Donald Ewen Cameron was born in Bridge of Allan, Scotland, the oldest son of a Presbyterian minister. Both of her brothers were heavily into drugs by the age of 10 and dealt with serious mental illness throughout their lives. Although Cameron rejected the Freudian notion of the unconscious, he shared the Freudian idea that personal psychology is linked to the nervous nature. Ben: Street Mountain is a strange choice for a bucket list. Experts must develop methods of forcefully changing attitudes and beliefs to prevent the authoritarian overlord. Thus, this group would have to be studied and controlled as a contagious social disease. Donald Ewen Cameron ((1901-12-24)24 December 1901 (1967-09-08)8 September 1967)[1] was a Scottish-born psychiatrist. (McCoy, 2007), According to Leonard Rubenstein, an attorney for plaintiffs [Mrs. David Orlikow et al. He theorized that attitudes and beliefs should reinforce the overall attitudes of the desired society. You can see out a window. 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. 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. Ben: Her dad couldnt afford childcare, so soon after Marians mother went into the Allan, social services took Marian and her two younger brothers away because there was no parent to take care of them. Advertisement. At least, until after Cameron left the Allan. Hebb submitted his findings to the CIA, and it ended up being just the beginning. You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. We put this to Harvey Weinstein, the psychiatrist we heard from earlier, whose father was a patient at the Allan. And I think my father would have too. Indian River. 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". 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. Cameron began to develop broader theories of society, new concepts of human relations to replace concepts he deemed dangerous and outdated. Those with anxieties or insecurities and who had trouble with the state of the world were labelled as "the weak"; in Cameron's analysis, they could not cope with life and had to be isolated from society by "the strong". Abruptly and unexpectedly, Dr. Cameron suffered a life-ending heart attack while mountain climbing in 1967. Ben Brock Johnson: So what do you have in front of you here? This was made into a TV mini-series directed by Anne Wheeler in 1998, called The Sleep Room, which also dramatizes the lawsuit of Cameron's ex-patients against the CIA. The transcript has been edited from our original script for clarity. He has an open, amused look on his face. Those who are privileged to know him, even briefly, will not soon forget the warmth and kindliness of this understanding man.. "He was supposed to do wonders with people with depression or mental health issues." That's absolutely the stuff of a terrifying Netflix horror series, but it was very real and it destroyed an unknown number of lives. Amory: This is from The Adirondack Daily Enterprise, is the name of the paper. And I feel for them for that. Amory: Duncan struggles dealing with his dads legacy because he cant speak to why his dad did what he did. 22 As the Watergate scandal broke in 1973, MKUltra was officially ordered to be shut down by the CIA. We collect and match historical records that Ancestry users have contributed to their family trees to create each person's profile. 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. [clarification needed] Those Germans affected by the events that led to World War II were of utmost concern. What started as short-term depression before the Allan, morphed into chronic depression, as well as diagnosed schizophrenia and bipolar disorder afterwards. With a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, money from John Wilson McConnell of the Montreal Star, and a gift of Sir Hugh Allan's mansion on Mount Royal, the Allan Memorial Institute for psychiatry was founded. Ben: But do you even though you had nothing to do with it do you have any feelings of sadness about those folks and what they've gone through? Here in the hospital Cameron could observe how the psychiatric patient resembled patients with other diseases that were not psychiatric in nature. Cameron would analyze what conditions produced the stronger worker, what would be the necessary conditions to replicate this personality and to reward the stronger while disciplining the weaker. He was always interested in the future. Ewen married Agnes Cameron (born Bell) in 1867, at age 35 at marriage place. They were destroyed. He wanted to cure schizophrenia, and win a Nobel Prize for it. with distinction from the University of Glasgow in 1936.[8]. She was left with permanent impairments: She was unable to recognize faces, had impaired spatial recognition, and lost a good portion of her memory. We encourage you to research and examine these records . [16], Cameron next published Nuremberg and Its Significance. And people talk about the transmission of trauma through generations. 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. ", "Brainwashing's Avatar: The Curious Career of Dr. Ewen Cameron,". [1] In papers published during this time he linked RNA to memory. Those were right out. 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. It has to do with another of his Adirondack hikes that changed the Cameron family forever. Cameron further argued that "the weak" must not influence children. Click here for the donation page. 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. Cameron quickly found patients didn't want to listen to the messages. Psychiatric experimentation: the lessons or history, The Journal of the California Alliance for the Mentally Ill, 1994, Vol. The Canadian government also funded the project. If we can succeed in inventing means of changing their attitudes and beliefs, we shall find ourselves in possession of measures which, if wisely used, may be employed in freeing ourselves from their attitudes and beliefs in other fields which have greatly contributed to the instability of our period by their propensity for holding up progress, In Cameron's book Life is For Living, published in 1948, he expressed a concern for the German race in general. Sign up and be the first to find out the latest news and articles about what's going on in the medical field. My recollection was that I wasn't able to provide him with much information that he didn't already have. He moved to Upstate New York where he studied aging and memory at two hospitals in Albany. 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 Camerons death. Sounds questionable? Toby Ziegler:In the '50s, it was the CIA mind control research program begun in response to the Chinese attempt on U.S. prisoners. Or answer questions about his motivations, whether or not he knew he was part of the CIAs mind control efforts. Ben: But the Canadian and US governments could take accountability for their support of Cameron. Psychiatry would play a disciplinary role. After his treatments patients were unable to function; they had been reduced to a state of infancy. Duncan: Well, I didnt destroy the documents. 