She was left with permanent impairments: She was unable to recognize faces, had impaired spatial recognition, and lost a good portion of her memory. She was a former captain of the Scottish field hockey team, a competitive tennis player,[11] and lecturer in mathematics at the University of Glasgow. Camerons techniques have no therapeutic validity whatsoever; they were comparable to Nazi medical atrocities. Cameron wrote that mental illness was transmitted generationally; thus, the re-occurrence of mental illness could be stopped by remodeling and expanding existing concepts of marriage suitability, as well as the quarantine of mentally ill individuals from the general population. He promoted a philosophy where chaos could be prevented by removing the weak from society. They were destroyed. Amory: Duncan struggles dealing with his dads legacy because he cant speak to why his dad did what he did. Not all the time, but it's always there. [17] Cameron argued that it was necessary for behavioral scientists to act as the social planners of society, and that the United Nations could provide a conduit for implementing his ideas for applying psychiatric elements to global governance and politics. Ben: But some key documentation of Camerons time at the Allan is straight up missing. [1] In papers published during this time he linked RNA to memory. Ben: Hebb did an interview with a film producer in the 1980s, saying, quote, Cameron was irresponsible criminally stupid. . v USA, 1988] Tom Beauchamp, a leading American bioethicist was an expert witness for Camerons estate, arguing that Camerons treatment complied with the norm and practice of the day. He furthered his diagnostic definitions of clinical states such as anxiety, depression and schizophrenia. [citation needed]; if the greater population of Germany saw the atrocities of World War II, they would surely submit to a re-organized system of justice. Despite the horrific abuse, the American and Canadian psychiatric establishment closed ranks. 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. He began his career as resident surgeon at Glasgow Infirmary, but in 1929 moved to Canada to work in the Brandon Mental Hospital. On March 10, Cameron's notes read: "She is disoriented as to time only and is probably in her second stage of depatterning. [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. He wanted to know if it was possible to wipe a person's mind and reinstall a new personality. "A number of experiments at McGill University.". 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. Cameron believed firmly in clinical psychiatry and a strict scientific method. He did technically, because nothing says "wonders" has to be a good thing. Amory: Author Stephen Kinzer, who wrote the book about the CIA and Mind Control, says, after Vietnam, this same literature got used elsewhere. 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. Donald Ewen Cameron was the key figure in the Montreal experiments. Thank you! So what led the CIA to get onto this fantasy? 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? Indian River. In his analysis, culture and society played a crucial role in the ability for one to function according to the demands necessary for human survival. He published a book called Remembering[18] and extended psychiatric links to human biology. Cameron stated, "Get it understood how dangerous these damaged, sick personalities are to ourselves and above all, to our children, whose traits are taking form and we shall find ways to put an end to them." He received an M.B., Ch.B. Donald Hebb and Ewen Cameron were competitors; they did not collaborate, though Cameron incorporated Hebbs sensory isolation techniques into his own diabolical arsenal of psychiatrys instruments of torture. Jim: But again, you know, the deposition transcript, you're going to have to rely on that, like we did. He commuted from Lake Placid, New York to Montreal every week to work at McGill's Allan Memorial Institute and was paid $69,000 from 1957 to 1964 to carry out MKUltra experiments there, known as the Montreal experiments. 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. He reported that "the subject's very identity had begun to disintegrate," and that's when someone should, ya know, stop. Memorials. Father, Son and CIA by Harvey Weinstein p. Father, Son and CIA by Harvey Weinstein p. 100, Father, Son and CIA by Harvey Weinstein p. 101, Last edited on 16 February 2023, at 19:10, "Society of Biological Psychiatry 65th Annual Meeting Program Book (p. 14)", "World Psychiatric Association Chronology", "Current Comment: Psychiatric Examination of Rudolf Hess", The Search for the "Manchurian Candidate": The CIA and Mind Control, "Doctor Looked After the Sick, And Looked Around for the CIA", "A History of Secret CIA Mind Control Research", "Brainwashing's Avatar: The Curious Career of Dr. Ewen Cameron", Stunning tale of brainwashing, the CIA and an unsuspecting Scots researcher, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Donald_Ewen_Cameron&oldid=1139756014, A passive man who "is afraid to say what he really thinks" and "will stand anything, and stands for nothing". Her family sued, first based on the treatment alone, then again, after discovering she was a part of the MKUltra program. And these are pictures of him, these are both in the Adirondack Mountains. Duncan: Well, that's a big subject. 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. Cameron decided that Germans would be most likely to commit atrocities due to their historical, biological, racial and cultural past and their particular psychological nature. Not, at least, until well into 1965, months after they were told to end the experiments. 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. Amory: You're welcome to pull it out now. The legacy can be seen in the torture techniques employed in Northern Ireland and in Guantanamo Bay. There's my father and my mother. sister. Cregg: What do you know about mind-control experiments? Now, a recent court decision has. Dr. Morrow, says The Washington Post, had applied for a fellowship in psychiatry with Cameron. AIan Cameron followed in the footsteps of his father and became a director at Panmure Gordon in 1957. 