.
