The Sleep Room

The Sleep Room is the writer Jon Stock’s determined attempt to piece together exactly what went on in Sargant’s Sleep Room, which operated from 1964 to 1973… Stock builds on interviews with former patients (including the actress Celia Imrie) and colleagues of Sargant’s to make a compelling case that it was home to a scandal that the medical establishment has done its best to forget… In his telling, Sargant emerges as an egomaniacal lech and a dangerous, reckless psychiatrist * Sunday Times *Shocking tales from 1960s psychiatry * Blake Morrison, Guardian Book of the Day *A shocking account of a very British medical scandal. It’s also a damning portrait of a man who, in the name of psychiatric progress, left a trail of broken lives in his wake * Daily Telegraph, five stars *Powerful… it is to Stock’s great credit that he places patient testimony centre stage * Observer, Book of the Week *A beautifully researched, wildly unsettling study of a psychiatrist running amok * Sam Knight, author of The Premonitions Bureau *A gripping medical biography that encompasses sex, drugs, brainwashing, intelligence operations, murder and several scandals * Frank Tallis, author of Mortal Secrets: Freud, Vienna and the Discovery of the Modern Mind *A devastating account of the effects one unchecked psychiatrist had on vulnerable mental patients * Lisa Appignanesi, author of Mad, Bad and Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors *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 * Cordelia Fine, author of Testosterone Rex *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 * Mike Jay, author of Psychonauts: Drugs and the Making of the Modern Mind *A fascinating and compelling account of some of psychiatry’s darkest practices that has resonance today * Joanna Moncrieff, author of Chemically Imbalanced: The Making and Unmaking of the Serotonin Myth *A journalist and thriller writer, perhaps already picturing the inevitable Hulu mini-series, [Stock] makes the most of his subject’s lurid fascination, from Sargant’s vaulting ego and simian menace… to his private torments. * Emily Eakin, The New York Times *Written with nuance and tact, The Sleep Room is a chilling exposé into psychiatric care that will resonate deeply [with] readers and, especially, true crime fans. * Fernanda Figueroa, Associated Press *The Sleep Room underscores the essential need for psychiatric practice and research to be done under the bright lights of regulators and the law, irrespective of who the overseeing clinician happens to be – Kate Womersley * The Lancet *

Jon Stock is a novelist and journalist. After reading English at Cambridge, he became a freelance reporter, writing investigative features for the Observer, Private Eye, GQ, the Telegraph and the Independent.