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Montreal MKULTRA Experiments

Article by Taylor C. Noakes

Published Online December 14, 2021

Last Edited December 14, 2021

Between 1957 and 1964 (though possibly beginning as early as 1948), psychiatric experiments were conducted at the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal — a psychiatric teaching hospital affiliated with McGill University . Scottish-American psychiatrist Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron led and conducted these experiments. The program is widely believed to have been partly funded by the United States Central Intelligence Agency as part of their top-secret MKULTRA program. The Canadian government also funded the project. The experiments’ purpose was originally and officially listed as an effort to find a cure for schizophrenia . However, in reality, the project conducted illegal human experimentation to determine whether drugs and psychological techniques could be used for the purposes of mind control. Officially, neither the United States nor Canada has admitted to being responsible for the experiments. ( See Canada and the United States .) Survivors have attempted to receive compensation with some success.

The United States became interested in mind control in the 1950s after the Korean War . It was believed that North Korea, China and the Soviet Union had employed mind-control techniques during the conflict, particularly on American prisoners of war. Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan also conducted unethical human experimentation during the Second World War , some of which are believed to have involved the use of drugs for mind-control purposes. As a result, the US felt it was behind in this respect.

Donald Ewen Cameron

By 1943, Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron was already a well-known psychiatrist . He was invited to lead the new Allan Memorial Institute by famed Canadian neurologist Wilder Penfield . Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron would become the hospital’s first director. Cameron would also become the first chairman of McGill University ’s psychiatry department. Well respected in his field, Cameron was considered a particularly humane and progressive psychiatrist. The Allan Memorial Institute was the very first mental hospital to operate on an “open door” policy. The institution allowed patients to leave should they choose to do so. As a day hospital, patients could also return home to their families after receiving treatments during the day. These innovations were considered groundbreaking at the time and have since become standard practice.

Experiments

One of Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron’s research focuses was the treatment of schizophrenia. He believed it could be cured by “depatterning” — erasing memories and bringing patients to a childlike state. Patients’ personalities and identities would then be rebuilt using a technique called “psychic driving.”

Psychic driving involved forcing patients to listen to taped messages played on a loop. Patients, who were immobilized and sedated, often underwent this treatment for as long as 16 hours each day. Messages might be repeated for hundreds of thousands. Typically, a patient might endure 10 days of negative messages — often attacking a perceived personality problem. This was then followed by 10 days of positive messages.

Psychic driving involved other highly experimental treatments like placing patients in a drug-induced coma. This practice was often done for much longer than they anticipated (one case is said to have lasted as long as 86 days). In some instances, the patient would also be given large doses of psychotropic drugs, such as LSD. In other cases, patients were subjected to electroshock therapy at up to 75 times the normal intensity. In other cases, both drugs and electroshock therapy were used simultaneously.

Some patients were also put into a sensory deprivation environment. This would have the effect of numbing basic senses like sight, smell and hearing. The method could even include limiting patients’ food and water consumption. Powerful sedatives were also used in high quantities to keep patients sedated. Patients were made as helpless as infants. They were unable to stand, walk or, in some cases, control their bowels. Cameron often went far beyond what was normally prescribed. For instance, Cameron subjected patients to more frequent electroshock sessions with more powerful shocks.

Many patients experienced retrograde amnesia. They became unable to recall memories made before their treatments. They also had to relearn whatever skills they had. In many cases, family members described their loved ones as being more emotionally unstable and damaged than before the treatments began. One patient describes being unable to remember what happened to her up to two years after her treatment. Another forgot his children or how to run the business he had managed for years. Hundreds of patients were likely treated by Dr. Cameron under the auspices of this program.

Connection to the Central Intelligence Agency

Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron’s experiments and research caught the attention of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The agency provided funding through a front organization called the “Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology” from 1957 to 1964. Cameron is also believed to have received half a million dollars in funding from 1950 to around 1965 from the Canadian government . Former director of the CIA Richard Helms ordered files related to the Montreal Experiments to be destroyed when the MKULTRA program was concluded in 1973. In 1977, it was revealed that not all these files were destroyed. The CIA’s connection to the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology was subsequently confirmed.

Similar Experiments Elsewhere in Canada

Other experiments took place around the same time as the Montreal Experiments were being conducted. Women inmates at Kingston ’s Prison for Women were regularly dosed with LSD. They were also subjected to electroshock therapy as part of psychiatric treatments. Experiments were conducted on the inmates at the Oak Ridge section of what is now called the Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care in Penetanguishene , Ontario . In addition, Indigenous youth in residential schools were also unwitting participants in medical tests of vaccines and vitamin supplements.

Violation of Medical Ethics

Researchers conducted the MKULTRA experiments without the patients’ consent. This is considered a gross violation of medical ethics , even at the time. Key information — such as the nature of the treatments or the fact that they were experimental — was withheld from the patients’ families. This left family members unsure of what had happened to their supposedly “cured” relatives. Medical records were further withheld, which made follow-up treatment impossible.

The violations of individual human rights went beyond medical ethics. The experiments contravened the Nuremberg Code. This was a code of ethics enacted after the Second World War as a consequence of the medical experiments undertaken by the Nazis.

Aftermath and Legacy

In 1975, the US Senate’s Church Committee investigated abuses done by the CIA, National Security Administration and Federal Bureau of Investigation. As a result, MKULTRA became public knowledge.

Canadians first became aware of what had occurred at the Allan Memorial Institute in 1980. An episode of the CBC ’s The Fifth Estate revealed what had happened. Survivors of the experiments also spoke publicly about their experiences for the first time. In 1984, it was revealed that the US sent a formal apology to the Canadian government. However, the US also asked the Canadian government to not share any details about the MKULTRA program with former patients seeking an apology and financial compensation.

In the mid-1980s, the directors of the Allan Memorial Institute defended Cameron’s actions. They stated that psychiatrists weren’t expected to inform their patients of the experiments or treatment they were conducting in the 1950s and 1960s. They further claimed that there was no evidence Cameron was aware the CIA was funding his experiments.

Over 300 individuals made claims for compensation from the Canadian government. In 1988, nine survivors received compensation from the US government. In 1992, 77 survivors were awarded compensation from the Canadian government. However, more than 250 claimants were denied compensation because individuals couldn’t produce medical records, filed too late or weren’t considered to have suffered enough. Then-justice minister Kim Campbell also refused to accept liability. In recent years, the families of those denied compensation have attempted to secure compensation from the government. In some cases, they were compensated only if they agreed to sign strict confidentiality and non-disclosure agreements. Advocates argue that the strict rules prevent people from speaking openly about what they experienced. The rules also discourage more victims from coming forward and further ensure the government won’t take responsibility for their actions.

Neither the CIA nor the Canadian government has apologized for the human experimentation conducted at the Allan Memorial Institute that they funded.

Recommended

Medical ethics.

McGill University

Canada and the cold war.

Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

The Montreal Experiments: Brainwashing and the ethics of psychiatric experimentation

Shaan Bhambra Montreal, Canada

“ We do not merely destroy our enemies; we change them .” 1 – George Orwell, 1984

In the aftermath of World War II, the race to become the dominant world power motivated both the United States and the USSR to strive for influence, power, and military strength. In the mid-twentieth century, the brewing Cold War served as the impetus for many of mankind’s modern scientific achievements. From advances in communication technology fundamental to developing the Internet to the push for space exploration, the fear of being outmatched technologically pushed world powers to pursue cutting-edge research. While many research projects led to findings that would define the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, many came up short—and abused civilians in the process.

