Electroconvulsive therapy, the deliberate induction of an epileptic fit in severely depressed patients, had—and perhaps still has—a very bad public reputation. To give the brain an electric shock without any real underlying theory as to why it might work seems brutal; after all, we don't take our car to the garage when it is working imperfectly and expect the mechanics to give it a good kicking in the hope that the vibrations set up by their boots might rattle the components into good working order. And how infinitely more subtle, more delicate, than the workings of the internal combustion engine are those of the brain!
When I was a young doctor, however, I witnessed something that caused me to doubt whether the One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest view of electroconvulsive therapy, then more or less the orthodoxy among bien pensant intellectuals, was quite adequate. The 1962 Ken Kesey novel and 1975 movie famously depicted it as simply a punitive measure taken against the insubordinate and rebellious.
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