title: Electroshock in Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance--fictional, not factual.
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.
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Healy
authors.forename: Bruce G
authors.initials: BG
authors.lastname: Charlton
mesh_terms: D004565:Electroconvulsive Therapy