Of the many Cold War research projects, one that remains shrouded in mystery is the Central Intelligence Agency’s MKUltra project. MKUltra began clandestinely in 1953, with the goal of developing “chemical, biological, and radiological materials capable of employment in the clandestine operations to control human behavior.” 2 To research methods for “brainwashing,” the project defied the ethics of modern psychiatric research, and subjected research participants to high doses of LSD, hypnosis, sexual and verbal abuse, and often torture—all without their knowledge or consent. 3,4

Within the larger MKUltra project existed a set of experiments run by the Scottish psychiatrist Donald Ewen Cameron, which focused specifically on methods to reprogram an individual’s psyche. The experiments, conducted at the Allan Memorial Institute at Montreal’s McGill University, began as an attempt to further Dr. Cameron’s work on “psychic driving,” a method he believed could cure schizophrenia. 5

Hundreds of patients enrolled in the project with the hope of curing their depression and schizophrenia under the world-renowned Dr. Cameron. 6 Patients were often induced into a chemical sleep for days to months. Then patients would be “depatterned” by electroconvulsive therapy to reduce them to a “vegetable state, from which they would recover to a more healthy state of mind.” 7 Often, patients were subjected to two to three daily sessions of 150-volt shocks, each of which lasted a total of six seconds. Without their knowledge or consent, patients were forcibly treated with large doses of LSD and subsequently played sixteen-hour recorded loops of negative messages for ten days, followed by ten days of positive messages. 8 For hours on end, patients were subjected to taped messages such as “my mother hates me,” repeated up to 500,000 times per session. 9

Through this process of “psychic driving,” Cameron believed he could cure schizophrenia and possibly “re-pattern” the patients’ psyches to a healthy state. If successful, “re-patterning” could reverse mental disorders, but also could produce a method to reprogram and plant ideas into an individual’s memory without them being aware of such ideas being unoriginal or foreign. The theoretical method of repatterning thus could be used for therapeutic or nefarious purposes, depending on the goals of whoever chose to utilize it.

After the experiments, many patients noted that they had lost memories and details of their immediate family 10 and were left with permanent amnesia. 11 Many returned to their friends and family in a “childlike state” 12 and required training to regain continence and toilet-training skills. 13 One such patient was Gail Kastner, a nineteen-year-old nursing student who suffered from clinical depression. After repeated electroshock therapy as a test subject, she left the Allan Memorial Institute speaking like a baby, sucking her thumb, and without any of her childhood memories. As a patient and research subject, she was deceived about the intentions, aims, and methods of the study and became incapacitated for the remainder of her life. 14 Patients like Ms. Kastner entered the Allan Memorial Institute hoping to be cured, only to have been medically tortured and experimented on.

The story of the Montreal Experiments and MKUltra remind us today of the power of unchecked psychiatric research. More startingly, they demonstrated how easily circumventable the requirements of the medical ethics system were at the time. Despite these violations of medical or research ethics, Dr. Cameron was globally renowned and served as the president of the American, Canadian, and World Psychiatric Associations. 15,16,17

While the funding for Cameron’s experiments were clandestinely routed through CIA shell organizations like the “Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology,” 18 it later became clear that Cameron was aware of CIA involvement and directly manipulated subjects to further his research. In at least one case, a child was forced to perform sexual acts on government officials. Cameron recorded the acts, and used the recordings as bargaining chips in blackmailing the officials for continued research funding. 19

Stunningly, Dr. Cameron provided psychiatric assessment of Nazi defendants at the Nuremberg Trials, where the Nuremberg Code for research ethics in human experimentation was first declared. 20 At the Doctors’ Trial of the Nuremberg Trials, Nazi doctors were convicted of “performing medical experiments, without the subjects’ consent… of which experiments the defendants committed murders, brutalities, cruelties, tortures, atrocities, and other inhuman acts.” 21 Cameron’s experiments strongly parallel those of the Nazis not only in their brutality, but in their shared goal of improving intelligence and military techniques.

Abruptly and unexpectedly, Dr. Cameron suffered a life-ending heart attack while mountain climbing in 1967. 22 As the Watergate scandal broke in 1973, MKUltra was officially ordered to be shut down by the CIA. Today, much of what was recorded in the experiments remains classified or has been destroyed by government orders. 23 Much of what has been learned about the patients and the Montreal Experiments come from lawsuits against the CIA and legal settlements from the Canadian government. While both the CIA and Canadian government provided compensation to victims of the experiments, neither have admitted liability or issued formal apologies. 24 Furthermore, patients who received compensation signed binding non-disclosure agreements, making understanding the full extent of MKUltra experimentation at the Allan Memorial Institute difficult. 25

By both historical and modern research ethics standards, the Montreal Experiments were obscenely unethical. The Montreal Experiments represented a form of experimentation which relied heavily on the largely unfounded hypotheses of respected authorities (specifically Dr. Cameron’s “psychic driving” theory). Most importantly however, the Montreal Experiments represent one of the greatest violations of informed consent in the modern era.

Moreover, the events that took place in the Montreal Experiments blatantly ignored the medical axiom of primum non nocere or “first, do no harm.” While it could be argued that the medical benefit of curing patients suffering from schizophrenia or depression could justify some medical risk, there was no justification provided for why such extreme—and arguably sadistic—measures would be suitable. Some patients had enrolled with diagnoses like post-partum depression, and instead were subjected to experiments that rivalled military torture. 26

Today, MKUltra remains a shadowy part of American military history and continues to inspire conspiracy theorists who believe that mind-control techniques were successfully developed. 27 Regardless of the conclusions of the research, it is certain that the experiments conducted in Montreal egregiously violated research ethics standards. By ignoring requirements for informed consent and without consideration to the risks and damage inflicted onto research subjects, MKUltra and the Montreal Experiments tortured and permanently damaged patients hoping to be freed of their mental disorders.