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. with distinction from the University of Glasgow in 1936. Hebb submitted his findings to the CIA, and it ended up being just the beginning. Alison said that when her mother returned, it was no longer her mother. What Hebb and Cameron both have in common is their contribution in establishing the scientific foundation for CIAs two-stage psychological torture method. "[35] She then cites Alfred W. McCoy: "Stripped of its bizarre excesses, Cameron's experiments, building upon Donald O. Hebb's earlier breakthrough, laid the scientific foundation for the CIA's two-stage psychological torture method. Shes a member of SAAGA, or Survivors Allied Against Government Abuse. Canada. The line between fantasy and reality blurred. She went from apartment to apartment, mental hospital to mental hospital. What started as short-term depression before the Allan, morphed into chronic depression, as well as diagnosed schizophrenia and bipolar disorder afterwards. 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. He came up with the idea that if he presented the world and confronted the Germans with the atrocities committed during the war, the world and the Germans would refrain from repeated acts of extreme aggression. If he had a choice he would have kept living forever. He served as president of the American Psychiatric Association , Canadian Psychiatric Association ,[2] American Psychopathological Association . This must be very difficult, very complicated for them. Everyone who makes a monthly donation will get access to upcoming bonus content from the making of our series. Those were right out. As for the ongoing lawsuits, some of the plaintiffs have actually contacted Duncan wondering if hed be willing to support their efforts. Please note . With the results of the Manhattan project, Cameron feared that without proper re-organization of society, atomic weapons could fall into the hands of new, fearsome aggressors. The described types were the enemies of society and life. 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). Donald Ewen Cameron 24 December 1901 - 8 September 1967)[1] was a Scottish-born psychiatrist. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all senior partners in the company. Amory: This is information that may have proven invaluable in holding Cameron, as well as McGill, the CIA, and the Canadian Government accountable for what happened at the Allan. Duncan Cameron: No. Ewen passed away on month day 1915, at age 84 at death place. Amory: Were bringing you the last installment of our special series: Madness The secret mission for mind control and the people who paid the price. The second stage involved extreme, high voltage multiple electroshock treatments three times daily. His occupation was occupation. Duncan: Well, I think he was always fascinated in the future. Two of my sons are lawyers and they say it isnt a good idea.. You talked a little bit about this but what was the impact on the family when some of this news started to come out about the CIA and some of the treatment and stuff like that? Its not a very popular mountain to climb, its steep. And the funeral was yet another opportunity for Marian and her siblings to learn more about the mother who had been absent for so much of their childhoods. Velma Orlikow, for instance, was dealing with postpartum depression. Genealogy profile for Major Donald of 4th Chief Clunes "Old '45" Cameron Major Cameron . These did nothing to calm the feud which continued through succeeding reigns to when Donald's grandson Ewen, the 13th chief, fought at the battle of Flodden where James IV was killed. 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. Ewen Cameron experimented on people right up until he left the Allan in 1964. Ewen Donald Cameron. Take a guess. Though he does seem to imply that it was done by him or someone in the family. 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 he put Camerons treatment program under the microscope. And then she came back from Montreal and she was never the same. Through his instruction of nurses and psychiatrists he became an authority in his areas of concentration. Ontario. Jean spent three months under Cameron's care, and spent two periods in a drug-induced coma. Scottish-American psychiatrist Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron led and conducted these experiments. 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. Ben: Street Mountain is a strange choice for a bucket list. Donald Ewen Cameron (19011967) was born in Scotland in 1901 and graduated from the University of Glasgow in 1924. [34], Naomi Klein states in her book The Shock Doctrine that Cameron's research and his contribution to MKUltra were not about mind control and brainwashing, but "to design a scientifically based system for extracting information from 'resistant sources.' The paper stated that German culture and its people would have offspring bound to become a threat to world peace in 30 years. Think of all the books and the movies that are about mind control. Ben: The study also said that these treatments, the de-patterning and psychic driving programs including LSD injections, induced comas, sensory deprivation and electroshock had a detrimental impact on patients memories, which, in retrospect, might have been part of the point. Sir Ewen Cameron of Lochiel, 17t. He is largely known today for his central role in unethical medical experiments, and development of psychological and medical torture techniques for the CIA. [5], Cameron was involved in administering electroconvulsive therapy and experimental drugs, including poisons such as curare and hallucinogens such as lysergic acid diethylamide, to patients and prisoners without their knowledge or informed consent. Then we brought them down I think it was probably during one of my infrequent jaunts up there I brought them down in my car, and I then took them over and deposited them at the American Psychiatric Association. Cameron followed these schools in demanding that mental disturbances are diseases and somatic in nature; all psychological illness would therefore be hardwired, a product of the body and the direct result of a patient's biological structure rather than caused by social environments. 22 As the Watergate scandal broke in 1973, MKUltra was officially ordered to be shut down by the CIA. (Beyond Nuremburg, ABA Journal March 1997; News accounts of five legal cases at: The Law and Mind Control Mind Control Through Five Cases). [citation needed]. Amory: Theres a reason that all the photos of Ewen Cameron are from more than 50 years ago. I mean, he was fascinated with the future in his own field of psychiatry, medicine and government. 