Jules Montague on Private Passions with Michael Berkeley 2nd October 2022

Jules Montague trained as a doctor in Dublin before moving to London and becoming a consultant neurologist, specialising in treating people with dementia. This led to her first book, "Lost and Found: Why losing our memories doesn’t mean losing ourselves". After fifteen years as a doctor, she has now left clinical practice to become an investigative journalist, focusing on some of the deeper questions raised by her medical work. Her second book is called The Imaginary Patient: How Diagnosis gets us Wrong.

In conversation with Michael Berkeley, she explains that although most of us are relieved when our symptoms are explained by a medical label, diagnosis is not always a good thing. Her experience working as a doctor in Mozambique and in India has revealed how differently diseases may be diagnosed across different cultures. In some ways, she claims, a diagnosis of “spirit possession” may actually be more helpful to the patient than the label “PTSD”. She talks too about her work as a neurologist treating patients with brain damage and dementia, and how it’s led her to ask questions about how much of the “real” person remains when memory is lost.

Jules’s parents are from the Assam region of India and took her back as a child to spend time there; her music choices include a New Year dance from Assam, as well as piano music by Beethoven, a heart-breaking scene from Puccini’s Madame Butterfly; and music by Stravinsky, which he finished soon after suffering a stroke.

A Loftus Media production for BBC Radio 3

Produced by Elizabeth Burke