•  Orwell, 1984 .
• National Security Archives, “Advisory on Human Radiation Experiments, July 5, 1994, National Security Archives.”
• Otterman, American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond , 24.
• McCoy, A Question of Torture, 29.
• Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, “MK Ultra: CIA Mind Control Program in Canada (1980) – The Fifth Estate.”
• “Brainwashed.”
• “1950s–1960s.”
• Farnsworth, “Canada Will Pay 50’s Test Victims.”
• “Suit Alleges Infamous MD Ruined Woman.”
• Zilboorg, “D. Ewen Cameron m. d.”
• “Past Presidents & Board Chairs.”
• “World Psychiatric Association Chronology | World Psychiatric Association.”
• Linville, “Project MKULTRA and the Search for Mind Control.”
• Goliszek, In the Name of Science , 170–71.
• Cameron, “Psychiatric Examination of Rudolf Hess.”
• Germany (Territory under Allied occupation, 1945-1955 : U. S. Zone), Trials of War Criminals before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, Nuremberg, October 1946-April, 1949 , 14.
• “Stunning Tale of Brainwashing, the CIA and an Unsuspecting Scots Researcher.”
• Kennan, Memoirs , 1950-1963, Vol. 2, 145–67.
• Cashore et al., “Trudeau Government Gag Order in CIA Brainwashing Case Silences Victims, Lawyer Says | CBC News.”
• Oct 26, October 26, and 2017, “After 60 Years, Ottawa Compensates Daughter of CIA Brainwashing Experiments Victim | CBC News,” 60.
• Oct 26, October 26, and 2017, “After 60 Years, Ottawa Compensates Daughter of CIA Brainwashing Experiments Victim | CBC News.”
• Knight, Conspiracy Theories in American History , 490.
•  “1950s–1960s: Dr. Ewen Cameron Destroyed Minds at Allan Memorial Hospital in Montreal.” AHRP (blog), January 18, 2015. https://ahrp.org/1950s-1960s-dr-ewen-cameron-destroyed-minds-at-allan-memorial-hospital-in-montreal/.
• “Brainwashed : The Secret CIA Experiments in Canada – Episodes – The Fifth Estate.” Accessed April 13, 2019. https://www.cbc.ca/fifth/episodes/2017-2018/brainwashed-the-secret-cia-experiments-in-canada.
• Cameron, Donald Ewen. “Psychiatric Examination of Rudolf Hess.” Journal of the American Medical Association 130, no. 12 (March 23, 1946): 790–91. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.1946.02870120036012.
• Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. “MK Ultra: CIA Mind Control Program in Canada (1980) – The Fifth Estate.” Accessed April 13, 2019. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=990k-5Jm5aA&t=494s.
• Cashore, Harvey, Lisa Ellenwood, Bob McKeown · CBC News · Posted: Dec 15, 2017 5:00 AM ET | Last Updated: December 15, and 2017. “Trudeau Government Gag Order in CIA Brainwashing Case Silences Victims, Lawyer Says | CBC News.” CBC, December 15, 2017. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/canadian-government-gag-order-mk-ultra-1.4448933.
• Farnsworth, Clyde H. “Canada Will Pay 50’s Test Victims.” The New York Times , November 19, 1992, sec. World. https://www.nytimes.com/1992/11/19/world/canada-will-pay-50-s-test-victims.html.
• Germany (Territory under Allied occupation, 1945-1955 : U. S. Zone). Trials of War Criminals before the Nuernberg Military Tribunals under Control Council Law No. 10, Nuremberg, October 1946-April, 1949 . U.S. G.P.O., 1949.
• Goliszek, Andrew. In the Name of Science: A History of Secret Programs, Medical Research, and Human Experimentation . First Edition edition. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2003.
• Kennan, G. F. Memoirs , 1950-1963, Vol. 2. Boston: Little Brown & Company, 1972.
• Knight, Peter, ed. Conspiracy Theories in American History: An Encyclopedia: Conspiracy Theories in American History [2 Volumes]: An Encyclopedia . Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC-CLIO, 2003.
• Linville, Tani M. “Project MKULTRA and the Search for Mind Control: Clandestine Use of LSD Within the CIA,” 2016.
• McCoy, Alfred. A Question of Torture: CIA Interrogation, from the Cold War to the War on Terror . Henry Holt and Company, 2007.
• National Security Archives. “Advisory on Human Radiation Experiments, July 5, 1994, National Security Archives,” July 13, 2013. https://web.archive.org/web/20130713145805/http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/radiation/dir/mstreet/commeet/meet4/trnsct04.txt.
• Oct 26, Elizabeth Thompson · CBC News · Posted:, 2017 5:01 PM ET | Last Updated: October 26, and 2017. “After 60 Years, Ottawa Compensates Daughter of CIA Brainwashing Experiments Victim | CBC News.” CBC, October 26, 2017. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/cia-brainwashing-allanmemorial-mentalhealth-1.4373590.
• Orwell, George. 1984 . 1 online resource vols. Cabin John, Maryland: Wildside Press, 2011. http://api.overdrive.com/v1/collections/v1L2BaQAAAJcBAAA1M/products/aa1bc9d4-f84d-49a8-a6d8-0cf91b00314d.
• Otterman, Michael. American Torture: From the Cold War to Abu Ghraib and Beyond . Pluto Press, 2007.
• “Past Presidents & Board Chairs.” Canadian Psychiatric Association – Association Des Psychiatres Du Canada (blog). Accessed April 13, 2019. https://www.cpa-apc.org/about-cpa/who-we-are/past-presidents-board-chairs/.
• “Stunning Tale of Brainwashing, the CIA and an Unsuspecting Scots Researcher.” Accessed April 13, 2019. https://www.scotsman.com/lifestyle/stunning-tale-of-brainwashing-the-cia-and-an-unsuspecting-scots-researcher-1-466144.
• “Suit Alleges Infamous MD Ruined Woman.” Accessed April 14, 2019. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/suit-alleges-infamous-md-ruined-woman/article22402086/.
• “World Psychiatric Association Chronology | World Psychiatric Association.” Accessed April 13, 2019. http://www.wpanet.org/detail.php?section_id=5&content_id=7.
• Zilboorg, Gregory. “D. Ewen Cameron m. d.” American Journal of Psychiatry 110, no. 1 (July 1, 1953): 10–12. https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.110.1.10.

SHAAN BHAMBRA  is a first-year medical student at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He is interested in medical ethics, global health and policy research, and humanities in medicine. In the future, he hopes that his career in medicine will provide him with a wealth of experiences to draw on in his writing.

Spring 2019

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1950s–1960s: Dr. Ewen Cameron Destroyed Minds at Allan Memorial Hospital in Montreal

Cameron was an internationally prominent psychiatrist who developed torture techniques on his involuntary hospitalized patients — mostly women. 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. The second stage involved extreme, high voltage multiple electroshock “ treatments ” three times daily. 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)

Cameron’s techniques have no therapeutic validity whatsoever; they were comparable to Nazi medical atrocities. After his “treatments” patients were unable to function; they had been reduced to a state of infancy. Case of Gail Kastner: “ The shock treatment turned the then 19 year old honours student into a woman who sucked her thumb, talked like a baby, demanded to be fed from a bottle and urinated on the floor.” At that point her affluent family abandoned her and she lived in poverty. John Marks observes,

“Ewen Cameron did not need the CIA to corrupt him. He clearly had his mind set on doing unorthodox research long before the Agency front started to fund him. . . In Cameron, the CIA had a psychiatrist, conveniently outside the United States, who was willing to do terminal experiments in electroshock, sensory deprivation, drug testing, and all of the above combined. 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. The human significance of his dark legacy was brought to public attention when nine of his Canadian victims filed lawsuits in 1980s — twenty-one years after Cameron’s death. Despite the horrific abuse, the American and Canadian psychiatric establishment closed ranks. A Canadian government dismissed the CIA’s role as a “side issue” or “red herring”; Ottawa’s Justice Department denied legal responsibility, offering each victim a nugatory $20,000 “nuisance” payment. (McCoy, 2007)

According to Leonard Rubenstein, an attorney for plaintiffs [Mrs. David Orlikow et al. v USA, 1988] Tom Beauchamp, a leading American bioethicist was an expert witness for Cameron’s estate, arguing that Cameron’s “treatment” complied with the norm and practice of the day. (Rubenstein LS. “Psychiatric experimentation: the lessons or history,” The Journal of the California Alliance for the Mentally Ill, 1994, Vol. 5, p. 22–27) 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. (Beyond Nuremburg, ABA Journal March 1997; News accounts of five legal cases at: The Law and Mind Control — Mind Control Through Five Cases )

Donald Hebb and Ewen Cameron were competitors; they did not collaborate, though Cameron incorporated Hebb’s sensory isolation techniques into his own diabolical arsenal of psychiatry’s instruments of torture. What Hebb and Cameron both have in common is their “contribution” in establishing the scientific foundation for CIA’s two-stage psychological torture method. (McCoy, 2007) Indeed, Hebb and Cameron’s “contribution” as “pioneers” who designed the psychological paradigm for torture used by the CIA was acknowledged by The McGill Daily , in 2012.

