And they are still being asked to by victims and their families, 60 years later. in psychological medicine from the University of Glasgow in 1924, a D.P.M. [22], During the 1950s and 1960s, Cameron became involved in what has later become known as the MKUltra mind control program, which was covertly sponsored by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)[6] and which eventually led to the publication of the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation manual. Ben: In photos, the Cameron family seems happy, a candid shot of Ewen Cameron that looks to be from a garden party shows the psychiatrist in a skinny tie and jacket, horn-rimmed glasses and short cropped white hair. Her niece later said, "She had electric shock equipment put on her head so many times that it [remained] in her subconscious." Peterborough County. It affected a lot of people. And Camerons part of that. AIan Cameron followed in the footsteps of his father and became a director at Panmure Gordon in 1957. Anyone with any appreciation of the complexity of the human mind would not expect that you could erase an adult mind and then add things back with this stupid psychic driving. Those with anxieties or insecurities and who had trouble with the state of the world were labelled as "the weak"; in Cameron's analysis, they could not cope with life and had to be isolated from society by "the strong". Marian Cameron. Lloyd Schrier, son of Cameron patient Esther Schrier, told the CBC, "Oh, 'He was God-like,' they would say." ", "Brainwashing's Avatar: The Curious Career of Dr. Ewen Cameron,". It's not clear how many patients Dr. Ewen Cameron's treatments destroyed, but some families have come forward with stories of what was done to their loved ones. Hebb who did pay the students for their participation basically put them in a room for 24 hours, in a set-up that deprived them of all sensory input. He had various people record the tapes sometimes including the patient's loved ones and it was, on the whole, incredibly traumatizing. But the government agency backing his experiments at the Allan did find a way to make use of his methods. Those who are privileged to know him, even briefly, will not soon forget the warmth and kindliness of this understanding man.. Duncan: And I've said Im unable to do that. It was the start of a series of experiments backed by the British, the Americans, and the Canadians, and they wanted to know what prolonged sensory deprivation actually did to a person. John Marks: The Allan Memorial Institute under Cleghorn commissioned a study of his work, which is absolutely or almost absolutely unprecedented in the psychiatric field. Genealogy profile for Major Donald of 4th Chief Clunes "Old '45" Cameron Major Cameron . Experts must develop methods of forcefully changing attitudes and beliefs to prevent the authoritarian overlord. And here I am looking much younger than I am now. The Canadian government also funded the project. Her life was sad. The first was for 18 days and the second for 29 days, all while hearing endless recorded messages and being subjected to a series of electroshock therapy sessions. Alison Steel won compensation for her mother's misery in 2017, says the CBC: $100,000 in exchange for ending legal action. Ben: Over and over, weve heard from victims of Dr. Ewen Camerons brutal experiments at the Allan Memorial Institute. Amory: We definitely will. Deze informatie is onderdeel van Families Klein, Ree, de Breed en de Vries van Terschelling van Marthan Klein op Genealogie Online. By literally wiping the minds of his subjects clean by depatterning and then trying to program in new behavior, Cameron carried the process known as brainwashing to its logical extreme., The dehumanizing nature of his methods were published in premier medical journals without any complaints from other psychiatrists; Cameron read papers about depatterning with electroshock before meetings of his fellow psychiatrists; and they rewarded him, electing him president of the American, Canadian, and World Psychiatric Associations. When it came time to evaluate Nazi leaders ahead of the Nuremberg Trials, he was one of a group of internationally renowned mental health professionals who were sent to decide just what was going on in the heads of some of the worst war criminals the world had ever seen. Amory: Dr. Ewen Cameron will never be able to respond to the intergenerational trauma created by his work. Very different. The Guardian talked to Alison Steel, Jean's daughter and one of the many family members trying to shine a light on what was done to their loved ones without their consent. There must have been records of experiments. Montreal's CTV says that by the time she died in 2011, she had spent the last 20 years of her life as an "infant," unable to allow anyone near her head without a terrible reaction. But he has fond childhood memories of summers spent in New Yorks Adirondack Mountains, where his dads competitive nature led him again and again to the line of the horizon. While he didn't name names or give specifics, he did say that papers "related to patients were destroyed.". Duncan: He probably did, but I dont think I could remember the specifics of it. Death: June 18, 1958 (52) Immediate Family: Son of Sir Ewen Allan Cameron and Rachel Margaret Cameron. Duncan: This is at the Lake Placid Club in Lake Placid, New York. A Canadian government dismissed the CIAs role as a side issue or red herring; Ottawas Justice Department denied legal responsibility, offering each victim a nugatory $20,000 nuisance payment. And one of these risks was the treatment that he was using. And when you get up to the top, its completely wooded, so theres no panoramic view after all the hard climbing. All Germans on trial would be assessed according to the likeliness for committing the crime. In 1984, New Scientist reported