Canada. Amory: Hey, Dad, let's get out of here!, Duncan: I can remember doing that several times. He clearly had his mind set on doing unorthodox research long before the Agency front started to fund him. This was made into a TV mini-series directed by Anne Wheeler in 1998, called The Sleep Room, which also dramatizes the lawsuit of Cameron's ex-patients against the CIA. He told The Scotsman: "Cameron's entire focus seemed to shift after the Nuremberg Trials. (laughter). We want to hear from you! He had various people record the tapes sometimes including the patient's loved ones and it was, on the whole, incredibly traumatizing. Although society had established sanctions against the spread of infectious diseases, Cameron wanted to extend the concept of contagion to chronic anxiety. [6] Decades after his own death, the psychic driving technique he developed continued to see extensive use in the torture of prisoners around the world. Ben: OK. Fair. He was always attracted to these subjects for which there was no easy answer. Its not a very popular mountain to climb, its steep. And I recall going through them and *taking out* several papers that appeared to me to be identified or could be identified as dealing with a particular patient. Duncan: Oh yes, he enjoyed a good joke even if they were off color. 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. Duncan: Yes. Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron did experiments so horrifying he's been called "Scotland's Mengele." Here's why MKUltra's top brainwashing scientist was a nightmare. Skip . 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. 5, p. 2227) As a result of the lawsuit, the CIA agreed to pay $750,000, the maximum allowed under U.S. law, to settle a case without conceding liability. [15], Before his arrival in Nuremberg, Cameron had written The Social Reorganization of Germany, in which he argued that German culture and its individual citizens would have to be transformed and reorganized. Amory: Nearly everyone who experienced Camerons treatments first-hand has since died. When asked about the decision to involve Cameron in MK-ULTRA, John Gittinger, the CIA officer in charge of monitoring his work said, quote, Now that was a foolish mistake. Like in Nicaragua, where he was The New York Times Bureau Chief. Alison said that when her mother returned, it was no longer her mother. Some would bang their heads against the walls relentlessly, trying to get the helmets off and that's when he realized he could just put them back into a medically-induced coma and play the tapes for as long as he wanted. After his treatments patients were unable to function; they had been reduced to a state of infancy. His list of credentials was so long it's impossible to list them all, but for starters, his resume included the University of Glasgow and Johns Hopkins, and in the 1930s, he was lauded for setting up a series of psychiatric clinics. This third type needs, This page was last edited on 16 February 2023, at 19:10. Amory: Just not in the way he might have hoped. Cameron began to base some of his notions on race, as is seen in his theories regarding the German people. Click here for the donation page. Duncan: He loved hiking. The behaviour of a mental patient could resemble the behaviour of a patient with, for example, syphilis, and then a somatic cause could be deduced for a psychological illness. There must have been names of patients. They were destroyed. Amory: Sarah Anne Johnson, whose grandmother Val Orlikow was a patient of Ewen Camerons, has a response to Duncan that, considering what her family has been through as a result of his fathers experimentation, is surprising. Results were telling: They became super sensitive to the sensory stimuli they did receive, and then, things started getting really weird. Ben: Robert Cleghorn, a former member of Camerons staff, took over after Cameron stepped down. Donald Ewen Cameron 24 December 1901 - 8 September 1967)[1] was a Scottish-born psychiatrist. Josh Crane Twitter Producer, Podcasts & New ProgramsJosh is a producer for podcasts and new programs at WBUR. Amory: We definitely will. Marian Read: So for me, the importance of all of this is to get it out of the shadows of pulp fiction, you know Amory: This is Marian Read. For example, something like rock music could be created by mentally ill people and would produce mentally ill people through infection, which in turn would be transmitted to the genes. Peterborough County. Ben: But the Canadian and US governments could take accountability for their support of Cameron. First I have to say that my father was exceedingly committed to his field. He moved to Upstate New York where he studied aging and memory at two hospitals in Albany. Ewen Cameron was fulfilling one of the items on his life bucket list: to climb Street Mountain. Cregg: What do you know about mind-control experiments? Ben: He looks like hes having a good time. Any documents that related to patient treatment were destroyed? Ben: Did you ever get a sense of at least some of the things that he was trying to accomplish while he was at the Allan? He warned that government institutions should take measures against such potential liabilities. Its in the Netflix show, Stranger Things: Amory: Or the hit video game Call of Duty: Ben: They're talking about it on The West Wing:C.J. In his 1946 paper entitled "Frontiers of Social Psychiatry", he used the case of World War II Germany as an example where society poisoned the minds of citizens by creating a general anxiety or neurosis.