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History of Now

The True Story of Brainwashing and How It Shaped America

Fears of Communism during the Cold War spurred psychological research, pop culture hits, and unethical experiments in the CIA

Lorraine Boissoneault

Journalist Edward Hunter was the first to sound the alarm. “Brain-washing Tactics Force Chinese Into Ranks of Communist Party,” blared his headline in the Miami Daily News in September 1950. In the article, and later in a book, Hunter described how Mao Zedong’s Red Army used terrifying ancient techniques to turn the Chinese people into mindless, Communist automatons. He called this hypnotic process “brainwashing,” a word-for-word translation from xi-nao, the Mandarin words for wash ( xi ) and brain ( nao ), and warned about the dangerous applications it could have. The process was meant to “ change a mind radically so that its owner becomes a living puppet—a human robot—without the atrocity being visible from the outside.”

It wasn’t the first time fears of Communism and mind control had seeped into the American public. In 1946 the U.S. Chamber of Commerce was so worried about the spread of Communism that it proposed removing liberals, socialists and communists from places like schools, libraries, newspapers and entertainment. Hunter’s inflammatory rhetoric didn’t immediately have a huge impact—until three years into the Korean War, when American prisoners of war began confessing to outlandish crimes.

When he was shot down over Korea and captured in 1952, Colonel Frank Schwable was the highest ranking military officer to meet that fate, and by February 1953, he and other prisoners of war had falsely confessed to using germ warfare against the Koreans, dropping everything from anthrax to the plague on unsuspecting civilians. The American public was shocked, and grew even more so when 5,000 of the 7,200 POWs either petitioned the U.S. government to end the war, or signed confessions of their alleged crimes. The final blow came when 21 American soldiers refused repatriation.

Suddenly the threat of brainwashing was very real, and it was everywhere. The U.S. military denied the charges made in the soldiers’ “confessions,” but couldn’t explain how they’d been coerced to make them. What could explain the behavior of the soldiers besides brainwashing? The idea of mind control flourished in pop culture, with movies like Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Manchurian Candidate showing people whose minds were wiped and controlled by outside forces. FBI director J. Edgar Hoover referred to thought-control repeatedly in his book Masters of Deceit: The Story of Communism in America and How to Fight It . By 1980 even the American Psychiatric Association had given it credence, including brainwashing under “dissociative disorders” in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-III. Had Chinese and Soviet Communists really uncovered a machine or method to rewrite men’s minds and supplant their free will?

The short answer is no—but that didn’t stop the U.S. from pouring resources into combatting it.

“The basic problem that brainwashing is designed to address is the question ‘why would anybody become a Communist?’” says Timothy Melley, professor of English at Miami University and author of The Covert Sphere: Secrecy, Fiction, and the National Security State . “[Brainwashing] is a story that we tell to explain something we can’t otherwise explain.”

The term had multiple definitions that changed depending on who used it. For Hunter—who turned out to be an agent in the CIA’s propaganda wing—it was a mystical, Oriental practice that couldn’t be understood or anticipated by the West, Melley says. But for scientists who actually studied the American POWs once they returned from Korea, brainwashing was altogether less mysterious than the readily apparent outcome: The men had been tortured.

Robert Jay Lifton, one of the psychiatrists who worked with the veterans and later studied doctors who aided Nazi war crimes, listed eight criteria for thought reform (the term for brainwashing used by Mao Zedong's communist government). They included things like “milieu control” (having absolute power over the individual’s surroundings) and “confession” (in which individuals are forced to confess to crimes repeatedly, even if they aren’t true). For the American soldiers trapped in the Korean prison camps, brainwashing meant forced standing, deprivation of food and sleep, solitary confinement, and repeated exposure to Communist propaganda.

“There was concern on the part of [the American military] about what had actually happened to [the POWs] and whether they had been manipulated to be [what would later be known as] a ‘Manchurian candidate,’” says Marcia Holmes, a science historian at the University of London’s “ Hidden Persuaders ” project. “They’re not sleeper agents, they’re just extremely traumatized.”

The early 1950s marked the debut of the military’s studies into psychological torture, and instead of concluding the American soldiers needed rehabilitation, military directors came to a more ominous conclusion: that the men were simply weak. “They became less interested in the fantasy of brainwashing and became worried our men couldn’t stand up to torture,” Holmes says. This resulted in the Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape program (SERE), meant to inoculate men against future attempts at psychological torture by using those same torture techniques in their training.

Meanwhile, the American public was still wrapped up in fantasies of hypnotic brainwashing, in part due to the research of pop psychologists like Joost Meerloo and William Sargant. Unlike Lifton and the other researchers hired by the military, these two men portrayed themselves as public intellectuals and drew parallels between brainwashing and tactics used by both American marketers and Communist propagandists. Meerloo believes that “totalitarian societies like Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union or Communist China were in the past, and continue to be, quite successful in their thought-control programs… [and] the more recently available techniques of influence and thought control are more securely based on scientific fact, more potent and more subtle,” writes psychoanalyst Edgar Schein in a 1959 review of Meerloo’s book, The Rape of the Mind: The Psychology of Thought Control—Menticide and Brainwashing .

Psychiatrists, as well as writers like Aldous Huxley, were aided by the dominant theory of the human mind at the time, known as “behaviorism”. Think of Ivan Pavlov’s slobbering dogs, trained to salivate upon hearing a bell, even if they weren’t tempted with food. The basic assumption of behaviorism was that the human mind is a blank slate at birth, and is shaped through social conditioning throughout life. Where Russia had Pavlov, the U.S. had B.F. Skinner , who suggested psychology could help predict and control behavior. Little wonder, then, that the public and the military alike couldn’t let go of brainwashing as a concept for social control.  

With this fear of a mind-control weapon still haunting the American psyche, CIA director Allen Dulles authorized a series of psychological experiments using hallucinogens (like LSD) and biological manipulation (like sleep deprivation) to see if brainwashing were possible. The research could then, theoretically, be used in both defensive and offensive programs against the Soviet Union. Project MK-ULTRA began in 1953 and continued in various forms for more than 10 years. When the Watergate scandal broke, fear of discovery led the CIA to destroy most of the evidence of the program. But 20,000 documents were recovered through a Freedom of Information Act request in 1977 , filed during a Senate investigation into Project MK-ULTRA. The files revealed the experiments tested drugs (like LSD), sensory deprivation, hypnotism and electroshock on everyone from agency operatives to prostitutes, recovering drug addicts and prisoners—often without their consent.

Despite MK-ULTRA violating ethical norms for human experiments, the legacy of brainwashing experiments continued to live on in U.S. policy. The same methods that had once been used to train American soldiers ended up being used to extract information from terrorists in Abu Ghraib, Iraq and Guantanamo Bay .

