Editing Shock Corridor (section)

==Plot==
Bent on winning a [[Pulitzer Prize]], ambitious journalist Johnny Barrett hopes to uncover the facts behind the unsolved murder of Sloan, an inmate at a [[psychiatric hospital]]. He convinces an expert psychiatrist, Dr. Fong, to coach him to appear insane when it involves relating imaginary accounts of [[incest]] with his "sister", who is impersonated by his [[striptease|exotic-dancer]] girlfriend, Cathy; though against her wishes, she is talked into assisting him by filing a police complaint, and his performance during the investigation convinces the authorities to incarcerate him in the institution where the murder took place. Johnny is quickly disturbed by the behavior of his fellow inmates, and on one occasion is mauled by a group of female [[hypersexuality|nymphomania]]cs who assault him in their ward.

Johnny learns the murder had three witnesses, each driven insane by a particular stress (each witness represents one of the obsessions of Americans at that time; war, racism, fear of nuclear annihilation) but capable of occasional, brief periods of sanity. The first witness, Stuart, is the son of a Southern [[sharecropper]] who was taught bigotry and hatred as a child. He was captured in the [[Korean War]] and was [[Brainwashing|brainwashed]] into becoming a [[Communist]]. Stuart was ordered to indoctrinate a fellow prisoner, but instead the prisoner's unwavering patriotism reformed him. Stuart's captors pronounced him insane and he was returned to the United States in a prisoner exchange, after which he received a dishonorable discharge and was publicly reviled as a traitor. Stuart now imagines himself to be [[Confederate States of America]] General [[J.E.B. Stuart]]. Through conversation with Stuart, Johnny discerns that the killer was likely a hospital staff member, as Stuart recalled the assailant was dressed in white.

The second witness to Sloan's murder, Trent, was one of the first black students to [[School segregation in the United States|integrate a segregated Southern university]]. Psychologically traumatized by the abuses he suffered there, he now imagines himself a member of the [[Ku Klux Klan]], and stirs up the patients with [[White nationalism|white nationalist]] dogma. The third and final witness is Boden, an [[atomic scientist]] scarred by the knowledge of the devastating power of intercontinental ballistic missiles. He has regressed to the mentality of a six-year-old child.

After a hospital riot, Barrett is [[straitjacket]]ed and subjected to [[Electroconvulsive therapy|shock treatment]], and comes to believe Cathy is truly his sister, rejecting her when she visits. He experiences many other symptoms of mental breakdown while he learns the identity of the killer - Wilkes, a hospital attendant who committed the murder to cover up his sexual liaisons with numerous female patients. Johnny confronts Wilkes in the [[hydrotherapy]] room, and begins a violent altercation with him, eventually extracting a confession in front of witnesses.

Wilkes is apprehended, and Johnny is finally able to write his story on Sloan's murder, but the ordeal leaves him with a shattered psyche, and he is diagnosed with [[schizophrenia]]. Some time later, Cathy visits Johnny in the hospital. She laments to a psychologist about Johnny's mental decline, as Johnny sits idly in a [[catatonia|catatonic]] state.