Tall and muscular, with a toothy smile that never quite reached his eyes, Sargant had an athlete’s stride, a legacy of his days as a Cambridge University track athlete. His clipped speech and penetrating stare brooked no challenge. His lodestar was that “insanity must be treated by primarily physical methods. Just as the heart can be stimulated by a physical shock and a tumor removed from the brain to give relief, so can mental illness be similarly treated.”
These beliefs had been instilled in him from early on at the boarding school he attended and later at St. John’s College, Cambridge. His tutor’s responsibility was to produce an uninterrupted flow of young men to regenerate post-war Britain.
Those he had met during this period displayed a quality of mind, marked by civility, taste and detachment. These became in later life the veneer behind which Sargant would work free of any questioning.
His early medical career was remarkable in the way he gathered to himself powerful men in medicine. Men like Lord Moran (Winston Churchill’s wartime physician) and Professor Edward Mapother. They guided him to the safe haven of Maudsley Hospital. It was there he began his serious research into what eventually became mind-control.
His early subjects were the victims of “acute battle neurosis.” These were men who had simply cracked under the strain of a long war. They were written off as “lacking moral fiber.” But for Sargant they were ideal for his first steps into heavy sedation, drug-induced sleep, modified insulin treatment and barbiturate dosages.
Not everyone approved. The sight of young men lying comatose for long periods only to be woken up for food and electroshock treatments did not sit easy with Sargant’s peers.
And there was another dark, secret side to William Sargant. He had a voracious sexual appetite that could not be satisfied by a normal relationship. Even though he had married a delightful woman named Peggy, he had made it clear he wanted no children. Whatever Peggy may have suspected, she never challenged him about the way he regularly disappeared for a weekend.
His destinations were mansions in the depths of the English countryside, where those recovering from the dull gray years of World War II had found a new way to satisfy themselves at “swinger” parties. Many were out-and-out orgies—often attended by doctors, lawyers and pillars of their churches. In the seclusion of those country estates, William Sargant found the physical relief for his fantasies. (See “An amoral life...”.)
Refreshed, he would return to London to continue his work.