“Here, then, is the brief history of brainwashing,” Melley writes in a 2011 paper for Grey Room . “The concept began as an [O]rientalist propaganda fiction created by the CIA to mobilize domestic support for a massive military build-up. This fiction proved so effective that the CIA’s operations directorate believed it and began a furious search for a real mind control weapon. The search resulted not in a miraculous new weapon but a program of simulated brainwashing designed as a prophylactic against enemy mistreatment. This simulation in turn became the real basis for interrogating detainees in the war on terror.”

While few people take seriously the notion of hypnosis-like brainwashing (outside Hollywood films like Zoolander ), there are still plenty who see danger in certain kinds of control. Consider the conversations about ISIS and radicalization, in which young people are essentially portrayed as being brainwashed. “Can You Turn a Terrorist Back Into a Citizen? A controversial new program aims to reform homegrown ISIS recruits back into normal young Americans,” proclaims one article in Wired . Or there’s the more provocative headline from Vice : “ Inside the Mind-Control Methods the Islamic State Uses to Recruit Teenagers .”

“I think a program of isolation and rigorous conversion still does have a life in our concept of radicalization,” Melley says. But outside those cases related to terrorism it’s mostly used facetiously, he adds.  

“The notion of brainwashing, no less than radicalization, often obscure[s] far more than it reveal[s],” write Sarah Marks and Daniel Pick of the Hidden Persuaders project. “Both terms could be a lazy way of refusing to inquire further into individual histories, inviting the assumption that the way people act can be known in advance.”

For now, the only examples of “perfect” brainwashing remain in science-fiction rather than fact. At least until researchers find a way to hack into the network of synapses that comprise the brain .

Editor's note, May 25, 2017: The article previously misstated that Robert Jay Lifton studied Nazi doctors' war crimes before studying American prisoners of war, and that he coined the term "thought reform." 

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Lorraine Boissoneault | | READ MORE

Lorraine Boissoneault is a contributing writer to SmithsonianMag.com covering history and archaeology. She has previously written for The Atlantic, Salon, Nautilus and others. She is also the author of The Last Voyageurs: Retracing La Salle's Journey Across America. Website: http://www.lboissoneault.com/

Why MKUltra's Top Brainwashing Scientist Was A Real-Life Nightmare

One of the weirdest chapters in U.S. history was approved on April 13, 1953, and any time anyone says anything about "the good ol' days," when things were just better, simpler, and kinder, well, point to MKUltra and say, "Check out this madness!" When then-CIA director Stansfield Turner testified about the program in 1977, he said (via the Smithsonian ) that the bottom line was to develop "the use of biological and chemical materials in altering human behavior." That's absolutely the stuff of a terrifying Netflix horror series, but it was very real — and it destroyed an unknown number of lives.

Operating under the umbrella of MKUltra were as many as 162 sub-projects, with as many as 80 different organizations involved in research. Unfortunately, a lot of what went on within them has been lost: In 1973, the majority of the documents associated with MKUltra were destroyed in a massive (and not-at-all-suspicious) purge.

Traces of some survived, including documentation on Sub-project 42 — also known as Operation Midnight Climax — and sub-project 68. That, says McGill University , was the work of Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron, a psychiatrist who performed experiments so horrifying he's been called "Scotland's Mengele." Being compared to the Nazi's most notorious doctor probably isn't the life goal of most medical professionals, so let's look at what he did to deserve this dubious title.

The work of Dr. Donald Hebb

Canada's McGill University has owned up to the part it played in MKUltra's Sub-project 68, and they say that it really started before Dr. Ewen Cameron even got involved. In 1951 — a few years before the U.S. government and the CIA approved MKUltra — there was a top secret meeting held at Montreal's Ritz-Carlton. 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.

That right there is getting into some shady territory, but the promise of a $10,000 grant — the equivalent of just over $100,000 today — had to be pretty tempting. McGill's then-director of psychology, Dr. Donald Hebb, took the money and set up experiments using his ready-and-waiting pool of test subjects: students.

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. Results were telling: They became super sensitive to the sensory stimuli they did receive, and then, things started getting really weird. He reported that "the subject's very identity had begun to disintegrate," and that's when someone should, ya know, stop. Hebb submitted his findings to the CIA, and it ended up being just the beginning.

MKUltra found their doctor

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. He did — and he got it.

According to The Washington Post , Cameron was recruited in 1957, and he was a big deal. 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. 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.

His work had led him to the belief that mental illness could be "cured" like, say, a broken hip might be rehabilitated. 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. Sounds questionable? Joseph Rauh Jr. was one of the attorneys that represented the group who filed lawsuits in the mid-1980s. He didn't pull punches, saying, "We hanged Nazis for doing the sort of things Cameron did."

Depatterning and psychic driving

At the heart of MKUltra, says The Guardian , was the broadcasting of videos of American POWs from the Korean War condemning their own country and lauding the benefits of Communism. The U.S. wanted to know just how such a thing could possibly happen, and Dr. Ewen Cameron had a theory: brainwashing. He wanted to know if it was possible to wipe a person's mind and reinstall a new personality. Don't worry, it gets worse.

The idea was to first "depattern" the person in question. He tried a variety of things, including multiple electroshock therapy sessions a day and massive doses of drugs — including LSD. Many spent this period of time in what he called the "sleep room," where they were drugged into a medically-induced coma that they were brought out of only to be given three meals a day and the occasional trip to the bathroom. 

The goal, says CBC , was to reduce the patient to what was called a "childlike state," with some people destroyed so completely that they could no longer walk, talk, or dress themselves Shoelaces? Those were right out. The idea was turning the mind into a fresh slate for the next part of the process, called "psychic driving."

Patients protested

The second part of the technique was inspired by something called the Cerebrophone, which was essentially a "learn-while-you-sleep" recording device. His version was a continuous-loop cassette player that would deliver messages on repeat ... and it's even worse than it sounds.

According to The Guardian , it started with playing tapes designed to tap into the reason the patient sought help in the first place. 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."  He had various people record the tapes — sometimes including the patient's loved ones — and it was, on the whole, incredibly traumatizing. That could be heightened with various drugs, eventually was replaced by positive messages, and the so-called "psychic driving" would continue.

Cameron quickly found patients didn't want to listen to the messages. He first solved the problem by wiring the speakers into football helmets and locking them onto patients' heads, but that ended up being not ideal. 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. Patients would be subjected to messages repeated hundreds of thousands of times, as they were kept in their coma for up to a month. Did it work? Take a guess.

Esther Schrier's story

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. Esther Schrier — who was a nurse at Montreal's Jewish General Hospital — tragically lost her first child at just three weeks of age. The guilt of her baby's deadly staph infection stayed with her, and when she became pregnant with her second, and the CBC says she went into Cameron's care in February of 1960. In theory, he was supposed to help her anxiety, depression, and postpartum depression.

She went into the sleep room.

Pregnant with son Lloyd, Esther was kept in a drug-induced coma in the sleep room for a month, where she lost 13 pounds. On March 10, Cameron's notes read: "She is disoriented as to time only and is probably in her second stage of depatterning. There is no incontinence, there is no mutism, and we are continuing this intense treatment of her until we get complete depatterning."

On March 12, her records show she was considered "depatterned": She could no longer stand, speak, could barely swallow, was incontinent, and required treatment by an obstetrician for severe bleeding. Cameron's work stopped when she gave birth, and Lloyd remembered a broken mother. She had no idea how to boil water, much less care for a child. She very slowly recovered — mostly — and died in 2017. Lloyd has continued to fight for recognition, recompense, and an apology.

