Jung in the World | Individuation at 75: Oliver Sacks’s Journey to Wholeness with Bill Hayes

Individuation isn’t about becoming better. It’s about becoming whole. At 75, neurologist Oliver Sacks finally integrated the parts of himself he’d kept hidden—his sexuality, his need for love, his domestic life (who knew he kept a library of Jung’s work). Bill Hayes talks intimately about Sacks’s late-life transformation which exemplifies Jung’s crucial insight: growth isn’t about fixing what’s broken. It’s about integrating what you’ve exiled.

The recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship in nonfiction, Bill Hayes is a frequent contributor to the New York Times and the author of seven books, including Sleep Demons; Five Quarts; The Anatomist; Insomniac City; and How We Live Now: Scenes from the Pandemic.  His writing has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Review of Books, the New York Times “T” Style Magazine, BuzzFeed, and The Guardian. His most recent book, SWEAT: A History of Exercise, a narrative nonfiction look at exercise from antiquity to the present, is available now wherever books are sold. 

Hayes is also a photographer, with credits including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and the New York Times.  His portraits of his partner, the late Oliver Sacks, appear in the volume of Dr. Sacks’s suite of final essays Gratitude.  A collection of his street photography, How New York Breaks Your Heart, was published in 2018 by Bloomsbury.  His photographs are available for sale as limited edition prints exclusively by CLAMP art gallery in New York City.