Duncan: You see, he doesn't have a scowl. The paper stated that German culture and its people would have offspring bound to become a threat to world peace in 30 years. There was also Donald Hebb, who ran McGills psychology department at the time Cameron was running its psychiatry department. Cameron believed that mental illness was literally contagious that if one came into contact with someone with mental illness, one would begin to produce the symptoms of a mental disease. Duncan: I think the furthest I got was to his office. About 55 families of victims who underwent medical experimentation in the 1950s and 1960s are suing for millions of dollars. Ben: So its fitting that, today, most of what people hear about the CIAs search for mind control also seems to come from fantasy and popular fiction. Alison Steel says her mother was never the same after undergoing. The described types were the enemies of society and life. After he left, his position as chair of the department of psychiatry was handed to Robert Cleghorn. You know, all of us not only respected him, but loved him, and not just myself, but my brothers. It describes various personalities that he believed were of marked danger to all members of society. And here I am looking much younger than I am now. 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. Traces of some survived, including documentation on Sub-project 42 also known as Operation Midnight Climax and sub-project 68. memorial page for Donald Ewen Cameron (1852-5 Feb 1892), Find a Grave Memorial ID 170055188, citing Cameron Cemetery, Indian River . 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. 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. 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". [13], In 1945, Cameron, Nolan D. C. Lewis and Dr Paul L. Schroeder, colonel and psychiatrist, University College of Illinois, were invited to the Nuremberg trials for a psychiatric evaluation of Rudolf Hess. 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. 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. In 1933, he married Jean C. Rankine, whom he had met while they were students at the University of Glasgow. You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. After one test he noted: "Although the patient was prepared by both prolonged sensory isolation (35 days) and by repeated depatterning, and although she received 101 days of positive driving, no favourable results were obtained." Those who are privileged to know him, even briefly, will not soon forget the warmth and kindliness of this understanding man.. It's Boston local news in one concise, fun and informative email. There must have been names of patients. You can try, The 1963 "Kubark Counterintelligence Interrogation" manual, "CIA's Secret Brainwashing Experiment" (1984), "Brainwashed: The Secret CIA Experiments in Canada" (2017), Jim Turner and Joseph Rauh's lawsuit debrief: "Anatomy Of A Public Interest Case Against The CIA,", Send us a direct message on Reddit. It affected a lot of people. [citation needed]. And then she came back from Montreal and she was never the same. Allan Cameron. She wasn't able to joke and laugh She would blurt out something like: 'We must do the right thing!'" After his treatments patients were unable to function; they had been reduced to a state of infancy. Heres journalist John Marks. Amory: Nearly everyone who experienced Camerons treatments first-hand has since died. Like, did she always have problems? And he said, Oh, gosh. She goes, No. She was the one that was gonna go and conquer the world. His response? She never did get her children back. And he has a much different memory of how it all went down. The work of Dr. Ewen Cameron may have been discredited by mainstream psychiatry, but that doesn't mean it went away completely. 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. Ben: Jims right. Another patient was suffering from leg pains that no one had been able to diagnose. It was reported that none of the patients sent to the Radio Telemetry Lab showed any signs of improvement. 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. If you haven't heard Parts 1 through 4 yet, you can find them here, here,here,and here. From 1939 to 1943 he was professor of neurology and psychiatry at Albany Medical College, and at the Russell Sage School of Nursing, also in the Albany area. 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. Amory: Duncan also has an easy, quiet smile. Patients would be subjected to messages repeated hundreds of thousands of times, as they were kept in their coma for up to a month. 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. And I think you have, as much as love that you had for him you also had respect for him. 