Hi Jerome: I can't say I know anything about shock therapies. As you note, they are rather "brutal" and intrusive "treatments" and aren't something I would even contemplate, personally, so I haven't explored this topic. You may be quite right that it simply disrupts the brain's functioning so completely that it does a "reset", as for fibrillation in the heart. Along with the damage it does, of course. I certainly would encourage people to try a number of less intrusive approaches first (neurofeedback among them, of course ;-), but I understand you are asking from more a theoretical perspective.