By Linda Andre

LYING FOR FUN AND PROFIT

In 1975, when he was a graduate student in psychology at the University of Pennsylvania, young Harold Sackeim wrote his masters thesis on self deception. And his PhD dissertation was titled "Self Deception: Motivational Determinants of the Non-Awareness of Cognition."

So Harold became a doctor by self deception. He then seemed headed for a dead-end career in academic psychology, publishing on such decidedly unsexy topics as "Classroom seating and psychopathology." He published a book chapter called "The Adaptive Value of Lying to Oneself" and an article titled "Self Deception: A concept in search of a phenomenon."

Clearly Harold needed a product to pitch, a big-ticket tie-in; if he didn't find one he would end up just another obscure academic researcher. Sometime around 1980, his concept met its phenomenon: Harold hitched his wagon to a shock machine. It was a perfect match. Harold's star has done nothing but rise ever since.

Harold had received a grand total of about $5,000 in grant money up to 1981. That year he got half a million dollars, and the millions have been rolling in steadily ever since. By 1988, Harold was proclaiming himself a "world expert" on ECT, and not many in the world were inclined to contradict him.

The fact is that if Harold Sackeim didn't exist the American Psychiatric Association would have had to invent him, in order to get out of what it perceived as a public relations problem with electroshock. Sackeim is a born PR man. No one else has had quite the stomach for ECT promotion that Harold has; other ECT advocates, not so skilled in self deception, tend to choke on the Big Lies he tells so glibly. Harold gives the impression of actually believing his own lies, and perhaps he really does.

Whenever the media does a story on ECT, Harold is there with a sound bite on the spot. Whenever an ECT survivor sues for memory loss, Harold is likely to be the "expert witness" testifying against her. He's got his fingers in every dike where the truth about ECT might slip through.

A writer for a men's magazine once called Harold Sackeim a "designer-suited scientist." But only the first half of that description is accurate. Harold does wear the finest suits ---though like the special souped-up shock machines he uses, they must be made to order, since he stands under five feet tall. But a scientist Harold Sackeim is not. All of his money and influence have gone, not into an objective scientific investigation of ECT, but into preventing such an investigation.

--- Since 1981, Harold has been continuously funded by NIMH to study "Affective and Cognitive Consequences of ECT." He's received over five million dollars for this grant alone (he has several other million dollar grants from NIMH as well). That's five million dollars that made sure that no one but Harold would have the official say as to exactly what ECT's cognitive effects are. And it's virtually certain now that no one else ever will. This grant, now entering its third decade, no longer has to compete with other proposals for funding; it's renewed for ten years at a time, most recently in 2000.

What does Harold have to show for his twenty years of "research"? Well, he wrote last year that "we lack data" on the permanent adverse effects of ECT; in particular, he claims there is no research on the number of survivors who experience severe permanent amnesia.

--- Rather than doing this research ---- research he surely knows would be fatal to his published claims that ECT is safe, and to his position as the golden boy of the ECT industry --- Harold's chosen to simply make up some numbers. He wrote the APA's informed consent form, which is used in one version or another in most hospitals in America. The form states that only "1 in 200" ECT survivors report permanent memory loss. But that fake "statistic" is not based on anything. Harold was finally forced to admit (on national television) that this is simply a made-up number, and that there is no data to support it. Ever the PR man, he calls the figure "impressionistic."

Without blinking an eye, he's now (as of mid-2001) begun touting a new "impressionistic" figure: 1 in 500.