If you read popular books on neuroscience (like those by Oliver Sacks or V. S. Ramachandran or David Eagleman), you will have encountered many of the types of case studies presented in The Man Who Wasn't There.

So, there's not a lot of new material here in this book that focuses on trying to answer the question "What is the self?" by examining how various neurological disorders and dysfunctions affect the sense of self.

The chapter on epilepsy, though, did present some material that I had not previously encountered, especially in regards to the feeling of oneness with the universe and where in the brain this feeling originates, so I found this chapter particularly fascinating.

The epilogue was also very good, presenting an overall synthesis of not just the cases examined previously in the book but also the broader philosophical arguments about the self. Ultimately, the author does not tell us what he believes to be the definitive answer to the question posed in his book, though he seems to hint at believing in some sort of minimal, pre-linguistic self that serves as the subject for experience even in those who are experiencing a loss of their sense of self.

This book is exactly what I was looking for. It is quite sad that there is such a lack of human psychology and neuroscience books out there that actually focus on HUMAN research and experiences rather than detailing horrific abuses of nonhuman animals. This is the first psych/neuro book I have read in a long time that actually did it right. It is full of cognitive neuroscience research so if you are not into understanding the brain areas that affect human function and experience, you may not get what you need here. As someone who formerly worked in cog neuro and who often craves it, this was perfect.

The author is also quite compassionate and intentional in his writing. I thought he should have deferred more to what Autistic peoples definitions of their experiences are more in the chapter on Autism. But, all of the others- especially that on BIID- I thought were navigated carefully. Ananthaswamy found ways to discuss research into and the struggles many have with diagnoses while also presenting people as whole and human, rather than all pathology.

There is a sprinkling of philosophy throughout the book that holds things together nicely. I learned quite a few things and ended up wishing I took notes. This is a really great set of interviews, case studies, and human research that's actually relevant to humans. Well written to boot.

If you are like me and like to read true stories regarding psychological and neurological disorders then you will want to check out this book. I found this book to be an very thought-provoking, intriguing read. I was had heard of and was kind of familiar with BIID (body integrity identity disorder) but if asked I could not really describe to you what this disorder is all about. This disorder really fascinated me. The way that sufferers experience depression towards their healthy limbs because they feel that the limbs are foreign objects that need to be removed. The fact that there are surgeons out there that will remove these limbs for BIID patients is what shocked me the most. Well that and the transformation that these people have after the surgery of being a "normal" person with an happy outcome for life as if they had just been born for the first time.

Mr. Ananthaswamy also explorers in this book Alzheimer's, Schizophrenia, Depersonalization, Out-of-body experiences, and Ecstatic epilepsy. Again, some of these disorders I am not familiar about. So I learned a lot about these disorders while reading this book. I found the stories sad but at the same time I am glad that more and more people are bring to light these disorders and the people suffering from them are not the exception. Therefore, the need to help is greater. Although, as I was reading this book there were times when Mr. Ananthaswamy would get to explaining the disorder or quote a reference that seemed to be over my head with words that I had never heard of. I would have to re-read sections. Overall, this book is well edited and could be a table top book or one for a book club discussion.

An interesting book but a broken sense of self is a correlation in disorders like autism and schizophrenia. To say it is a causation is too simple and not believable.

Many surprising revelations. Among them: In the Appearance-Reality test: Autistic's ability to tell appearance from reality, they look at an egg, then are handed a stone egg and still say it was just an egg.
If this isn't emblematic of our times, I don't know what is....
Highly recommended!

I really enjoyed the first few chapters. Toward the end it seemed to lose the story aspect that made the earlier chapters so compelling.

i thought this was very interesting, and you can really tell how little we know about the self as a society right now. my only thing was there was kinda a weird balance between scientific and anecdote, but idk that might be my problem bc i don’t know very much about the brain.