on a lawsuit filed on behalf of some of the people who ended up a part of MKUltra's Sub-project 68. Today, we're talking to one of the only people who will stand up for Dr. Cameron. Region. So you can see that the work of Ewen Cameron, filtered through Gottlieb, definitely informs the interrogation techniques, if we want to call them that, that the United States has been using on its prisoners in Guantanamo and in black sites around the world. Like, did she always have problems? And he said, Oh, gosh. She goes, No. She was the one that was gonna go and conquer the world. Psychiatric experimentation: the lessons or history, The Journal of the California Alliance for the Mentally Ill, 1994, Vol. It was reported that none of the patients sent to the Radio Telemetry Lab showed any signs of improvement. Amory: What was your father like as a dad? Donald Ewen Cameron 24 December 1901 - 8 September 1967)[1] was a Scottish-born psychiatrist. And this is a picture up with my brother, Stuart. in psychological medicine from the University of Glasgow in 1924, a D.P.M. [clarification needed] Those Germans affected by the events that led to World War II were of utmost concern. They were destroyed. It's Boston local news in one concise, fun and informative email. Kinzer: This idea of some evil scientists taking control of someone else's mind is a wonderfully appealing trope, and it's been used repeatedly in very popular movies and books and stories. Alison believes those random phrases her mother would sometimes say were from the recordings that she'd been forced to listen to for hours. Alison said that when her mother returned, it was no longer her mother. Ben: Hebb did an interview with a film producer in the 1980s, saying, quote, Cameron was irresponsible criminally stupid. His focus on children included the rights to protection against outmoded, doctrinaire tactics, and the necessity for the implantation of taboos and inhibitions from their parents. You know, my job was to look out for the cops. [31][2] In her book, In the Sleep Room: The Story of the CIA Brainwashing Experiments in Canada,[32] author Anne Collins explored the history of Cameron and Montreal's Allan Memorial Institute. And he always had a little book of science fiction by the bedside. [citation needed]. Although society had established sanctions against the spread of infectious diseases, Cameron wanted to extend the concept of contagion to chronic anxiety. Cameron focused primarily on biological descriptive psychiatry and applied the British and European schools and models of the practice. His version was a continuous-loop cassette player that would deliver messages on repeat and it's even worse than it sounds. Or answer questions about his motivations, whether or not he knew he was part of the CIAs mind control efforts. Cameron became the first director of the Allan Memorial Institute as well as the first chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at McGill. There's Edgar Allan Poe stories and Sherlock Holmes stories. [citation needed]. In other words, torture. In 1936, he moved to Massachusetts to become director of the research division at Worcester State Hospital only 1 year later. ", And what about the CIA, who had approved and funded the research in the first place? It was a heart attack and was very sudden. Some of this work took place in the context of the Project MKUltra program for the developing of mind control and torture techniques, psychoactive poisons, and behavior modification systems. In fact, he might have enjoyed those more. (McCoy, 2007) Indeed, Hebb and Camerons contribution as pioneers who designed the psychological paradigm for torture used by the CIA was acknowledged by The McGill Daily, in 2012. Birthdate: June 04, 1906. This is Part 5. Kinzer: If Cameron had failed to find an effective means of mind control despite carrying out the most reckless experiments, in which he was willing to take any kind of a grotesque step in an effort to find that key, this must have helped feed Gottlieb's conclusion that the whole thing didn't exist. Donald Hebb and Ewen Cameron were competitors; they did not collaborate, though Cameron incorporated Hebbs sensory isolation techniques into his own diabolical arsenal of psychiatrys instruments of torture. Duncan: I started work at the State Department just a day or so before Kennedy was assassinated. Ironically, his lasting impact would be on how to destroy the human mind, not how to repair it. Shes also signed on to the class-action lawsuit against McGill University, the Canadian government, and the CIA. You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. His brutal techniques involved a three-stage method for brainwashing in order to eliminate the will and establish control: first, mental depatterning achieved through drug-induced coma; massive neuroleptic drug cocktails induced extended sleep lasting up to eighty-six days. Cameron began to base some of his notions on race, as is seen in his theories regarding the German people. And, later on to guidebooks for what we now call enhanced interrogation at places like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. In 1933, he married Jean C. Rankine, whom he had met while they were students at the University of Glasgow. Amory: Ben and I are in an apartment in Washington D.C. thats bursting with morning light and books, and were flipping through some of our hosts old family photos. Cameron placed the psychiatric treatment unit inside of the hospital and inspected its success. Ben: About halfway through, Prosecutor Joseph Rauh starts quoting statements that Camerons wife Duncans mom made on the record. Ben: He looks like hes having a good time. And it's still hugely controversial: In 2019, The New York Times published drawings done by prisoners who had been subjected to these torture methods at Guantanamo