The Sleep Room
A Sadistic Psychiatrist and the Women Who Survived Him
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- $19.99
Publisher Description
A chilling true story of medical abuse, psychological manipulation, and the women who refused to be silenced.
In the heart of postwar London, Dr. William Sargant was a revered psychiatrist with a glittering résumé. He was also a regular lecturer in the United States, where he was a visiting professor at Duke University and had close connections with the CIA.
But behind the doors of Ward Five at the Royal Waterloo Hospital, he orchestrated one of the most disturbing chapters in modern psychiatric history.
Known as the Sleep Room, this ward became the site of relentless experimentation. Women—many young, vulnerable, and without consent—were subjected to months of chemically induced sleep, interrupted only for electroconvulsive therapy and forced feedings. Their identities blurred, their memories fractured, and their lives forever altered.
Now, decades later, the survivors are speaking out. In this gripping investigation, journalist and novelist Jon Stock uncovers the dark legacy of Sargant’s methods, the institutional complicity that enabled them, and the haunting question: Were these women victims of rogue science—or pawns in a broader, state-sanctioned agenda?
The Sleep Room is a powerful blend of investigative journalism and survivor testimony, exposing the twisted intersection of medicine, power, and secrecy.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
Sometimes true crime edges into straight-up horror, and that’s where this gripping story of medical malfeasance lies. From the 1940s through the ’70s, Dr. William Sargant was the face of British psychiatric care. A firm opponent of Freudian talk therapy, he believed the brain could be forcibly rewired into health. His experiments with insulin-induced comas and barbiturate narcosis, during which patients—mostly female and as young as 13—were subjected to electroshock and even lobotomies without consent, were horrifying. They were also close enough to torture that both MI5 and the CIA studied them for Cold War brainwashing techniques. Journalist Jon Stock unpacks this chilling legacy with precision and clarity, showing how Sargant’s blend of arrogance and certainty shaped a generation of practitioners. The testimonies of former patients, including actress Celia Imrie, are particularly powerful. The Sleep Room is a disturbing portrait of one man’s unchecked authority and the institutions that looked the other way.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Journalist and spy novelist Stock follows up No Place to Hide with a harrowing deep dive into the lurid life and crimes of British psychiatrist William Sargant (1907–1988). After WWII, Sargant rose to prominence as a so-called expert on mental illness, advocating for lobotomies, electroshock therapies, and narcosis as standard treatments for even mild ailments. Drawing on medical records and first-person accounts from Sargant's mostly female patients, Stock paints a chilling portrait of Ward 5 at London's Royal Waterloo Hospital for Children and Women, where Sargant, who authored several popular books on mental illness, treated even minor cases of depression with drug-induced comas between 1948 and his retirement in 1972. As Stock catalogs Sargant's malpractices, he also pieces together a biography of the man himself, who suffered from nervous breakdowns and addictions to pornography and drugs. Most intriguingly, Stock covers Sargant's work developing truth serums and brainwashing compounds for the British armed forces during WWII, positing that some of his patients may have been guinea pigs for military intelligence. With the thoroughness of top-notch journalism and the controlled tone of the best espionage fiction, Stock serves up one chilling anecdote after another. The result is an unforgettable glimpse into the heart of darkness.