Jean Steel's experience

Jean Steel was another one of Cameron's patients, and — like the others — she didn't sign up to be a part of MKUltra, depatterning, or psychic driving at all. She was admitted to McGill's Allan Memorial Institute in 1957, needing help dealing with depression and the loss of her child.

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. She said that at the time, Cameron was something of a celebrity. "He was this miracle psychiatrist," she said. "He was supposed to do wonders with people with depression or mental health issues." He did — technically, because nothing says "wonders" has to be a good thing.

Jean spent three months under Cameron's care, and spent two periods in a drug-induced coma. 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 said that when her mother returned, it was no longer her mother. She said: "She wasn't able to talk to me about life and regular stuff. She wasn't able to joke and laugh ... She would blurt out something like: 'We must do the right thing!'" Alison believes those random phrases her mother would sometimes say were from the recordings that she'd been forced to listen to for hours.

From doctor to patient

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. They stressed how they'd been unwilling participants, and that they'd gone to the institute for other issues. Velma Orlikow, for instance, was dealing with postpartum depression. Another patient was suffering from leg pains that no one had been able to diagnose. And Mary Morrow? 

Dr. Morrow, says The Washington Post , had applied for a fellowship in psychiatry with Cameron. That was in December of 1959, and according to the lawsuit (via the Consumer Law Grou p), Cameron diagnosed Morrow as having "nervousness and tension." Instead of being considered for the fellowship, the neurologist was admitted to his Allan Memorial Institute, diagnosed with schizophrenia, and given such a heavy dose of barbiturates that it triggered an allergic reaction and she suffered from a prolonged loss of oxygen to the brain.

Morrow's family got involved, and it was only at their insistence that she was transferred to another hospital. She was left with permanent impairments: She was unable to recognize faces, had impaired spatial recognition, and lost a good portion of her memory. Her family sued, first based on the treatment alone, then again, after discovering she was a part of the MKUltra program. The lawsuits were dismissed, even though it was later shown there were a higher-than-usual number of people diagnosed with schizophrenia, presumably to increase Cameron's subject pool.

Automating mental health

According to "Brainwashing's Avatar: The Curious Career of Dr. Ewen Cameron,"  there was more to his work at the Allan Memorial Institute than just exploring the CIA's questions about brainwashing. He wanted to cure schizophrenia, and win a Nobel Prize for it.

Cameron also wanted to revolutionize the way psychology and psychiatry looked at mental illness. The idea that people needed to sit down and talk about their problems was the old way of doing things, and Cameron was living in an era where things were getting more and more automated. He saw no reason why psychiatry should be any different.

His goal was to standardize his treatment, and once he did it for schizophrenia, he believed he would open a "gateway through which we might pass into a new field of psychotherapeutic methods." 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. It's safe to say that the exact opposite happened.

The end of the experiments

Dr. Ewen Cameron was an undeniably fascinating figure, and as horrible as his experiments were, the way people continued to talk about him was even more telling. Lloyd Schrier, son of Cameron patient Esther Schrier, told the CBC , "Oh, 'He was God-like,' they would say." According to "Brainwashing's Avatar: The Curious Career of Dr. Ewen Cameron,"  he left his position at Allan — and his patients — in 1964. Care of his patients went to his assistants, and here's where things get even weirder.

After he left, his position as chair of the department of psychiatry was handed to Robert Cleghorn. Cleghorn immediately went and took a long, hard look at what Cameron had actually been doing in his little corner of the university, and he was pretty shocked. Even as he wrote about Cameron's "warmth... [which was] never allowed to appear as intimacy," he wrote about a pretty big blind spot: Cameron had apparently hired a few assistants with "psychopathic personalities."

And that kind of explains why, when they were ordered to stop their depatterning and psychic driving of patients, they just sort of... didn't. Not, at least, until well into 1965, months after they were told to end the experiments.

What the people in charge thought

Cameron never got his Nobel Prize — in fact, he died not long after leaving Allan Memorial Institute. According to what his son, Duncan, told WBUR , it was 1967 when he decided to climb Street Mountain in the Adirondacks. A notoriously tough climb, he did it with his son James, and when he got to the top, he had a heart attack and died almost instantly.

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. His successor at Allan, Robert Cleghorn, would later write (via "Brainwashing's Avatar: The Curious Career of Dr. Ewen Cameron,"  "Cameron's controversial practices [are] now thoroughly discredited." Donald Hebb — the psychiatrist who started the whole mess with his sensory deprivation experiments — had even less kind things to say: "Cameron was irresponsible — criminally stupid. 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."

And what about the CIA, who had approved and funded the research in the first place? Cameron reported to John Gittinger, an agent in charge of overseeing parts of MKUltra. His response? "Now, that was a foolish mistake. We shouldn't have done it, I'm sorry we did it."

The missing documents

While more is known about the experiments of Dr. Ewen Cameron than about some of the other MKUltra projects, there's still a lot of information missing. Most of the patient files are gone, and according to WBUR , they weren't just misplaced, they were destroyed.

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." They also asked him for clarification about what happened to his father's personal papers and patient records, and he replied, "Well, I didn't destroy the documents."

So, they went back to a 1983 court transcript, where Duncan was called to the stand to testify about what happened to his father's documents. After his mother confirmed that yes, there were 12 boxes of papers that her sons — both lawyers — said she probably shouldn't share, Duncan revealed that he had gone through and taken out "several papers" that identified "a particular patient." While he didn't name names or give specifics, he did say that papers "related to patients were destroyed."

The lawsuits

For years, the patients of Dr. Ewen Cameron — or, more accurately, the families of those patients — have been trying to get compensation for the unthinkable experiments their loved ones were subjected to. And they haven't been super successful.

The National Post reports that in 1992, 77 of Cameron's patients were awarded an ex gratia settlement of $100,000, and that's all well and good, but claims made by more than 250 other people were rejected for various reasons. In some cases, applicants couldn't prove the conditions they currently lived with were a direct result of what they went through at Allan, and in others, they were treated outside of the time frame.

That was the case for people like Phyllis Goldberg. 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. Her niece later said, "She had electric shock equipment put on her head so many times that it [remained] in her subconscious." Alison Steel won compensation for her mother's misery in 2017, says the CBC : $100,000 in exchange for ending legal action. 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.

Modern-day torture techniques

The work of Dr. Ewen Cameron may have been discredited by mainstream psychiatry, but that doesn't mean it went away completely. In 1963, the CIA published the Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation manual, and that's exactly what it sounds like — guidelines on how to get people to talk. As the CBC notes, it's sourced pretty heavily from Cameron's work, and talks about things like "deprivation of sensory stimuli, threats and fear, pain, hypnosis and narcosis," and the source of their research? "A number of experiments at McGill University."

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. 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.

In 2020, director Stephen Bennett released "Eminent Monsters," a film that examined the link between Cameron's work and the torture techniques used by organizations around the world, including the CIA. He told The Scotsman : "Cameron's entire focus seemed to shift after the Nuremberg Trials. ... The legacy can be seen in the torture techniques employed in Northern Ireland and in Guantanamo Bay."

Recommended

The history of brainwashing

In 1950, an American journalist popularised the term ‘brainwashing’, arguing that a new amalgam of technology, medicine and ideology was allowing an onslaught on people’s minds. In this abridged extract from ‘ Brainwashed, A New History of Thought Control ’, psychoanalyst and historian Daniel Pick explores how what we think can be manipulated.

