Oh boy, I can't/won't rate this book as I'll find it too difficult for me to separate the book from the content. I picked up this book because I really wanted to learn more about this man that I view with revulsion. It's always good to remember that these people never consider themselves monsters and truly believe that they are helping people. And yes, the crazy thing is that given the context of the time and the treatments and outcomes for people with mental health issues at the time, you can definitely see how making someone 'docile' enough to live at home with their family instead of getting shipped off to a mental institution can be considered a mercy. 

However, given all the insights into this man, which were a *lot* because he was very self-important so documented his life fully as he was convinced basically until he died that he should go down with all the Nobel prize winners as a 'great' of his field. And therein lies this issue. He is a man who got into medecine not based on his desire to want to help people, but on seeing the prestige it gave his grandfather and was always chasing that prestige. When he started the scientific method was not in effect so his methods of taking sad 'before' photos and then happier looking 'after' photos seemed like a very legit 'evidence' gathering at that time. But then as more rigorous and scientific methods of data comparison came into fashion he resolutely refused to adapt because his ego simply could not accept what the data started to show. He increasingly dug his heels in more and more. 

The only thing that softened my heart to him a bit was his feverish insistence on following up with his patients (although clearly this was again driven by his own ego's need to find support for his world-view where he was a brilliant man who improved so many people's lives). He tracked them until the end of their or his lives and started doing regular road trips to visit and follow-up with them and kept up many letter correspondences. It's so sad to see him desperately trying to convince himself of the good he did and that one sad little man's ego can do SO much unchecked damage in this world to countless other individuals and families (the majority) of the other cases where his intervention left a path of destruction.