PSYCHIC DRIVING
From 1957 to 1963, Donald Ewen Cameron under CIA project MK Ultra conducted experiments in Montreal, Canada, receiving funding from the CIA through a front organization called the Society for the Investigation of Human Ecology. He also received more direct funding from the US federal government of over $500,000 between 1950 and 1965.
These experiments were colloquially known as the Montreal Experiments, and officially classified as “Subproject 68”. The experiments were initially predicated upon attempts to treat schizophrenia, but quickly became about seeking methods to pattern and repattern the human brain – essentially, seeking methods of mind control. No schizophrenic patients were informed about the full nature of the study and could not properly consent.
Patients were exposed to electroshock therapy, the use of Thorazine to induce artificial comas lasting up to 86 days, sensory deprivation while in a paralyzed state induced by LSD, and were exposed to a technique invented by Cameron which he called “psychic driving”. Psychic driving, a concept Cameron invented in 1953, consisted of listening to repeated audio recordings for up to 16 hours a day, for a total of up to half a million repetitions of the same recordings.
Cameron recorded these tapes himself – for the first ten days, patients were exposed to negative messages, and for the second ten days, positive messages. Sometimes sedating drugs were used in conjunction with these treatments. The objective of psychic driving was to break down the subject’s personality, and then subsequently insert a new replacement personality.
Participants exited these experiments often with retrograde amnesia, reverted to a childlike state, and became emotionally even worse off. One woman in particular, Jean Steel, was reportedly never again the same. She would sit alone in the dark for days, writing codes on the wall. Her daughter said her emotions were stripped away, and that it took away her soul.
Donald Ewen Cameron left the Subproject 68 four years prior to the end of his contract. Despite the results of these operations, and the significant ethical questions surrounding them, Cameron later became president of the World Psychiatric Association in 1961. He died of a heart attack in 1967, many years prior to the first public reveal of MK Ultra and Subproject 68.
Sources:
“MKULTRA DOC_0000017468 : Central Intelligence Agency.” Uploaded by Emma Best, Internet Archive, 26 June 2016, archive.org/details/DOC_0000017468/page/n17/mode/2up.
McKeown, Bob. “Brainwashed : The Secret CIA Experiments in Canada - Episodes - The Fifth Estate.” CBCnews, CBC/Radio Canada, 15 Dec. 2017, www.cbc.ca/fifth/episodes/2017-2018/brainwashed-the-secret-cia-experiments-in-canada.
D'Alimonte, Michael. “The Secret Montreal Experiments They Don't Want You To Know About.” MTL Blog, MTL Blog, 3 Nov. 2015, www.mtlblog.com/news/the-secret-montreal-experiments-they-dont-want-you-to-know-about.