‘An experiment with the self’: sensory experience, self-analysis, and object relations theory in Oliver Sacks’ A Leg to Stand On (1984)

Abstract

ABSTRACT In 1974, neurologist Oliver Sacks was hiking alone in the Norwegian mountains when he severely injured his leg running from a bull. Better known for documenting his patients’ disorders and recovery processes, in the autobiographical A Leg to Stand On (1984) he instead maps the ensuing “chaos” of his own changed body and mind as he grapples with the alteration of core sensory experience and its impact on his sense of self. In this article, I showcase Sacks’ self-analytic narrative, demonstrating the value of reading accounts of sensory experiences of ill health via the lens of psychoanalytic object relations theory. I argue that this this approach can not only help us to see sensory and material experience as intimately tied up with one’s internal object world, but also allows us to understand illness narratives themselves as psychical objects in which authors, readers and critics may have complex investments.