Chilling ... Jon Stock...captures [the] tyranny in a gripping manner ... [Stock's] writing here...is constrained in the best sense. There is a dignity and sensitivity embedded in Stock’s accounts of the women’s stories that make up this scandal ... Fascinating ... However, at times I felt that [Sargant's potential connection to the CIA AND M15] was almost a separate story and detracted somewhat from the brutal impact Sargent had on the lives of his patients.
[A] determined attempt to piece together what exactly went on in Sargant’s Sleep Room .... A compelling case ... Stock is careful to understand his subject as a product of a time when male consultants were afforded unfettered medical authority ... What Stock cannot prove, frustratingly for the reader, is the extent of Sargant’s involvement with [the CIA and MI15].
To say that these stories are difficult to read is an understatement ... It is to Stock’s great credit that he places patient testimony centre stage ... The Sleep Room can present [Sargant] as almost cartoonishly villainous ... This portrayal unhelpfully flattens very real and complicated issues over how best to treat serious mental illness ... With more nuance and less condemnation, Stock could have interrogated more richly the complexities of how best to treat disabling and life-threatening psychiatric illness.
Though Stock is a skilled journalist and fiction writer, the book’s structure is disjointed and its goals are unclear. It serves partly as a biography of Sargant, but fails to situate him within the broader medical context of brain regionalization or to address the gender and class dynamics of the time. Though it opens by considering psychiatry as a form of social control, it doesn’t explore this theme in depth. The patient interviews are not analysed and the women’s stories are not connected to larger societal patterns.
