William Sargant

Out of the horrors of Dunkirk and the aimless terror of the raids on London, British psychiatrists learned much about the treatment of war’s mental cases that has application in the practice of psychiatry today. Sometimes by accident, sometimes by inspiration, doctors evolved ways of curing or inhibiting the effects of acute hysteria, reactive depression, loss of memory, and fright paralysis. Dr. Sargant, a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and chief of the Department of Psychological Medicine at one of London’s great teaching hospitals, was one of those wartime discoverers. This article is drawn from his new book, THE UNQUIET MIND, to be published in the fall by Atlantic - Little, Brown.

A fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, DR. WILLIAM SARCIANTfirst came to the United States in 1938 to work at Harvard and the Massachusetts General Hospital on a Rockefeller Foundation grant. Since then he has been a frequently invited visitor to the United States. Author ofBATTLE FOR THE MINDand a former president of the section of psychiatry of the Royal Society of Medicine, he is in charge of the department of psychological medicine at one of London’s oldest and most famous general leaching hospitals.