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. Shes also signed on to the class-action lawsuit against McGill University, the Canadian government, and the CIA. Duncan: He loved hiking. Amory: Marian was 5 years old when her mom was admitted to the Allan for what she thinks was postpartum depression. Results were telling: They became super sensitive to the sensory stimuli they did receive, and then, things started getting really weird. And you can see this manual that's been found all around the world, from hellholes to modern democracies. Ben: After Marians mom left the Allan, she struggled for the rest of her life to regain her sense of self and mental clarity. She said that at the time, Cameron was something of a celebrity. Donald Ewen Cameron was born in Bridge of Allen, a small town in Scotland, on December 24, 1901. Amory: Jim Turner was one of two prosecutors on the case. 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. 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. Experts must develop methods of forcefully changing attitudes and beliefs to prevent the authoritarian overlord. The sick were, for Cameron, the viral infection to its stability and health. Who hasnt talked about this in a long time. He is largely known today for his central role in unethical medical experiments, and development of psychological and medical torture techniques for the CIA. Ben: As for the CIAs MK-ULTRA program itself, it never had an official end date. He also organized the structure of mental health services in the western half of the province, establishing 10 functioning clinics; this model was used as the blueprint for similar efforts in Montreal and a forerunner of 1960s community health models. 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. 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. [citation needed]. Cameron stayed there for seven years and was made physician-in-charge of the Reception Unit of the Provincial Mental Hospital. Donald Cameron of Lochiel (c.1700 - October 1748), was an influential Highland Clan Chief known for his magnanimous and gallant nature. Cameron began to base some of his notions on race, as is seen in his theories regarding the German people. He was always interested in the future. He served as president of the American Psychiatric Association (19521953), Canadian Psychiatric Association (19581959),[2] American Psychopathological Association (1963),[3] Society of Biological Psychiatry (1965)[4] and the World Psychiatric Association (19611966). ", 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. Her family sued, first based on the treatment alone, then again, after discovering she was a part of the MKUltra program. Abruptly and unexpectedly, Dr. Cameron suffered a life-ending heart attack while mountain climbing in 1967. Sir Ewen Cameron of Lochiel, 17t. Alison Steel won compensation for her mother's misery in 2017, says the CBC: $100,000 in exchange for ending legal action. 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. Ben: Would you have anything that you would want to say to Dr. Cameron or his family? Ben: But some key documentation of Camerons time at the Allan is straight up missing. You can buy the full book for only . In this, he hoped to establish a suitable method to reinstate a form of justice in Germany that could prevent its society from recreating the attitudes that led it from the Great War to World War II. And here he is with me many years ago. Theres no clear approach to the summit only overgrown pathways. 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. Ben: Duncan Cameron was 10 years old when his dad became the Director of the Allan Memorial Institute in Montreal. And one of these risks was the treatment that he was using. 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. To see some of the things that have happened are very upsetting. Amory: Duncan has a very different picture of his father, a whole bunch of them actually. Heres John Marks again. 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. He has an open, amused look on his face. A possessive type, filled with jealousy and demanding utmost loyalty. John Marks observes, Ewen Cameron did not need the CIA to corrupt him. There's my father and my mother. Duncan: Talking about him, it should be easy, but sometimes it's sort of emotional. ", "Brainwashing's Avatar: The Curious Career of Dr. Ewen Cameron,". He never got one. 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. While he didn't name names or give specifics, he did say that papers "related to patients were destroyed.". She was left with permanent impairments: She was unable to recognize faces, had impaired spatial recognition, and lost a good portion of her memory. (Rubenstein LS. He wanted to know if it was possible to wipe a person's mind and reinstall a new personality. Here in the hospital Cameron could observe how the psychiatric patient resembled patients with other diseases that were not psychiatric in nature. And I think my father would have too. So I think in a certain way they believed that what fiction writers could come up with, somebody could actually make real. 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." Stephen: So they created a manual, which basically was for intelligence personnel. 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. He furthered his diagnostic definitions of clinical states such as anxiety, depression and schizophrenia. Cameron began to abandon the Freudian unconscious in favour of a social constructivist's view of mental illness. Though he does seem to imply that it was done by him or someone in the family. 