[19]. He published a book called Remembering[18] and extended psychiatric links to human biology. He promoted a philosophy where chaos could be prevented by removing the weak from society. Amory: Marians mom died three ago. The last generation of Holocaust survivors and their children express their concerns about current events A Five-Part, FDA Advisory Panel & CDC Director are Complicit in Sacrificing Childrens Lives to Protect Pfizer from Liability, Copyright 2023 Alliance for Human Research Protection, 1950s1960s: Dr. Ewen Cameron Destroyed Minds at Allan Memorial Hospital in Montreal, Law and Mind Control Mind Control Through Five Cases, Vera Sharavs documentary Never Again is Now Global now available. ", Why MKUltra's Top Brainwashing Scientist Was A Real-Life Nightmare, "Brainwashing's Avatar: The Curious Career of Dr. Ewen Cameron. She was left with permanent impairments: She was unable to recognize faces, had impaired spatial recognition, and lost a good portion of her memory. He is largely known today for his central role in unethical medical experiments, and development of psychological and medical torture techniques for the CIA. The second stage involved extreme, high voltage multiple electroshock treatments three times daily. Not, at least, until well into 1965, months after they were told to end the experiments. He is largely known today for his central role in unethical medical experiments, and development of psychological and medical torture techniques for the CIA. 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. But none of us trained in psychiatry. I wasnt destroying documents. And there some of them were high risk ones. Hij is getrouwd met (Niet openbaar), ze kregen 1 kind. Amory: The study, which was published a few months before Cameron died, found that Camerons methods exposed his patients to unnecessary risk, and that there was no clinical proof his methods were any more effective than standard forms of treatment. 22 As the Watergate scandal broke in 1973, MKUltra was officially ordered to be shut down by the CIA. John Marks: There must have been clinical documents. 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 is a rare thing that a psychiatrist of his worldwide reputation and capacity should be a resource available to a small mountain community. And, later on to guidebooks for what we now call enhanced interrogation at places like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. Duncan: Well, that's a big subject. The lawsuits were dismissed, even though it was later shown . So I think the complaints of the doctors and nurses had reached their ears. Very different. Harvey: It is frustrating, and if you talk about a story with no end, I think the important thing to remember is that it isn't just the patients who went through this, it was their families. Psychiatry would play a disciplinary role. Amory: Sarahs grandmother, Val, sued the CIA forty years ago for supporting Dr. Camerons work at the Allan. Cameron also wanted to revolutionize the way psychology and psychiatry looked at mental illness. He never got one. Amory: He doesnt explicitly say that he was the one who did the destroying. [7], Donald Ewen Cameron was born in Bridge of Allan, Scotland, the oldest son of a Presbyterian minister. So we reached out to one of the most comprehensive archives in the world: The Library of Congress. Advertisement. He didn't pull punches, saying, "We hanged Nazis for doing the sort of things Cameron did.". And people talk about the transmission of trauma through generations. North America. A stronger personality would be able to maintain itself in heavy industrial situations, he theorised, while the weaker would not be able to cope with industrial conditions. Amory: Dr. Ewen Cameron will never be able to respond to the intergenerational trauma created by his work. He reported that "the subject's very identity had begun to disintegrate," and that's when someone should, ya know, stop. Skip Ancestry main menu Main Menu. Ben: Im Ben Brock Johnson, and youre listening to Endless Thread, the show featuring stories found in the vast ecosystem of online communities called Reddit. Cameron began his training in psychiatry at the Glasgow Royal Mental Hospital in 1925. Ben: Hebb did an interview with a film producer in the 1980s, saying, quote, Cameron was irresponsible criminally stupid. 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. Ontario. His occupation was occupation. sister. You know, all of us not only respected him, but loved him, and not just myself, but my brothers. Amory: Duncan knows how to be very careful about what he says. The personality types are as follows: Cameron believed that a society in which psychiatry built and developed the institutions of government, schools, prisons and hospitals would be one in which science triumphed over the "sick" members of society. And one of these risks was the treatment that he was using. Thus, this group would have to be studied and controlled as a contagious social disease. The manual got updated in 1980, but the techniques that have come about including things like waterboarding and restraint in a "coffin-like wooden box" still harken back to that original research. 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