Bay, and it's not for the faint of heart. [14] Hess later confessed that he had faked the amnesia. By that time, information on Cameron's sleep room projects was coming out, and there were all kinds of people who were very quick to distance themselves from it. The victims and their lawyers want us to remember that this story isnt over. A possessive type, filled with jealousy and demanding utmost loyalty. Joseph Rauh Jr. was one of the attorneys that represented the group who filed lawsuits in the mid-1980s. In 1936, he also published his first book, Objective and Experimental Psychiatry which introduced his belief that psychiatry should approach the study of human behavior in a rigorous, scientific fashion rooted in biology. Amory: With the information we do have about Cameron, we know this: his so-called treatment didnt cure mental illness, and it didnt control peoples minds. Allan Cameron. [39], Social and intrapsychic behaviour analysis, Cameron and Freud: civilization and discontents. Cameron began to abandon the Freudian unconscious in favour of a social constructivist's view of mental illness. My recollection was that I wasn't able to provide him with much information that he didn't already have. He is largely known today for his central role in unethical medical experiments, and development of psychological and medical torture techniques for the CIA. In 1943, Cameron was invited to McGill University in Montreal by neurosurgeon Dr Wilder Penfield. While guys like Freud encouraged talking through problems, Cameron thought things like electroshock therapy and drug cocktails could be used to physically change the brain and get rid of the illness in question. Cameron believed that mental illness was literally contagious that if one came into contact with someone with mental illness, one would begin to produce the symptoms of a mental disease. That could be heightened with various drugs, eventually was replaced by positive messages, and the so-called "psychic driving" would continue. He received an M.B., Ch.B. . Theres no clear approach to the summit only overgrown pathways. Ben: Duncan says his father was so busy that he didnt see much of him during their time in Montreal. Not, at least, until well into 1965, months after they were told to end the experiments. Her family sued, first based on the treatment alone, then again, after discovering she was a part of the MKUltra program. Duncan Cameron is Ewen Cameron's son, and when he speaks of his father, he talks about a man who loved to hike, read science fiction, and who had an obituary that read, in part: "Those who are privileged to know him, even briefly, will not soon forget the warmth and kindliness of this understanding man." Part of Camerons plan for his patients was to wipe their minds clean, to make them forget their past, so they could move forward. According to The Washington Post, Cameron was recruited in 1957, and he was a big deal. Marian: It's become so embedded in our narrative, in our pop culture, without people really understanding that it happened It was real. Any documents that related to patient treatment were destroyed? That was the case for people like Phyllis Goldberg. Finally, while the person is in isolated confinement, in LSD altered states of consciousness, and deprived of sensory stimulation, adequate food, water, and oxygen, the subject would be bombarded by psychic driving by use of a football helmet clamped to the head with taped messages played for hours non-stop up to a half-million times, messages such as my mother hates me. (McCoy, 2007). Once it was down to an exact science the precise number of hours in a coma, the number and duration of electroshock treatments, the exact dosages of drugs he believed that curing mental illness could be as simple as admitting a patient, putting them through the program, and spitting out a brand new, problem-free person on the other side. [27] Such consequences included incontinence, amnesia, forgetting how to talk, forgetting their parents, and thinking their interrogators were their parents. Amory: In the Lake Placid community where Dr. Camerons family spent the bulk of their summers, his sudden death from a heart attack while hiking was big news. And he has a much different memory of how it all went down. She's the exception, though, and the CBC says that 2020 saw others like Lana Ponting, who was just 16 when she was sent to the sleep room hoping that year, it would finally be their year, thanks to a class action lawsuit filed in 2019. These became the basis of a new social and behavioural science that he would later institute through his presidencies of the Canadian, American and World Psychiatric Associations, the American Psychopathological Association and the Society of Biological Psychiatry. This must be very difficult, very complicated for them. Rauh: --Well, I will put it another way. These negative statements were sometimes taken from the therapy sessions Cameron conducted when patients first arrived, says Rebecca Lemov, author of "Brainwashing's Avatar: The Curious Career of Dr. Ewen Cameron." Amory: What we know of Camerons work comes from family accounts like Marian's, a few hard-won medical documents, and detailed descriptions of his techniques from his own journal articles and speeches. It's hardwired into the brain. So why havent they? The CBC says the CIA recruited Dr. Ewen Cameron a few years into MKUltra, using the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology to approach Cameron and tell him that he really, really needed to apply for one of their grants. We encourage you to research and examine these records to . Joseph Rauh (from the transcript): But as far as you know now, neither you nor your brother or sister or mother have *any* papers left that are not sort of public documents? 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