ABSTRACT
The neurologist Oliver Sacks (1985) has described the fascinating case of Dr. P., a musician who was referred to Sacks because of occasional “visual problems.” Sacks noted that Dr. P.’s acuity was good—he could see a pin on the floor—but that his attempt to describe a picture revealed the nature of his visual problem:
His eyes would dart from one thing to another, picking up tiny features, individual features… A striking brightness, a colour, a shape would arrest his attention and elicit comment—but in no case did he get the scene-as-a-whole… He had no sense whatever of a landscape or scene. (p. 9)
