A Beautiful, Local Mind
Winchester's Memoir on Madness
Simon Winchester, the Berkshires-based polymath and best-selling author (“The Professor and the Madman”; “The Map That Changed the World”), has written a slim volume in electronic-only form called The Man With the Electrified Brain: Adventures in Madness. It is a personal, confessional memoir about Winchester’s experience with sudden, incapacitating mental illness in his 20s and treatment with ECT (Electroconvulsive Therapy, also known as shock treatment).
As Winchester, now in his late 60s, states at the outset, he has only taken to penning his story following the death of his parents, so great was their disregard for any supposed failings (“stuff and nonsense”), and because he feared the stigma of ECT.
I came to Winchester’s account from my own interest in, and research on, the controversial subject of ECT. In large part because, as Winchester acknowledges, the workings of ECT are not understood, despite how much we have learned about brain science in recent years, writings about it are almost all polarized, for or against. Few who have actually experienced ECT have come forward with their own stories— Kitty Dukakis being a notable exception—and so Winchester’s courage is admirable.
ECT is frequently misunderstood. The treatment is not based on the electrical current per se, which is only used to trigger an epileptic-like seizure in the brain. Before electroshock, several drugs were administered to precipitate the same reaction. Although ECT may somehow “reset” electrical connections as well as chemical ones across neurons and their synapses, Winchester’s choice of title is a lapse of judgment.
Winchester, like Dukakis, is a staunch supporter of ECT. There is little doubt the treatment cured him of his illness, although being of a scientific turn of mind, he hesitates to claim absolute certainty on the matter. His precise diagnosis is also a matter for debate, with the closest DSM category being “dissociative disorder.”
Essentially, Winchester woke up in bed one morning and didn’t recognize anything as ordinary; his world was completely askew, and stayed that way for nine days. From then on until his cure four years later, he suffered these nine-day bouts, which rendered him barely sensible or functional, with debilitating regularity, generally twice a month.
Winchester’s equally sudden and apparently trouble-free cure, requiring only a single course of ECT (following some failed prescription drug therapies), seems very rare. Many ECT patients (such as Dukakis) have multiple treatments, sometimes over years, and need periodic “reboots.” Many more report memory loss of varying degrees, sometimes itself incapacitating, which is a major objection to the procedure. Winchester says he suffered very little and only fleeting memory loss.
ECT critics will not be reassured to learn that Winchester received shock treatment without consent, perhaps the biggest point raised against ECT’s use. (Many critics do not actually oppose the treatment, but insist on absolute informed consent.) The author himself found this fact terrifying at the time, especially since his then-wife signed the papers authorizing the procedure. Yet Winchester’s consternation was superseded by the relief of his rapid and total recovery. (Winchester has remarried twice since, it must be noted.)
The Man With the Electrified Brain is not a great read and does not seem destined for a wide audience, but I doubt that was Winchester’s intent; it is a personal attempt to put to bed ghosts of his past. Winchester, who was raised in England but is now an American citizen, writes with a bit too much British reserve. “Indeeds,” “terriblys,” “daresays,” and similar expressions are sprinkled liberally throughout; “topsy-turvydom” describes his first bout of illness, which was “terribly odd.”
We should be more than grateful, however, that whatever cured Winchester, ECT or not, did so, and gave us one of the most interesting and inquisitive writers in our region, whose forthcoming book on early American originals and eccentrics I can’t wait to read.
The Man With the Electrified Brain is available as a Kindle Single for only $1.99 on www.amazon.com.
As Winchester, now in his late 60s, states at the outset, he has only taken to penning his story following the death of his parents, so great was their disregard for any supposed failings (“stuff and nonsense”), and because he feared the stigma of ECT.
I came to Winchester’s account from my own interest in, and research on, the controversial subject of ECT. In large part because, as Winchester acknowledges, the workings of ECT are not understood, despite how much we have learned about brain science in recent years, writings about it are almost all polarized, for or against. Few who have actually experienced ECT have come forward with their own stories— Kitty Dukakis being a notable exception—and so Winchester’s courage is admirable.
ECT is frequently misunderstood. The treatment is not based on the electrical current per se, which is only used to trigger an epileptic-like seizure in the brain. Before electroshock, several drugs were administered to precipitate the same reaction. Although ECT may somehow “reset” electrical connections as well as chemical ones across neurons and their synapses, Winchester’s choice of title is a lapse of judgment.
Winchester, like Dukakis, is a staunch supporter of ECT. There is little doubt the treatment cured him of his illness, although being of a scientific turn of mind, he hesitates to claim absolute certainty on the matter. His precise diagnosis is also a matter for debate, with the closest DSM category being “dissociative disorder.”
Essentially, Winchester woke up in bed one morning and didn’t recognize anything as ordinary; his world was completely askew, and stayed that way for nine days. From then on until his cure four years later, he suffered these nine-day bouts, which rendered him barely sensible or functional, with debilitating regularity, generally twice a month.
Winchester’s equally sudden and apparently trouble-free cure, requiring only a single course of ECT (following some failed prescription drug therapies), seems very rare. Many ECT patients (such as Dukakis) have multiple treatments, sometimes over years, and need periodic “reboots.” Many more report memory loss of varying degrees, sometimes itself incapacitating, which is a major objection to the procedure. Winchester says he suffered very little and only fleeting memory loss.
ECT critics will not be reassured to learn that Winchester received shock treatment without consent, perhaps the biggest point raised against ECT’s use. (Many critics do not actually oppose the treatment, but insist on absolute informed consent.) The author himself found this fact terrifying at the time, especially since his then-wife signed the papers authorizing the procedure. Yet Winchester’s consternation was superseded by the relief of his rapid and total recovery. (Winchester has remarried twice since, it must be noted.)
The Man With the Electrified Brain is not a great read and does not seem destined for a wide audience, but I doubt that was Winchester’s intent; it is a personal attempt to put to bed ghosts of his past. Winchester, who was raised in England but is now an American citizen, writes with a bit too much British reserve. “Indeeds,” “terriblys,” “daresays,” and similar expressions are sprinkled liberally throughout; “topsy-turvydom” describes his first bout of illness, which was “terribly odd.”
We should be more than grateful, however, that whatever cured Winchester, ECT or not, did so, and gave us one of the most interesting and inquisitive writers in our region, whose forthcoming book on early American originals and eccentrics I can’t wait to read.
The Man With the Electrified Brain is available as a Kindle Single for only $1.99 on www.amazon.com.