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. Ben: As for the CIAs MK-ULTRA program itself, it never had an official end date. After he left, his position as chair of the department of psychiatry was handed to Robert Cleghorn. This third type needs, This page was last edited on 16 February 2023, at 19:10. Amory: Duncan also has an easy, quiet smile. [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. He is largely known today for his central role in unethical medical experiments, and development of psychological and medical torture techniques for the CIA. Now, a recent court decision has. There are movies like Gaslight and Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. 3.99 Cameron titled this procedure "intrapsychic" (a term derived from the psycho-somatic relationship of hospital patients). Marian Cameron. We were unable to subscribe you to WBUR Today. Cameron wanted to build an inventive psychiatric institution to determine rapid ways for societal control while demanding a psychological economy that did not center itself around guilt and guilt complexes. So you can see that the work of Ewen Cameron, filtered through Gottlieb, definitely informs the interrogation techniques, if we want to call them that, that the United States has been using on its prisoners in Guantanamo and in black sites around the world. In 1936, he also published his first book, Objective and Experimental Psychiatry which introduced his belief that psychiatry should approach the study of human behavior in a rigorous, scientific fashion rooted in biology. 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. 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." Amory: Author Stephen Kinzer, who wrote the book about the CIA and Mind Control, says, after Vietnam, this same literature got used elsewhere. 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. [22], During the 1950s and 1960s, Cameron became involved in what has later become known as the MKUltra mind control program, which was covertly sponsored by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)[6] and which eventually led to the publication of the KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation manual. There are a few ways to reach us: This content was originally created for audio. Photo by Courtesy of Julie Tanny For the first four years of Julie Tanny's. . She was gonna go out there and do something. 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!" Heres journalist John Marks. He had various people record the tapes sometimes including the patient's loved ones and it was, on the whole, incredibly traumatizing. During those years, Cameron began to expand on his thoughts about the interrelationships of mind and body, developing a reputation as a psychiatrist who could bridge the gap between the organic, structural neurologists, and the psychiatrists whose knowledge of anatomy was limited to maps of the mind as opposed to maps of the brain. 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. [7], Donald Ewen Cameron was born in Bridge of Allan, Scotland, the oldest son of a Presbyterian minister. In other words, they really must have seen that there was something wrong and crazy. Ben: Duncan Cameron was 10 years old when his dad became the Director of the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal. Amory: Duncan, one of the two lawyer sons, admits hes familiar with those 12 boxes of papers, and then explains what happened to them. I'm the oldest son of Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron and Jean Cameron. His response? Take a guess. Kinzer: This idea of some evil scientists taking control of someone else's mind is a wonderfully appealing trope, and it's been used repeatedly in very popular movies and books and stories. Amory: The study, which was published a few months before Cameron died, found that Camerons methods exposed his patients to unnecessary risk, and that there was no clinical proof his methods were any more effective than standard forms of treatment. Our username is. Theres no clear approach to the summit only overgrown pathways. He served as president of the American Psychiatric Association , Canadian Psychiatric Association ,[2] American Psychopathological Association . 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. He warned that government institutions should take measures against such potential liabilities. That would have been the cultural environment in which people like Sidney Gottlieb grew up. Lloyd Schrier, son of Cameron patient Esther Schrier, told the CBC, "Oh, 'He was God-like,' they would say." Amory: With the information we do have about Cameron, we know this: his so-called treatment didnt cure mental illness, and it didnt control peoples minds. First I have to say that my father was exceedingly committed to his field. And they haven't been super successful. Amory: In the Lake Placid community where Dr. Camerons family spent the bulk of their summers, his sudden death from a heart attack while hiking was big news. So we reached out to one of the most comprehensive archives in the world: The Library of Congress. Amory: But even on their long drives from Montreal to upstate New York, Duncan says his dad never really talked about work. Ewen Donald Cameron. We shouldn't have done it, I'm sorry we did it.. Amory: Immortal Technique is rapping about it: Ben: But for those who have had to deal with the fallout of MK-ULTRA on a personal level, the fact that the program rarely gets discussed outside the realm of pop culture can feel discouraging. Dr. Ewen Cameron wanted to win a Nobel Prize for his work in psychiatry. As time has worn on, its become the families of those victims who shoulder the burden. Memories are not the most reliable form of evidence. A possessive type, filled with jealousy and demanding utmost loyalty. Ben: Hebb did an interview with a film producer in the 1980s, saying, quote, Cameron was irresponsible criminally stupid. Duncan: They got close to the top and James looked around and my father had passed away. He wanted to know if it was possible to wipe a person's mind and reinstall a new personality. Duncan: Well, I think that I would feel sad about that. And one of these risks was the treatment that he was using. Husband of Marielene Schlumberger. He told The Scotsman: "Cameron's entire focus seemed to shift after the Nuremberg Trials. Duncan: Thats my recollection, that any documents that related to patients were destroyed. In 1946, Cameron introduced the practice of the day hospital, the first of its kind in North America, permitting patients to remain at home while receiving treatment at the institute during the day, thus avoiding unnecessary hospitalization and allowing the patients to maintain ties with their community and family. Shes also signed on to the class-action lawsuit against McGill University, the Canadian government, and the CIA. 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