The shocking account of the women tortured by a legendary psychiatrist in his infamous “sleep room,” and the survivors fighting for change in the system
Dr. William Sargant was one of the most revered figures in postwar psychiatry. He had a lucrative private practice in London and a bestselling book on brainwashing, and was a household name. 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 he was best known for the apogee of his career: the Sleep Room in Ward Five on the top floor of the Royal Waterloo Hospital in London. In this twilight world, Sargant’s patients were subjected, often without their consent or that of their families, to continuous narcosis. They would be kept asleep for more than twenty hours a day for months at a time, roused only to be washed, fed, and given sessions of electroconvulsive therapy. Sargant believed in aggressive physical interventions: If the brain was sick, it needed to be splinted like a broken leg.
Between 1964 and 1972, hundreds of women were treated in the Sleep Room, emerging with little sense of who they were or why they were there. Now in their seventies and eighties, they have come forward to share their stories. They also want answers: Who funded their dangerous treatment, and were they the unwitting victims of state-sponsored experiments? The Sleep Room is thriller writer Jon Stock’s rigorous investigation into Sargant, the disturbing world of Ward Five, and the twisted science of the psychiatry that lay behind it.
Praise
“A beautifully researched, wildly unsettling study of a psychiatrist running amok.”
—author of The Premonitions Bureau, Sam Knight
“A gripping medical biography that encompasses sex, drugs, brainwashing, intelligence operations, murder, and several scandals.”
—author of Mortal Secrets: Freud, Vienna, and the Discovery of the Modern Mind, Frank Tallis
“A devastating account of the effects one unchecked psychiatrist had on vulnerable mental patients.”
—author of Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors, Lisa Appignanesi
“A chilling case study in dangerous psychiatry, Stock’s gripping exposé of the invasive and reckless interventions inflicted on women in The Sleep Room will keep you wide awake.”
—author of Patriarchy Inc. and Testosterone Rex, Cordelia Fine
"A gripping and harrowing account of a distinguished medical authority who pushed a therapeutic regime of electroshock, brain surgery, and mind-bending drugs to its limit and beyond.”
—author of Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind, Mike Jay
“It is to Stock’s great credit that he places patient testimony centre stage, allowing several patients to tell their stories at length in their own, unedited words.”
—The Guardian
“Shocking... a damning portrait of a man who, in the name of psychiatric progress, left a trail of broken lives in his wake.”
—Telegraph, five stars
“Compelling.”
—Sunday Times
“A gripping expose.”
—Financial Times
“ Lacerating.”
—Guardian Book of the Day, Blake Morrison
“Shocking investigation.”
—The Times, chosen as a best book of 2025
“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.”
—Publisher's Weekly, starred review