Words by Daniel Pick photography by Steven Pocock average reading time 7 minutes 13 July 2022

• Book extract

I n September 1950, during the first year of the Korean War, Edward Hunter, an American journalist who had worked in wartime intelligence, and post-war with the CIA, coined (or, more accurately, first popularised) the term brainwashing, and left no doubt for his readers that the problem was important and real. He suggested a profound shift had occurred: new historical conditions existed for governing the mind.

In using the term, first in a piece for the Miami News and then in other writings and books, he was pointing to what he claimed to be a frightening and rising danger. Hunter described a form of psychological intervention that was being perfected by certain enemy states. This involved a veritable onslaught upon people’s minds.

Though he recognised some precursors, he would elaborate during the 1950s upon how the brainwashing threat had truly come of age: a deadly new amalgam of ideology, technology, medicine and psychological sciences that was now transforming social reality in certain foreign places, but potentially in any state.

Hunter’s first article, ‘“Brain-Washing” Tactics Force Chinese into Ranks of the Communist Party’, adapted a commonplace Chinese phrase, xǐ nǎo , meaning to wash the brain. That was a euphemism; it was not about cleansing, literally, but rather destroying and substituting. The word’s Chinese provenance was highlighted, and this gave more than a clue to the American’s most obvious concerns: Mao and his communist revolution.

The psychological effects of propaganda

The warnings from Hunter and his fellow 1950s writers about brainwashing found a willing audience, perhaps primed by earlier dystopian scenarios explored in literature – all those compelling accounts of a supine society terrorised by omnipotent masters and/or fed by modern equivalents of ancient “ bread and circuses ”.

Some writers, such as Aldous Huxley in ‘Brave New World’ (1932), had pictured a future of captivity through anodyne entertainment, sexual so-called liberation, and drugs; others, including George Orwell, whose ‘Nineteen Eighty-Four’ was published in 1949, depicted a world where people are broken and held in a state of permanent totalitarian subjection.

“Hunter described a form of psychological intervention that was being perfected by certain enemy states. This involved a veritable onslaught upon people’s minds.”

By that time, much had already been written in the West about both Nazi and Soviet propaganda warfare. During the First and Second World Wars, substantial efforts were made by both sides to target propaganda efforts more efficiently, and, increasingly, to monitor shifts in morale and public opinion.

Clinical expertise was sought and deployed in the efforts during the 1940s to analyse and redress the deep psychological and social consequences of Nazism. The Nazis, after all, had sought to recast the population; they used the term Gleichschaltung (translated variously as coordination, synchronisation or consolidation) to convey the ambition to refashion society across the board.

The aim of the Nazi Party was to shape profoundly not only politics, but also every facet of society, and, ideally, to end all opposition in the minds of the people: in sum, to achieve a total harmonisation. It was never fully realised, but the German people lived for 12 years under the Führer; millions had voted for him, fought for him, agreed with his aims, loved him and accepted his world view, even in the face of impending calamity.

During the Second World War, psychological and anthropological researchers, including psychoanalysts, worked for the Allies in the army and intelligence services. They attempted to understand the mass appeal of fascism and the psychological consequences of living under such modern forms of tyranny; they would also help with assessing the testimony of POWs, refining propaganda, mounting “dirty tricks” operations, seeking to decipher the deeper intent and impact of enemy broadcasts, and, after victory in 1945, assisting the victors’ efforts to ‘denazify’ a defeated German population.

A focus on the brain-invaders

That terrible history continued to shadow Cold War debate on brainwashing. At the same time, there were dramatic developments in neuroscience and the elaboration of ‘psycho-surgery’. Some pundits heralded the great advances made in mental health treatment for all, thanks to the advent of electric-shock therapy and new techniques of brain surgery.

By the 1950s and 1960s, some surgeons, including prominent figures notably in the United States and Britain, would make grandiose claims that they could cure or tame those who were presumed to be suffering severe and chronic mental disorders by conducting lobotomies.

But if medicine and science might claim jurisdiction and have a key role in fixing pathological conditions in brains, from cancerous tumours to schizophrenia, others feared that drugs, shocks and surgery could also facilitate new modes of social control, including the pacification of the troublesome, unhappy, disturbed and eccentric inside a supposedly liberal society.

“If medicine and science might claim jurisdiction and have a key role in fixing pathological conditions in brains, others feared that drugs, shocks and surgery could also facilitate new modes of social control.”

Post-war movies updated older conceits in the mode of Frankenstein, featuring white-coated technicians who invade brains.

Such debate about the advances and potential dangers in science, medicine and technology also profoundly shaped the language of brainwashing. Post-war movies updated older conceits in the mode of Frankenstein, featuring white-coated technicians who invade brains, even perhaps entirely rejuvenating and controlling minds and bodies.

At the same time, some analyses of totalitarianism focused on the potential role of medicine and psychology in helping the state to ensure compliant or enthusiastic states of mind in a captive population, be it for fascism or communism.

Resisting brainwashing

Hunter wanted Americans to know that brainwashing threatened them too. He offered readers anxious glimpses of how in this new epoch, medico-psychiatric programmes could be unleashed with alarming rapidity. The methods might be overt or practically invisible. He saw links to the past, but also differentiated this emerging period of history sharply from earlier ages, when other, varied techniques exerted by political movements, religions, parties or states won hearts and minds.

The question for Hunter was whether the prisoner/patient in latter-day regimes such as Stalin’s or Mao’s could ever resist, and what tools could be offered to make people more wary, critical and resilient. Hunter recognised the possibility of psychological resistance, and explored more gradations than these simple absolutes.

Whatever the rhetoric, his accounts begged more questions than they answered, not only about how best to meet the challenge, but also about how brainwashing could be isolated conceptually from other ideas about education, persuasion and influence. His writings suggest the modern origins of the word; the mixture of fascination and fear the process evoked; the dramatic pictures so often painted, and yet also the blurred edges of that Cold War debate.

“People had to evaluate the stories they were being told and assess the authority of the columnists who told them what to think, where the dangers were coming from, whom to fear or how to resist.”

Was the procedure so total and indelible? Where and how might people hold out? What about partial brainwashing, split convictions, half-hearted conversions and milder forms of pressure and cajoling?

His role as a journalist and pundit on brainwashing was also significant, for much of this debate would be conducted not in seminar rooms or in parliaments, but across the airwaves, in popular magazines, newspapers, on TV and in the cinema. People had to evaluate the stories they were being told and assess the authority of the columnists and opinion-makers who told them what to think, where the dangers were coming from, whom to fear or how to resist.

Knowledge is power

When it came to describing what forms brainwashing actually took, and explaining the precise mechanisms involved in the process, Hunter reached for metaphors and analogies that, far from pinpointing the science, in fact made it seem truly scary, and also tantalisingly vague; for brainwashing, he proposed, somewhat loosely, is “more akin to witchcraft with its incantations, trances, poisons and potions”.

The whole thing “was a mixture of old voodoo as it were but all with a strange flair of science about it all… [a] magic brew in a test tube”.

Mysteries still abounded; he said the Chinese tried to cover up what they were doing. They didn’t want to call it brainwashing, even though they knew, apparently, that was precisely what it was. The first requirement, in Hunter’s view, was to identify the methods of brainwashing and then explore what would help people to withstand the assault.

