Brainwashing's Avatar: The Curious Career of Dr. Ewen Cameron

Lemov, Rebecca

doi:10.1162/grey_a_00050

Cited by 41 publications

(34 citation statements)

References 10 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…At the time of Lilly’s visit, Morison was also handling the Rockefeller grant of Ewen Cameron, whose psychic driving experiments, later covertly funded by the CIA, have made him one of the most notorious and controversial psychiatrists of his generation (Lemov, 2011). Lilly appears to have been impressed by certain aspects of Cameron’s work, in particular the reinforcement of behaviour via repeated signal data through the means of sound recordings on a taped loop.…”

Section: A Trip To Mcgillmentioning

confidence: 99%

On ‘modified human agents’: John Lilly and the paranoid style in American neuroscience

Williams

2019

History of the Human Sciences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The personal papers of the neurophysiologist John C. Lilly at Stanford University hold a classified paper he wrote in the late 1950s on the behavioural modification and control of ‘human agents’. The paper provides an unnerving prognosis of the future application of Lilly’s research, then being carried out at the National Institute of Mental Health. Lilly claimed that the use of sensory isolation, electrostimulation of the brain, and the recording and mapping of brain activity could be used to gain ‘push-button’ control over motivation and behaviour. This research, wrote Lilly, could eventually lead to ‘master-slave controls directly of one brain over another’. The paper is an explicit example of Lilly’s preparedness to align his research towards Cold War military aims. It is not, however, the research for which Lilly is best known. During the 1960s and 1970s, Lilly developed cult status as a far-out guru of consciousness exploration, promoting the use of psychedelics and sensory isolation tanks. Lilly argued that, rather than being used as tools of brainwashing, these techniques could be employed by the individual to regain control of their own mind and retain a sense of agency over their thoughts and actions. This article examines the scientific, intellectual, and cultural relationship between the sciences of brainwashing and psychedelic mind alteration. Through an analysis of Lilly’s autobiographical writings, I also show how paranoid ideas about brainwashing and mind control provide an important lens for understanding the trajectory of Lilly’s research.

show abstract

Section: A Trip To Mcgillmentioning

confidence: 99%

On ‘modified human agents’: John Lilly and the paranoid style in American neuroscience

Williams

2019

History of the Human Sciences

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…As Krishnan (10) explains, in the 1950s the CIA had looked into the use of electromagnetic fields for mind control purposes as part of its MK ULTRA project. MK ULTRA was a top secret program first set up in the late 1940s to investigate behavioral modification and the control of individual minds in the service of American geopolitical and ideological interests (24).…”

Section: The Soviet Experience and The American Experimentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The “Moscow signal” epidemiological study, 40 years on

Martínez

2019

Reviews on Environmental Health

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract Between 1953 and 1979, the USSR irradiated the United States embassy in Moscow with microwaves. This episode, a classic Cold War affair, has acquired enormous importance in the discussions on the effect of non-ionizing radiation on people’s health. In 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) classified radiofrequency electromagnetic fields as being a possible human carcinogen (Group 2B), but the results of recent laboratory and epidemiological studies have led some researchers to conclude that radiofrequency electromagnetic fields should be reclassified as a human carcinogen instead of merely a possible human carcinogen. In 1978, the “Moscow signal” case was officially closed after the publication of the epidemiological study of (Lilienfeld AM, Tonascia J, Tonascia S, Libauer CA, Cauthen GM. Foreign Service health status study. Evaluation of health status of foreign service and other employees from selected Eastern European posts. Report on Foreign Service Health Status Study, U.S. Department of State 6025-619073, 1978.), showing no apparent evidence of increased mortality rates and limited evidence regarding general health status. However, several loose ends still remain with respect to this epidemiological study, as well as the affair as a whole. In this paper, we summarize the available evidence concerning this case, paying special attention to the epidemiological study of Lilienfeld et al. After reviewing the available literature (including declassified documents), and after some additional statistical analyses, we provide new insights which do not complete the puzzle, but which may help to better understand it.

show abstract

“…More perniciously, in the 1950s and 1960s, Dr. Ewan Cameron in Montréal had conducted a series of what we now know to be questionable experiments on his patients (Lemov, 2011). He was a well‐known, respected, and experienced psychiatrist working at a reputable university centre.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%