THE EFFECT OF ELECTROSHOCK ON A "NORMAL" PERSON UNDER RECENT STRESS
An Expment Elucidating the Influence of Electroshock on the Defnsive Operations of the Ego
LEO ALEXANDER M. D.1
1 The Neurobiologic Unit and Research Clinic, Boston State Hospital, and the Department of Psychiatry, Tufts College Medical School.
After an experimental application of electroshock a prior stressful event was disregarded—Stripped of its associative connections—in the manner consistent with the defensive operation known as isolation. Neutral events that occurred both before and after the stressful event were clearly remembered after the electroshock.
Clinical studies to be reported elsewhere (I) indicate that the arousal or enhancing of active defensive operations appears to be the most decisive effect of convulsive electroshock treatment. It is probably for that reason that ECT is helpful in those conditions in which defensive operations are at a low ebb, ineffective or exhausted, such as in depression and other severely regressive psychotic states, but that it is ineffective—in fact disturbing—in those conditions in which defensive operations are already too disturbingly alerted, constituting an obstacle to treatment and recovery, such as in anxiety states.