To work most effectively, the process, he proposed, depends above all on the subject’s ignorance of how it is conducted; so, to educate might also be to arm us. If brainwashing could overpower free will, a well-prepared mind and well-equipped society could – maybe – push back against dangers abroad, or here in its midst. On the other hand, the brainwashers were becoming ever more sophisticated, and perhaps a day would come when resistance was futile; but then again, maybe not…

‘ Brainwashed ’ by Daniel Pick is out now.

About the contributors

Daniel Pick

Daniel Pick is a psychoanalyst, historian, university teacher, writer and occasional broadcaster. He is Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London, a fellow of the British Psychoanalytical Society, and author of several books on modern cultural history, psychoanalysis, and the history of the human sciences.

Steven Pocock

Steven is a photographer at Wellcome. His photography takes inspiration from the museum’s rich and varied collections. He enjoys collaborating on creative projects and taking them to imaginative places.

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The Art of Brainwashing

What’s in a “like” what we share in social media can be used to coax us..

Posted March 21, 2018 | Reviewed by Kaja Perina

Have you ever tried to convince someone of something?

Or have you ever been convinced of something?

Of course you have.

Everyone has. We are constantly bombarded with commercials for products to buy, and exposed to people’s rants, in real life or online, about how we should be voting, and what we should be eating, reading, angry about… The fact is that nowadays “convincing” is a business. The art of persuasion – or “brainwashing” if you prefer – is very profitable, and we are all subjected to it on a daily basis.

Before social media , advertisements were on our TV, on billboards, on newspapers. They would appeal to you only if you were part of their target audience. Otherwise, they would just be ignored and forgotten. For instance, you wouldn’t have payed much attention to the following Polly Pocket commercial unless you were a 10-year-old girl, or someone who needed to get a gift for a 10-year-old girl. It was 1994, and gender roles were acceptable and fair game.

However, we have been # blessed with social media and its personalized advertising tailored just for us – see the terms and conditions from Facebook below. They’re committed to showing us relevant advertising, based on the information we provide, sometimes inadvertently. Our likes, comments, status updates,… are all used to design a perfect strategy of persuasion. But does it really work?

Facebooks wants their “advertising to be as relevant and interesting as the other information you find in their Services. With this in mind, they use all of the information they have about you to show you relevant ads”.

The right ad, just for you

In a study recently published in PNAS, researchers from Columbia, Stanford, Pennsylvania and Cambridge, looked into the effectiveness of advertising campaigns within social media. They studied different psychological traits from digital footprints. These are characteristics that we show online through our Facebook profiles, Instagram pictures, tweets, blog posts or personal websites. Those traces of ourselves can be used to assess our psychological profile, to some extent.

In their study, they used Facebook “likes” as a version of digital footprints, and focused on two personality traits: extraversion and introversion . Looking into the “likes” of over 25,000 users, they classified those said Facebook users who liked “Parties” or “ Slightly Stoopid ” as extroverts, and those who liked “ Stargate-SG1 ” or “Computers” as introverts (apparently the researchers believe that stereotypes are a valid starting point for these studies). They designed different versions of a beauty ad aimed at women based on the psychological trait of extraversion versus introversion. Slogans such as “Dance like no one’s watching (but they totally are)” or “Love the spotlight and feel the moment” were designed to attract extroverts, whereas the introvert-targeting ads stated that “Beauty doesn’t have to shout” or “Beauty isn’t always about being on show”. When the extrovert-targeted beauty ads were shown to the extravert audience, those subjects were more likely to purchase the product than when the introvert-targeted ad was displayed on their Facebook page, in spite of the fact that the product was exactly the same.

This online surveillance leading to persuading us to buy more things that we don’t need, might seem innocuous when compared to brainwashing and persuasion aimed at political and war gains.

Mind control and brainwashing have been long-lasting goals for governments all around the world. Imagine if you could manipulate your enemies’ will with a simple injection. Isn’t that the dream of a government? It may sound like I’m describing some sort of political thriller, but truth is stranger than fiction.

When brainwashing is a political interest

MK-Ultra was a CIA series of experiments that were run in subjects that, at times, were unaware that they were in fact guinea pigs. Others, like Ken Kesey , author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, or Rob Hunter , lyricist of the Grateful Dead, volunteered for this human experiment. Fueled by the CIA’s desire to find the key to brainwashing – and even psychological torture – to use against the US enemies, the MK-Ultra project was active between 1953 and 1973. In the words of the CIA’s director at the time, Richard Helms , MK-Ultra aimed at studying a drug that could "[...] aid in discrediting individuals, eliciting information, and implanting suggestions and other forms of mental control.” MK-Ultra focused on the use of LSD (lysergic acid diethylamide) as mind controller, but before that, other substances such as MDMA (or ecstasy), were also objects of study.

Other trials aimed at identifying personalities that would be easier to manipulate and prone to succumb to the drug-induced mind control. From 1946 until at least 1953, unwitting patients of the New York State Psychiatric Institute (NYSPI) were administered drugs in order to find out which personality types were easier to manipulate under the influence of a particular substance. It goes without saying that these experiments were highly irregular, and they even cost a few lives due to lack of rigor (or common sense).

As far as we know, social media platforms are not trying to inject us with any mind-controlling substances, but as users we are most certainly part of an ongoing experiment. In the PNAS article, Matz highlights the importance of well-defined policies, as mass persuasion using psychological assessment through digital footprints could be used for “good or evil”. This means of persuasion may help people to lead healthier and happier lives, as well as prompt them to gamble or any other self-harming behavior. Or they could even be used for “discrediting individuals, eliciting information, and implanting suggestions and other forms of mental control”, just like the CIA tried before.

We are not in the midst of the Cold War anymore, but brainwashing – or persuasion if you will – it’s still enthralling and even lucrative for some. Whether it’s through online ads, Russian bots, or super-secret governmental projects, manipulation and mind malleability are a matter of interest, and we are all potential subjects. Think about it next time you give a “like”. Big Brother is watching you.

This post was originally published in NeuWrite San Diego .

S. C. Matz, M. Kosinski, G. Nave, D. J. Stillwell. Psychological targeting in digital mass persuasion. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Nov 2017, 114 (48) 12714-12719; DOI:10.1073/pnas.1710966114

Passie, T., and Benzenhöfer, U. MDA, MDMA, and other “mescaline-like” substances in the US military's search for a truth drug (1940s to 1960s). Drug Testing and Analysis. December 5, 2017. doi:10.1002/dta.2292

Elena Blanco-Suarez, Ph.D. , holds a doctorate in biochemistry and has been working in the field of neuroscience since 2010. She collaborates in several science communication and education projects.

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3 The power of persuasion

• Published: November 2004
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In Chapter 1, we saw how intensive, personal, painful, and terrifying brainwashing can be when force is used in the quest for thought control, as for example in some cults. However, brainwashing has also been alleged in two very different fields of human endeavour: advertising and the media, and education. Both seek to change minds, though for different reasons, and both are thought to wield considerable power. Unlike brainwashing by force, however, they generally employ less coercive methods, relying instead on stealthier forms of persuasion. Both are framed within, and transmit, a set of beliefs about the world, an ideology. That ideology defines the social roles of individuals as State subjects, teaching them their proper place in the status quo .

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