Shock Therapy in Danish Psychiatry

In the last decade, a new history of shock therapy in psychiatry has emerged. Electroshock or electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) in particular has attracted the attention of the scholars German Berrios, Roberta Passioni and Max Fink, who have each examined the scientific origins of the therapy.1 Timothy W Kneeland and Carol A B Warren have explored its history in the United States, and Jonathan Sadowsky has analysed its reception by American psychoanalysts in the twentieth century.2 Most recently, the extensive monograph Shock therapy by Edward Shorter and David Healy has provided new insights into the invention of ECT in Italy and its use in the United States and in several other countries.3 Specialized studies of the portrayal of ECT in films, popular magazines, and of patient consent to the therapy in Britain have also been published.4 The former image of ECT as a brutal and brain-disabling treatment has been challenged by this new literature. Instead, the recent studies have focused on the life-saving results of shock therapy and its positive effect on depression, characterizing ECT as the “penicillin of psychiatry”.5 The contemporary rise of electroconvulsive therapy has undoubtedly influenced its historiography. ECT is thus undergoing a comeback, and the historical literature on the treatment has been accompanied by a series of books advocating its benefits in psychiatry today.6 However, criticism of shock therapy has not ceased, and unfavourable studies of