Ben: When Amory and I spoke to Duncan Cameron about his dad, he also told us about his own work, as a lawyer. Amory: Author Stephen Kinzer, who wrote the book about the CIA and Mind Control, says, after Vietnam, this same literature got used elsewhere. Heads up that some elements (i.e. Heres documentarian Stephen Bennett, whose film Eminent Monsters looks at the real echoes of Camerons work in government interrogation programs today. Cameron started to distinguish populations between "the weak" and "the strong". Amory: Sarahs grandmother, Val, sued the CIA forty years ago for supporting Dr. Camerons work at the Allan. Like in Nicaragua, where he was The New York Times Bureau Chief. 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. He studied Medicine at the University of Glasgow and obtained his degree in 1924. . The transcript has been edited from our original script for clarity. Amory: And, they delivered, with a full transcript of Duncans deposition from November, 1983. And in that he took some risks, obviously. Her life was sad. [citation needed]. 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. Amory: But, Camerons extreme measures didnt result in a Nobel Prize or any mental health breakthroughs, which is why Harvey finds a certain poetry in his untimely death. Cameron further argued that "the weak" must not influence children. Donald Ewen Cameron was the key figure in the Montreal experiments. 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. Duncan: Well, I think he was always fascinated in the future. Its in the Netflix show, Stranger Things: Amory: Or the hit video game Call of Duty: Ben: They're talking about it on The West Wing:C.J. 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. In theory, he was supposed to help her anxiety, depression, and postpartum depression. Amory: And I think you may have given a deposition for that. Did he ever talk about that? Amory: Duncan, one of the two lawyer sons, admits hes familiar with those 12 boxes of papers, and then explains what happened to them. [33] The son of one of Cameron's patients noted in a memoir that other than Ed Broadbent and Svend Robinson, no Canadian MP brought up the issue in the House of Parliament. John Marks observes, Ewen Cameron did not need the CIA to corrupt him. The lawsuits were dismissed, even though it was later shown . 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". Thus, this group would have to be studied and controlled as a contagious social disease. Not only was Ewen Cameron running the Allan Memorial, but he was leading psychiatric organizations, he was teaching at McGill University, and he was still seeing private patients. "[36], Cameron is the subject of Stephen Bennett's film Eminent Monsters (2020), which was funded by BBC Scotland and Creative Scotland. I think he wanted to be famous. He died of a heart attack while climbing a mountain in the Adirondacks in 1967. In 1943, Cameron was invited to McGill University in Montreal by neurosurgeon Dr Wilder Penfield. Duncan Cameron: No. Old '45" Cameron Major Cameron (1663 - 1718) family tree on Geni, with over 230 million profiles of ancestors and living relatives. That could be heightened with various drugs, eventually was replaced by positive messages, and the so-called "psychic driving" would continue. A Canadian government dismissed the CIAs role as a side issue or red herring; Ottawas Justice Department denied legal responsibility, offering each victim a nugatory $20,000 nuisance payment. 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. Donald Ewen Cameron was born in Bridge of Allan, Scotland, the oldest son of a Presbyterian minister. Amory: Dr. Ewen Cameron will never be able to respond to the intergenerational trauma created by his work. Research genealogy for donald ewen Cameron of Melbourne, Victoria, as well as other members of the Cameron family, on Ancestry. 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? Cameron Cemetery. Amory: Duncan struggles dealing with his dads legacy because he cant speak to why his dad did what he did. You can see out a window. 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. Not all the time, but it's always there. Take a guess. 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. Advancing Voluntary, Informed Consent to Medical Intervention, Cameron was an internationally prominent psychiatrist who developed torture techniques on his involuntary hospitalized patients mostly women. The behaviour of a mental patient could resemble the behaviour of a patient with, for example, syphilis, and then a somatic cause could be deduced for a psychological illness. Cameron never got his Nobel Prize in fact, he died not long after leaving Allan Memorial Institute. But the government agency backing his experiments at the Allan did find a way to make use of his methods. And they haven't been super successful. 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." 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. That was the case for people like Phyllis Goldberg. There is no such thing as closure. Hij is getrouwd met (Niet openbaar), ze kregen 1 kind. [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. Ex-husband of Enid Agnes Maud Watson. I'm sure part of him very much wanted to be the person who cures mental illness. Kinzer: If Cameron had failed to find an effective means of mind control despite carrying out the most reckless experiments, in which he was willing to take any kind of a grotesque step in an effort to find that key, this must have helped feed Gottlieb's conclusion that the whole thing didn't exist. Part of Camerons plan for his patients was to wipe their minds clean, to make them forget their past, so they could move forward. So we reached out to one of the most comprehensive archives in the world: The Library of Congress. Amory: Duncan knows how to be very careful about what he says. (Rubenstein LS. He was a person who was always looking for a way of advancing the field. She said: "She wasn't able to talk to me about life and regular stuff. 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. 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. "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. Amory: You're welcome to pull it out now. Cameron's work stopped when she gave birth, and Lloyd remembered a broken mother. Alison believes those random phrases her mother would sometimes say were from the recordings that she'd been forced to listen to for hours. Canada. Marian believes all of this was a result of her mother going into the Allan. "A number of experiments at McGill University.". He did technically, because nothing says "wonders" has to be a good thing. And people talk about the transmission of trauma through generations. These became the basis of a new social and behavioural science that he would later institute through his presidencies of the Canadian, American and World Psychiatric Associations, the American Psychopathological Association and the Society of Biological Psychiatry. ", And what about the CIA, who had approved and funded the research in the first place? 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. You have been subscribed to WBUR Today. Memories are not the most reliable form of evidence. Cameron began his training in psychiatry at the Glasgow Royal Mental Hospital in 1925. What Hebb and Cameron both have in common is their contribution in establishing the scientific foundation for CIAs two-stage psychological torture method. Experts must develop methods of forcefully changing attitudes and beliefs to prevent the authoritarian overlord. 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. Duncan: Yes. As for the ongoing lawsuits, some of the plaintiffs have actually contacted Duncan wondering if hed be willing to support their efforts. And you see this actual physical manual on how to break down the human mind. 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." 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. In some cases, the same phrases reappear all through these. Ewen Cameron was fulfilling one of the items on his life bucket list: to climb Street Mountain. It was a heart attack and was very sudden. Think of all the books and the movies that are about mind control. Thank you! Not, at least, until well into 1965, months after they were told to end the experiments. His theories of behavior stressed the unity of the organism with the environment; the book also outlined experimental method and research design. 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." Duncan Cameron: This is a picture of the whole family. Scottish-American psychiatrist Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron led and conducted these experiments. Ben: Which brings us back to a question that no one can answer why did Dr. Cameron do what he did? Police, hospitals, government, and schools would need to use the correct psychiatric authority to stop mental contagions from spreading. He actually has a smile. So we don't have. Stephen Bennett: If I put one of you, either Ben or Amory, into prison for two, three years, you should be okay because you can have time and space. 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. 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. 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. And these are pictures of him, these are both in the Adirondack Mountains. There's my father and my mother. Harvey Weinstein: Complicated question, we all have motivations for the things that we do. Heres journalist John Marks. We want to hear from you! 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. 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