Having trained under Edward Mapother at the Maudsley Hospital, in South London, he worked at the Sutton Emergency Medical Service during the Second World War.
Although remembered as a major force in British psychiatry in the post-war years, his enthusiasm for discredited treatments such as insulin shock therapy and deep sleep treatment, his distaste for all forms of psychotherapy, and his reliance on dogma rather than clinical evidence have confirmed his reputation as a controversial figure whose work is seldom cited in modern psychiatric texts.
[2] Sargant would later attribute this period of depression to undiagnosed tuberculosis,[4] although research which he conducted on the use of iron, in very high doses, for the treatment of pernicious anaemia was not well received and this disappointment may have contributed to his breakdown.
[2] After his recovery, Sargant worked as a locum at Hanwell Hospital, and then for a while helped his brother-in-law at his Nottingham general practice, before deciding on a career in psychiatry.
[8] In 1938 Sargant was awarded a Rockefeller Fellowship to spend a year at Harvard Medical School in Boston, Massachusetts, under Professor Stanley Cobb.
[11] Sargant described his frustration when London County Council medical advisors tried to curb his experimentation with new treatments such as electroconvulsive therapy and psychosurgery (also called leucotomy) but, as he said "we generally got our own way in the end".
[13] But critics saw him as someone of extreme views who was cruel and irresponsible and refused to listen to advice; some suggested that he was motivated by repressed anger rather than a desire to help people.
[14] Sargant selected neurotic patients, especially those with obsessional ruminations, for operation, which carried with it a significant risk of death, personality deterioration, epileptic seizures, and incontinence.
[15] After the Dunkirk evacuation the Sutton Emergency Medical Service received large numbers of military psychiatric casualties and Sargant developed abreaction techniques – patients would relive traumatic experiences under the influence of barbiturates.
[17] During the war Sargant wrote, together with Eliot Slater, a textbook, An introduction to physical methods of treatment in psychiatry; five editions were published, and it was translated into several languages.
He returned to Britain in August 1948 having been offered the position of head of the department of psychological medicine at St Thomas’, a teaching hospital in London.
Sargant also advocated increasing the frequency of ECT sessions for those he describes as "resistant, obsessional patients" in order to produce "therapeutic confusion" and so remove their power of refusal.
In addition he states: "All sorts of treatment can be given while the patient is kept sleeping, including a variety of drugs and ECT [which] together generally induce considerable memory loss for the period under narcosis.
[23] Sargant's methods inspired Australian doctor Harry Bailey who employed deep sleep treatment at Sydney's Chelmsford Private Hospital, eventually leading to the death of 26 patients.
The part-time nature of Sargant's NHS contract at St Thomas' allowed him time to treat patients at other hospitals and establish a private practice on Harley Street[30] (when he died he was worth over £750,000).
[31] A second bout of tuberculosis and depression in 1954 gave Sargant time to complete his book Battle for the Mind (and also an opportunity for giving up his 30-year heavy smoking habit).
While this book is often referred to as a work on 'brainwashing', and indeed it is subtitled a physiology of conversion and brainwashing, Sargant emphasises that his aim is to elucidate the processes involved rather than advocate uses.
Visiting Sargant for a brief consultation every six months, he was given large doses of drugs and had a course of electroconvulsive therapy; he remembered his relief at being told that his depression was caused by chemical and hereditary factors and could not be resisted by an effort of personal will.
[36] But a woman who had been admitted to St Thomas' in 1970 with post-natal depression, and was left with memory loss after treatment with narcosis and electroconvulsive therapy, recalled her experience with anger.
[37] British actress Celia Imrie was admitted to St Thomas' Hospital when she was fourteen for the treatment of anorexia under the care of Sargant.
On 1 April 2009, BBC Radio 4 broadcast a programme researched and introduced by James Maw entitled Revealing the Mind Bender General dealing with Sargant's activities and concentrating on his Sleep Room treatments at St Thomas's Hospital.
Among the interviewees were his one-time registrar David Owen, and a number of patients from St Thomas' as well as a survivor of the Porton Down human experimentation, who testified that their lives had been shattered by Sargant's treatments.
This partial record included a copy of the 1973 referral letter from a psychiatrist at a London psychiatric hospital suggesting that the patient be given Narcosis treatment on Ward 5.
In recent years writer Gordon Thomas has suggested that Sargant's experiments with deep sleep treatment were part of British involvement with the CIA MKULTRA programme into mind control.
[42] Although Sargant acted as a consultant for MI5, no evidence has emerged that his work with deep sleep treatment at St Thomas' hospital had any links with intelligence services.
John Wesley who had years of depressive torment before accepting the idea of salvation by faith rather than good works, might have avoided this, and simply gone back to help his father as curate of Epworth following treatment.