The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: Part 4, Chapter 22 Summary & Analysis

In 1983, Oliver Sacks’s clinic admitted a sixty-one year-old man named Martin A., who had been suffering from Parkinson’s for many years. He was intellectually disabled, due to a case of meningitis he’d contracted as a baby; however, he excelled at music, partly because his father had been a famous opera singer. He could remember the melodies of thousands of operas, though he’d never learned to read music. He even remembered the names of the singers who’d played all the roles in different opera performances. He also had an encyclopedic knowledge of the New York public transportation system. Sacks wondered about Martin A.’s musical talent—if Martin had been born with a “normal” intelligence, would he have become a great musician like his father? Or was Martin’s musical ability his mind’s way of compensating for his limited intelligence?

When Martin A. listened to music, or when he sang in choruses, he seemed to forget about his mental problems. In his day-to-day life, he had very little knowledge of the external world, and yet he had the ability to recall maps, newspaper articles, and lists in near-perfect detail. At times, Sacks notes, people with great memories, such as Martin, have immature personalities, because their abilities interfere with the growth of their character. Martin could be childish, spiteful, and mean, and very soon, he’d become unpopular in the hospital.

One day in January, Sacks was called to see Martin A., who desperately explained that he needed to go to sing in church on Sunday, adding, “It’ll kill me if I don’t.” Confused about why Martin hadn’t brought up singing on Sundays before now, Sacks assured Martin that he’d be allowed to sing in church. At the nearby church, Martin was greeted like an old friend, and as “the brains and adviser of the choir.” At the church, Sacks saw for the first time Martin’s deep passion for the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. Henceforth, Sacks made sure that Martin visited church every Sunday, and, perhaps as a result, Martin became a different man—calmer, kinder, and more of a “real person.” When Martin sang, Sacks sensed, he focused his entire being on the beauty of the music, and attained a state of trancelike rapture.

In the Postscript, Sacks discusses some of the articles on music and the mentally challenged that he’s read since originally composing his article on Martin A. There have been other cases of mentally challenged people with a world-class ear for classical music. In many of these cases, music (and musical history) serves as a way for patients to make sense of the world, providing a sense of “order and coherence.”

The phrase “idiot savant” is often used to describe people who have mental problems combined with profound mental gifts. However, one problem with this term as it’s typically used is that it belittles the patient’s gifts, treating them as a mere “knack” or “talent of a mechanical sort, with no real intelligence or understanding.” It’s plain to Sacks that Martin A. had a profound, sophisticated understanding of Bach’s music, not just a photographic memory for the notes. Perhaps this is true of all “idiot savants”—their intelligence in a specific realm, such as music, is just as valid as their intellectual deficits in other areas.