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16 THIS DIFFICULT INDIVIDUAL
"Isn't it just like getting electrocuted?" the interviewer asked.
"There's a certain amount of risk," Dr. Overholser replied. "I
think rather slight, but there is some risk to it."
"What does it do? How does it cure them?"
"We don't know. It's entirely empirical."
The electric shock treatment is very closely allied to the practice
of electrocution as a capital punishment, with this difference: the
murderers are only electrocuted once, but those accused of mental
illness have to endure three or more shocks on consecutive days.
Electrodes are strapped on to the patient's temples, and he is
bombarded with currents not quite powerful enough to cause death.
A patient who had been "cured" by this treatment assured me that
it was one of the most terrifying experiences that anyone can
undergo.
Dr. Overholser concluded the interview by pointing out that
there was no longer any stigma attached to those who had been
inmates of mental hospitals. He said proudly, "We have a great
many of our patients who go back to work in government agencies."
The statistics on the number of government workers in Washington
who have histories of mental illness have been suppressed. One
of my fellow students at the Institute was a lady who had undergone
a lobotomy. She constantly complained that she was going to
sue the doctor, a resolve that we encouraged, but by the time she
had reached the doctor's office, she always would forget why she
had come. She was employed at the White House during the Truman
administration, but I do not believe that she held a policymaking
position.
Ezra was not forced to undergo either the lobotomy or the
electric shock treatment while he was imprisoned at St. Elizabeths.
His worldwide reputation as a poet perhaps protected him from
such ordeals. The electric shock technique had received some unfavorable
publicity at the Nuremberg Trials, when inmates of Nazi
concentration camps testified that they had been forced to submit
to this treatment. In her book, Hitler's Ovens, Olga Lengyel says
that she employed the ruse of insanity to escape from Auschwitz
and visit her husband at Buna. She was included in a convoy of
mentally ill inmates who were being sent to Buna for this treatment,
and she describes their reception there: