Electroshock in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance--fictional, not factual

Healy, David and Charlton, Bruce G. 2009. Electroshock in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance--fictional, not factual. Medical Hypotheses 72 (5) , pp. 485-486. 10.1016/j.mehy.2008.12.026

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Abstract

Electro-convulsive therapy (ECT/electroshock) features in a number of books and movies, but always unfavourably. ECT plays a major role in Robert Pirsig's philosophical novel Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance ('ZAMM'). This has sold more than five million copies; making Pirsig perhaps the most widely read philosopher alive. ZAMM is apparently autobiographical, and describes the author suffering a psychotic breakdown which was treated by ECT. ECT led to a 'cure' but supposedly by deleting all memories of the author's earlier self, producing a lost personality called Phaedrus. The presentation of ECT in ZAMM is chilling: 'Destroyed by order of the court, enforced by the transmission of high-voltage alternating current through the lobes of his brain. Approximately 800 mills of amperage at durations of 0.5-1.5s had been applied on twenty-eight consecutive occasions, in a process known technologically as 'Annihilation ECS'. A whole personality had been liquidated without a trace in a technologically faultless act ....'. Yet newly published biographical information on Pirsig from Mark Richardson (Zen and now: on the trail of Robert Pirsig and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. New York: Knopf; 2008) has documented that the role of ECT in ZAMM is a 'literary device', added at a late stage in drafting the book. In reality the ECT had erased some short-term memory, but Pirsig's long-term memory had quickly returned. Richardson obtained this information from Robert Pirsig's (then) wife, from his sister, and also from his friend John Sutherland (who appears as a character in ZAMM). It seems that one of the most famous depictions of ECT, one that had appeared factual, was actually fictional.

Item Type:	Article
Date Type:	Publication
Status:	Published
Schools:	Schools > Medicine
Subjects:	R Medicine > R Medicine (General)
Publisher:	Elsevier
ISSN:	0306-9877
Last Modified:	19 Nov 2015 11:03
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/81620

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