Stroke, Aphasia, and other Authors
Broca’s Brain in one of the most amazing pieces of literature especially for people with stroke and aphasia!
I had my first stroke in September 2011. It took me 11 months to be able to read more than just individual words, couplets, or a few words in a short sentence. But soon after my stroke, I was able to see and “read” titles of books and the table of contents for most of them.
As I looked online for anything connected to aphasia, one of the first things I found while looking for Paul Broca and Broca’s area was a book called, Broca’s Brain written by Carl Sagan!
He was the world-famous astronomer, always talked about “billions and billions” of stars. Given who he was, I had no idea how it was that he wrote a book about Paul Broca.
I bought five books in December 2011 and bought Broca’s Brain on January 1, 2012. One of the amazing things about this book was the fact the Paul Broca’s brain is still at a museum in Paris, France!
I refer to Broca’s Brain often while I am speaking to people with aphasia, masters’ students in speech, and speech therapists and most have never heard of it before. This should be on everyone’s reading list!
On Aphasia, A Critical Study by Sigmund Freud (1891) was Sigmund Freud’s first book before he shifted to psychoanalysis.
He was profoundly interested in mental processes that drew him into study aphasia.
As famous as he was, it is hard to believe but most people, including the speech language profession, have never heard of it.
142 copies were sold in the first year and 115 in the following nine years. It was first published in German in 1891. Since then, it was translated into English and published in 1953.
When making presentations around the country, I often refer to On Aphasia and Freud as another small world encounter about aphasia to learn from, whether you are someone who has aphasia or a speech therapist looking for new (and often inspiring) knowledge about aphasia at the very dawn of the aphasia world.