Susan Barry: Oliver Sacks taught me to see.

By Keely Savoie

Professor Sue Barry grew up cross-eyed, a condition that deprived her of the ability to see in three dimensions for nearly five decades.

But at age 48, Barry was able to do what had been considered impossible; she developed stereoscopic vision with the help of a local developmental optometrist, Dr. Theresa Ruggiero. With intense vision therapy, Barry was able to train not only her eyes, but also her brain, to see with both eyes together.

Her experience was at odds with the prevailing wisdom that there exists a critical period in early childhood during which stereoscopic vision develops—and once that window was missed, that there was no way to develop the ability. Nobel laureates had written on the topic, and the idea that anyone could develop stereoscopic vision in adulthood was considered a nonstarter.

Knowing that her story would likely be met with deep skepticism, she kept it largely to herself and her immediate family, until one day she felt moved to write a letter to neurologist Oliver Sacks, whom she had met once at a party.

“At that party, Oliver had looked at me with such inquisitiveness and asked such a simple, but incisive question: ‘Can you imagine what it is like to see in stereo?’” she remembered.

At the time, she had answered without much thought that of course she could imagine it. But when she actually experienced stereoscopic vision, seeing the volumes of space between objects and the way objects protruded or receded into space, she realized she could not have imagined stereoscopic depth.

Impulsively, she wrote to Sacks to correct the record and tell him of her profound transformation.

The letter touched off what would become a correspondence comprising more than 130 letters over the course of ten years.

Barry got to know Sacks as a colleague, a professional, and a friend. She became the subject of his 2006 New Yorker essay, “Stereo Sue,” and a chapter in his book The Mind’s Eye. He wrote the foreword to Barry’s book about her remarkable journey, Fixing My Gaze.

Sacks announced in early 2015 that he had terminal cancer. The news was met with a deep shock and sadness among the many who never knew him personally. But those whose lives he had graced in the flesh, such as Barry, were devastated.

Sacks passed away August 30, 2015.

Lessons learned from a master teacher.

Sacks brought a naturalist’s quenchless curiosity and keen observational skills to everything he did, she said.

“When I would talk to him about what I was experiencing, his total focus would be on what I was feeling and what I was saying,” she recalled. ”He had an enormous amount of empathy.”

While Barry credits Dr. Ruggiero with teaching her how to see, she credits Sacks with teaching her how to listen.

“I learned from him that nothing was too small or insignificant to warrant careful thought. My mind just unfolded as a result of knowing him,” she said. “He gave me permission to observe everything around me much more carefully, and to enjoy my observations and reflections and not to minimize them. He taught me that each of us has a legitimate take on the world and a different way of looking at it and theorizing about it.”

“That to me is the sort of selfless, wonderful deed that encapsulates who he was as a person,” she said. “Oliver Sacks changed my life in a profound way.”

Barry now passes the knowledge, curiosity, empathy, and courage that Sacks taught her down to her students.

“I tell my students, ‘Don’t let anyone else tell you what you cannot do,’” she said. “No one but you knows what you are capable of.”

What’s your path? See it here.