Is Pointsman based on Dr. William Sargant?

[Thomas Eckhardt]

I, for one, am convinced. In my opinion, this clinches it:

"After the Dunkirk evacuation the Sutton Emergency Medical Service 
received large numbers of military psychiatric casualties and Sargant 
developed abreaction techniques – patients would relive traumatic 
experiences under the influence of barbiturates."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Sargant

Presumably P had read one of Sargant's books:

Battle for the Mind (1957, on brainwashing, written with the help of 
Robert Graves)

The Unquiet Mind (1967, autobiography)

A few years after WW II:

"In 1948 [Sargant] was appointed director of the department of 
psychological medicine at St Thomas’s Hospital, London, and remained 
there until the 1980s. There he developed his procedures for 
'brainwashing'. He created a 22 bed sleep ward on the top floor of the 
adjacent Royal Waterloo Hospital, in which he would keep his traumatised 
patients in a continuous state of heavy sedation for periods of up to 
three months and subject them to insulin coma therapy and frequent 
electroconvulsive treatment. This brainwashing, he claimed, re-patterned 
the brain, wiping it clean of the traumatic experience so that when they 
woke up they couldn’t remember what had happened."

http://www.nickread.co.uk/articles/2010/03/visionary-or-disaster-a-perspective-on-william-sargant/

As for the MK-Ultra link (not touched upon in GR, I think) Wiki writes:

"In recent years writer Gordon Thomas has suggested that Sargant's 
experiments with deep sleep treatment were part of British involvement 
with the CIA MKULTRA programme into mind control. Donald Ewen Cameron 
was experimenting along similar lines in Canada, and it later emerged 
that his work was in part funded by the CIA. Cameron often sought 
Sargant's advice and on one occasion Sargant sent Cameron a note saying: 
'Whatever you manage in this field, I thought of it first'. Books about 
Cameron's experiments have commented on links between the two 
psychiatrists. Although Sargant acted as a consultant for MI5, no 
evidence has emerged that his work with deep sleep treatment at St 
Thomas' hospital had any links with intelligence services."

For Sargant, MK-Ultra and the Frank Olson saga, see also Hank P. 
Albarelli, "A Terrible Mistake", and the first long quote provided here:

https://wikispooks.com/wiki/William_Sargant


Am 29.05.2016 um 12:48 schrieb Kai Frederik Lorentzen:

>> Pointsman is also a great character and I've a strong inkling he is
> based on Dr. William Sargant.
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l