We can re-build him

I mentioned recently having listened to one of the episodes of the CBC podcast Brainwashed, about the CIA and psychiatrists' attempts to learn how to control peoples minds, in the 50's and 60's.

I went back to listen to another episode, and it was a very incredible reminder about how top psychiatrists got away with just ridiculously unethical experiments on the basis of fanciful theories of how they might work.

Those of us of a certain age (as the idea has been dead for quite a long time) might remember cheesy ads for pillow speakers that would play (say) a foreign language while you slept, and hey presto, it would help you learn with no effort at all.   I didn't know that this basis idea - which even as a child I thought sounded dubious - was in fact given a serious workout by at least one highly regarded psychiatrist working in Canada in the 1950's.  His name: Donald Ewen Cameron, and the experiments he did were called "psychic driving".  Wikipedia explains:

His "psychic driving" experiments consisted of putting a subject into a drug-induced coma for weeks at a time (up to three months in one case) while playing tape loops of noise or simple statements. These experiments were typically carried out on patients who had entered the Institute for minor problems such as anxiety disorders and postnatal depression; many suffered permanent debilitation after these treatments.^[27] Such consequences included incontinence, amnesia, forgetting how to talk, forgetting their parents, and thinking their interrogators were their parents.^[28] His work was inspired and paralleled by the psychiatrist William Sargant, who was also involved with the intelligence services and experimented extensively on his patients without their consent, causing similar long-term damage.^[29]

The Brainwashed episode indicated that the patients slept 23 hours a day, and although awoken to go to the toilet, the ideal result was considered a reversion to early childhood incontinence, as that indicated their mind had reverted to a childlike malleable state, into which positive messages on the tape would be absorbed by the subconscious, and replace those bad thoughts.

The podcast episode paints a much worse picture of how the experiments were done - if I recall correctly, Cameron first tried just playing the tape in the undrugged patient's bed 24 hours a day, which the patient found absolutely unbearable, so it was drugged sleep for weeks at a time, to get around that problem! 

There's a very good and lengthy article about Cameron here, which explains that for many people, Cameron exuded much charm, and his obituaries in 1967 were full of praise.  He apparently was very fond of gadgets and technology, and loved science fiction.   There is a detailed description of "psychic driving", although I would say inadequate attention given to this obvious problem (the failure of successful "rebuilds"):

Cameron reported that once the patient’s resistance had been conquered, the result was therapeutic. Depatterning then proceeded to a final level of “disorganzation” in which the patient experienced utter “loss of orientation as to space and time,” near-total amnesia for his or her identity, often double incontinence, and (relatedly) childlike dependency on care staff. 56 The goal now was to rebuild, to retrain the patient to pursue healthy behaviors and leave behind the unhealthy behavior patterns that had previously vexed him or her. Despite the labor-intensive tasks it generated for nursing staff, the method at its core served to put the whole process at a distance by automating it: “this method of activating psychotherapeutic mechanisms not only created a great deal of time saving for the therapist but also appears to operate much more rapidly than ordinary psychotherapeutic procedures and hence constitutes a time-saving for the patient,” Cameron and his assistant asserted.57 Cameron’s method was at heart an efficient device.

It all turned out after his death that money had flowed to him from the CIA, although it is not clear whether he knew that was the true source.  Somehow, it would seem, he managed to convince himself this was a genuinely successful treatment enough of the time to take the risk of ruining other patients who were permanently broken by it.  In fact, I haven't yet read about that aspect - I mean, it's kind of hard to be believe it was ever a clear success, in anyone.  

The article I linked to talks a lot about the connection of his ideas to behavourism, which has generally fallen from grace. I must admit, I have long found it frustrating that the present popular thoughts on psychology and personality are rarely seen in light of how previous "fashions" for how we think of ourselves have come and gone.   The idea that every person's true goal and only way to happiness is to be "true to yourself"* that now completely dominates much of the western world makes it is well worth reading about other ideas that have come and gone.

 

* What is the best term for that?  Personality - or identity - essentialism?  Someone has probably named it, I should go looking...