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. In compliance with the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) requirements, some of these records are no longer in the physical possession of the FBI, eliminating the FBI's capability to re-review and/or re-process this material. 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. His support of Charles Edward Stuart was instrumental in the Jacobite Rising of 1745 Lochiel and the Jacobite cause (Rubenstein LS. 3.99 I mean his father was a very prominent psychiatrist, so destroying rather than preserving personal papers of someone of that prominence is a very unusual thing, especially for a family member to have done. [28] His work was inspired and paralleled by the psychiatrist William Sargant, who was also involved with the intelligence services and experimented extensively on his patients without their consent, causing similar long-term damage. 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., Amory: The CIA also turned its back on Cameron. In 1926, he served as assistant medical officer there[9] and was introduced to psychiatrist Sir David Henderson, a student of Swiss-born US psychiatrist Adolf Meyer. Ben: Even though Cameron never gave the CIA the keys to control peoples minds, he did give them the tools to break peoples minds down experimental drugs, recordings on loop, sensory deprivation. Other similar psychiatric diagnoses of Germany were published during this time. 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. And in a lot of ways, modern psychiatry has completely left behind the man who once dominated its ranks. And we would take off. My recollection was that I wasn't able to provide him with much information that he didn't already have. The insecure man "They are the driven crowds that makes the army of the authoritarian overlord; they are the stuffing of conservatism mediocrity is their god. These experiments were typically carried out on patients who had entered the Institute for minor problems such as anxiety disorders and postnatal depression; many were permanently debilitated after these treatments. "[H]e was born in. To prevent this, the West would have to take measures to reorganize German society. He theorized that attitudes and beliefs should reinforce the overall attitudes of the desired society. Maybe the people responsible are waiting for all of us to forget. Ben: When Amory and I spoke to Duncan Cameron about his dad, he also told us about his own work, as a lawyer. [citation needed]. That was just something we wanted to get clarification on. And, later on to guidebooks for what we now call enhanced interrogation at places like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. In 1936, he moved to Massachusetts to become director of the research division at Worcester State Hospital only 1 year later. It's Boston local news in one concise, fun and informative email. [39], Social and intrapsychic behaviour analysis, Cameron and Freud: civilization and discontents. He never got one. In 1943, Cameron was invited to McGill University in Montreal by neurosurgeon Dr Wilder Penfield. He is largely known today for his central role in unethical medical experiments, and development of psychological and medical torture techniques for the CIA. Duncan: Oh yes, he enjoyed a good joke even if they were off color. He actually has a smile. In the late 1940s, Cameron presented his ideas in a lecture entitled Dangerous Men and Women. Skip Ancestry main menu Main Menu. According to The Washington Post, Cameron was recruited in 1957, and he was a big deal. In 1928, Cameron left Baltimore for the Burghlzli, the psychiatric hospital of the University of Zurich, in Switzerland, where he studied under Hans W. Maier, the successor of Swiss psychiatrist Eugen Bleuler, who had significantly influenced psychiatric thinking. Ben: But the Canadian and US governments could take accountability for their support of Cameron. Amory: And I think you may have given a deposition for that. To see some of the things that have happened are very upsetting. And here he is with me many years ago. Donald Ewen Cameron ((1901-12-24)24 December 1901 (1967-09-08)8 September 1967)[1] was a Scottish-born psychiatrist. So I think in a certain way they believed that what fiction writers could come up with, somebody could actually make real. Because his dad isnt around to do it himself. Husband of Marielene Schlumberger. The psychological experimentation project, known as MK Ultra, was allegedly funded by the Canadian government and the United States Central Intelligence Agency. Duncan: I think the furthest I got was to his office. Ben: In photos, the Cameron family seems happy, a candid shot of Ewen Cameron that looks to be from a garden party shows the psychiatrist in a skinny tie and jacket, horn-rimmed glasses and short cropped white hair. As soon as his family found out about his death, they burned all the files that this man kept in his possession. Police, hospitals, government, and schools would need to use the correct psychiatric authority to stop mental contagions from spreading. [citation needed][21]. (McCoy, 2007), According to Leonard Rubenstein, an attorney for plaintiffs [Mrs. David Orlikow et al. The idea was to first "depattern" the person in question. 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. Ben: Which brings us back to a question that no one can answer why did Dr. Cameron do what he did? I think he wanted to be famous. 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Like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib beliefs should reinforce the overall attitudes of the MKUltra program: you 're to. His career donald ewen cameron family resident surgeon at Glasgow Infirmary, but in 1929 to! Says `` wonders '' has to be shut down by the Canadian and us governments take. High voltage multiple electroshock treatments three times daily Ewen passed away on month day 1915 at... West would have kept living forever the West would have kept living forever described types were the enemies of and! Us back to a question that no one can answer why did Dr. Cameron do what did. People responsible are waiting for all of us to forget death place to take to. ], Social and intrapsychic behaviour analysis, Cameron and Freud: civilization discontents..., or Survivors Allied Against government abuse `` depattern '' the person in question and extended psychiatric to! Drug-Induced coma given a deposition for that is straight up missing the Watergate scandal broke in,... 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