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writerkitI've been listening to Endless Thread's special five-part Madness series, which is about Ewen Cameron, widely accepted as the author of the most horrific of the MK ULTRA experiments.
Apparently psychic driving is *not* a procedure invented by Hannibal. Apparently it is a real thing that Cameron was actually doing. The podcast takes pains to note in the beginning that things bear resemblance to Brave New World and implies that he was pulling more of his psychological theory from science fiction than actual science. While I can believe that to a point, I've read enough about the early history of psychiatric institutes to know that that didn't make him particularly unusual, even in the fifties and sixties-- he was not doing any of this *that* much later than lobotomies were the highest of psychiatric fashion.
Similarly, while the podcast implies he invented insulin shock therapy, that well predated him and was quite widespread. I can *kinda* see how you get from that to sleep comas as a therapeutic agent, but as with a lot of psychiatry at the time it didn't work. Also he very quickly moved from treating schizophrenia to mind control. Which he was still claiming was therapeutic.
This podcast seems much more shocked by Cameron's behavior than I would be-- while his behavior is undeniably *awful* it's more a matter of degree than kind in terms of abuses going on at the time, and I think it's important to remember that, not to excuse him, but to make it clear that the whole profession was doing some bad stuff. There's a deep trek into the moral vicissitudes of "How does someone who was actually a fairly competent and accomplished psychiatrist in many respects wind up doing this awful stuff to people and keep doing it even when it's clearly not helping them" that I think bears some comparison to the "Stop using 'inhuman monster' to describe rapists" movement: ordinary people are capable of great diversity within themselves which includes being quite capable of monstrous acts, and it has more to do with a strong sense of your own importance coupled with never coming up against anyone willing to set boundaries or enforce consequences than it does with some innate sort of monstrousness.
But the very fact that I don't find it shocking in the context of what I already know about psychiatric practice at the time that wasn't an experiment makes me wonder just how much cross-pollination and bleedthrough there was-- Cameron, after all, was presenting at least some of his results at psychiatric conferences, and I can only assume others were as well, especially since most of them didn't know they were being funded by the CIA. Given the sheer scale of it, it wouldn't be surprising if that affected psychiatric practice more generally. The reverse could also be true, since Cameron got recruited on the strength of experiments he was already doing on things that hadn't occurred to the CIA on their own, that they saw him presenting at conferences--and this explicitly calls out Cameron as the author of some of the most awful MK ULTRA things. Hospital personnel telling the journalist that broke it that they were afraid of Cameron but didn't approve reminds me of the lobotomy craze; there were plenty of people who disapproved of that but weren't willing to risk professional opprobium from people who were at the top of the field.
(So I realized that part of the problem I was having with "consuming engaging and thought-provoking media" was having no one to discuss it with afterwards. So guess what y'all get to read about now!)
Apparently psychic driving is *not* a procedure invented by Hannibal. Apparently it is a real thing that Cameron was actually doing. The podcast takes pains to note in the beginning that things bear resemblance to Brave New World and implies that he was pulling more of his psychological theory from science fiction than actual science. While I can believe that to a point, I've read enough about the early history of psychiatric institutes to know that that didn't make him particularly unusual, even in the fifties and sixties-- he was not doing any of this *that* much later than lobotomies were the highest of psychiatric fashion.
Similarly, while the podcast implies he invented insulin shock therapy, that well predated him and was quite widespread. I can *kinda* see how you get from that to sleep comas as a therapeutic agent, but as with a lot of psychiatry at the time it didn't work. Also he very quickly moved from treating schizophrenia to mind control. Which he was still claiming was therapeutic.
This podcast seems much more shocked by Cameron's behavior than I would be-- while his behavior is undeniably *awful* it's more a matter of degree than kind in terms of abuses going on at the time, and I think it's important to remember that, not to excuse him, but to make it clear that the whole profession was doing some bad stuff. There's a deep trek into the moral vicissitudes of "How does someone who was actually a fairly competent and accomplished psychiatrist in many respects wind up doing this awful stuff to people and keep doing it even when it's clearly not helping them" that I think bears some comparison to the "Stop using 'inhuman monster' to describe rapists" movement: ordinary people are capable of great diversity within themselves which includes being quite capable of monstrous acts, and it has more to do with a strong sense of your own importance coupled with never coming up against anyone willing to set boundaries or enforce consequences than it does with some innate sort of monstrousness.
But the very fact that I don't find it shocking in the context of what I already know about psychiatric practice at the time that wasn't an experiment makes me wonder just how much cross-pollination and bleedthrough there was-- Cameron, after all, was presenting at least some of his results at psychiatric conferences, and I can only assume others were as well, especially since most of them didn't know they were being funded by the CIA. Given the sheer scale of it, it wouldn't be surprising if that affected psychiatric practice more generally. The reverse could also be true, since Cameron got recruited on the strength of experiments he was already doing on things that hadn't occurred to the CIA on their own, that they saw him presenting at conferences--and this explicitly calls out Cameron as the author of some of the most awful MK ULTRA things. Hospital personnel telling the journalist that broke it that they were afraid of Cameron but didn't approve reminds me of the lobotomy craze; there were plenty of people who disapproved of that but weren't willing to risk professional opprobium from people who were at the top of the field.
(So I realized that part of the problem I was having with "consuming engaging and thought-provoking media" was having no one to discuss it with afterwards. So guess what y'all get to read about now!)
