The shocking account of the women tortured by a legendary psychiatrist in the 1960s and ‘70s in his infamous “sleep room,” and the survivors working for change in the system
Dr. William Sargant was one of the most revered figures in British postwar medicine. By the end of his life, he had a lucrative private practice, multiple published books on psychiatry, and had been awarded the Starkey medal and prize by the Royal Society of Health for his work on psychiatric medicine. But what he was best known for was the apogee of his career: the Sleep Room in Ward 5. This was a dark gallery where patients selected by Sargant were, often without their consent or that of their families, subjected to deep narcosis, sleeping for more than 21 hours per day for weeks at a time, and only roused for sessions of electroconvulsive therapy. There, he practiced his enthusiasm for now-discredited treatments such as lobotomy and electroshock therapy with zeal. Inspired by the work of Pavlov on conditioning in dogs, and by the post-Freudian revolution in psychiatric pharmacology, Sargant believed in aggressive interventions. When his patients finished their treatment, they would have lost not only memories of trauma, but also any sense of who they were or why they were there. At least four of them died in the room. Between 1964 to 1972, hundreds of women were treated in the now-shuttered ward of the Royal Waterloo Hospital for Women and Children.
Sargant’s patients, who are now in their 60s and 70s, have come forward to share their stories. The Sleep Room is thriller novelist Jon Stock’s investigation into Sargant, the private world of Ward 5, and the science of the psychology that produced it. Building on the testimony of eight survivors, Stock looks at the problem of the limited tool kit psychology has at its disposal, and the shadowy interface between medicine, the intelligence community, and dangerous charlatans.