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. And he admits that the papers he removed are now destroyed. He clearly had his mind set on doing unorthodox research long before the Agency front started to fund him. They stressed how they'd been unwilling participants, and that they'd gone to the institute for other issues. Or answer questions about his motivations, whether or not he knew he was part of the CIAs mind control efforts. Memorials. [citation needed] He furthermore wanted to understand the problems of memory caused by aging, believing that the aged brain experienced psychosis. Amory: And, they delivered, with a full transcript of Duncans deposition from November, 1983. Old '45" Cameron Major Cameron (1663 - 1718) family tree on Geni, with over 230 million profiles of ancestors and living relatives. Our username is. (McCoy, 2007) Indeed, Hebb and Camerons contribution as pioneers who designed the psychological paradigm for torture used by the CIA was acknowledged by The McGill Daily, in 2012. Ben: Which brings us back to a question that no one can answer why did Dr. Cameron do what he did? Cleghorn immediately ended Camerons program. 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. According to "Brainwashing's Avatar: The Curious Career of Dr. Ewen Cameron,"he left his position at Allan and his patients in 1964. Morrow's family got involved, and it was only at their insistence that she was transferred to another hospital. in psychological medicine from the University of Glasgow in 1924, a D.P.M. 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." A series of other research scandals in the 1960s resulted in stricter regulation of research practices and a more stringent code of ethics. We put this to Harvey Weinstein, the psychiatrist we heard from earlier, whose father was a patient at the Allan. Amory: Duncan struggles dealing with his dads legacy because he cant speak to why his dad did what he did. Ben: Im Ben Brock Johnson, and youre listening to Endless Thread, the show featuring stories found in the vast ecosystem of online communities called Reddit. Ben: But the Canadian and US governments could take accountability for their support of Cameron. 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. This third type needs, This page was last edited on 16 February 2023, at 19:10. 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. Maybe the people responsible are waiting for all of us to forget. Cameron placed the psychiatric treatment unit inside of the hospital and inspected its success. Marian: It's become so embedded in our narrative, in our pop culture, without people really understanding that it happened It was real. Like Freud, Cameron maintained that the family was the nucleus of social behavior and anxieties later in life were spawned during childhood. Some of this work took place in the context of the Project MKUltra program for the developing of mind control and torture techniques, psychoactive poisons, and behavior modification systems. 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. And he always had a little book of science fiction by the bedside. Death: June 18, 1958 (52) Immediate Family: Son of Sir Ewen Allan Cameron and Rachel Margaret Cameron. Pregnant with son Lloyd, Esther was kept in a drug-induced coma in the sleep room for a month, where she lost 13 pounds. 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. . Toby Ziegler:In the '50s, it was the CIA mind control research program begun in response to the Chinese attempt on U.S. prisoners. Hes in his mid-80s now. "Madness: The Secret Mission for Mind Control and the People Who Paid the Price" an investigative series in 5 parts unravels the shocking history of CIA-funded mind-control experiments. The FBI's FOIA Library contains many files of public interest and historical value. Shes a member of SAAGA, or Survivors Allied Against Government Abuse. Research genealogy for Donald Ewen Cameron of lambeth, as well as other members of the Cameron family, on Ancestry. Donald Ewen Cameron ((1901-12-24)24 December 1901 (1967-09-08)8 September 1967)[1] was a Scottish-born psychiatrist. Ben: Did you ever get a sense of at least some of the things that he was trying to accomplish while he was at the Allan? Harvey: Here he is trying to reach the peak, trying to climb the mountain, reach this goal. 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. If he had a choice he would have kept living forever. He had various people record the tapes sometimes including the patient's loved ones and it was, on the whole, incredibly traumatizing. And I feel for them for that. 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. Donald Ewen Cameron was born in Bridge of Allan, Scotland, the oldest son of a Presbyterian minister. Ian Donald Cameron is geboren in het jaar 1932 in Blairmore House, Aberdeenshire, Scotland, zoon van Ewen Donald CAMERON en Enid Agnes Maud LEVITA. 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