Once
upon a time there was a theory about powerful technologies of mind control, or
“brainwashing”, which enabled those possessing them to change and dictate
beliefs, experiences, and actions to their apparent victims. This technology
was supposedly much stronger than any technologies of persuasion known to
used-car salesmen and shrewd politicians everywhere. To understand the
historical context and the historical reasons for the appearance of such a
theory we have to go back to the Moscow show trials of 1936-1938, which shocked
all and every non-communist observer, and challenged them to explain how great
Bolshevik revolutionaries admitted to terrible crimes they could not have
committed. These show trials were followed by similar ones in Communist Eastern
Europe after 1945, and by reports of cooperation between US POWs and their
captors during the Korean War. When an ideology seems to us peculiar and
unacceptable, successful indoctrination into that ideology seems puzzling or
shocking. How could anybody you believe in communism, or become a Jehovah’s
Witness, a Moslem, or a Christian? (You can fill in your own choice of a belief
system).

The
belief in “brainwashing” led to several kinds of reactions. One was horror at
the diabolical nature of Communism, which only added to existing aversion.
Another was the desire to uncover the secrets of this technology and then use
it for our side, so that we can win the war against Communism. This desire is
behind the story that this book tries to tell us.

The
1962 film The
Manchurian Candidate, based on the 1959 novel
by the same name authored by Richard Condon, faithfully captures the paranoia
of those long-forgotten times. It’s a great film, designed to make the viewers
skeptical, but some of them miss the whole point. Unfortunately, one such
viewer is the author of the book before us.

What
did happen was that the United States Government, through its Central Intelligence
Agency, did invest many millions of dollars in experiments designed to develop
techniques of mind control. These were then to be used to create torture-proof
couriers and agents, committed and brave, whose psyches have been engineered to
fit the specifications. To achieve that, a variety of drugs, including LSD,
were tried, as well as hypnosis. Ideas about “ESP” and “multiple personality”
were also floated. In addition, the CIA, through a front using the name The
Fund for Human Ecology, financed work by reputable psychologists. Among them
were George Kelly at Ohio State University, Carl Rogers at the University of
Wisconsin, Muzafer Sherif at the University of Oklahoma, and Charles Osgood at
the University of Illinois. What these researchers did was perfectly
legitimate, and they had no knowledge of the CIA connection. What those in
charge of the project did was to invest in basic psychological research, in the
hope that some basic knowledge would later lead to relevant
behavior-modification technology. What should be mentioned is that the idea of
“mind control” had very few adherents within academic psychology.

In
many other cases, however, psychologists and psychiatrists, under contract to
the CIA or as its employees, engaged in real crimes, subjecting their unwitting
victims to horrifying experiments developed by sadistic minds. Some victims
died or suffered irreparable damage. We should be shocked not only by the
cruelty and inhumanity involved, but by stupidity of any theoretical notions.

The CIA mind-control
projects were not only evidence of total immorality, but also of a total lack
of serious thinking about the behavioral issues involved. The documents
presented in this book provide some
evidence for that. The researchers involved, if we might use this term, never
discovered any “brainwashing” technology, as there was nothing to be
discovered. The many projects involved
were gradually stopped, and not for any ethical reasons.

This
travesty ended in 1977, when Project MK-Ultra became public knowledge. Some of
those involved were officially demoted and punished. I know that the American
Psychological Association expelled some CIA employees who had been members. The
Canadian government apologized and established a fund to compensate victims.
The story became material for historians, and clearly had many lessons in it
for all those connected with the behavioral sciences.

After
the flashback to the 1950s, we now flash forward to the 1980s, when a major
epidemic was diagnosed in North American psychiatry. Within a few years, the
marginal diagnostic category of multiple personality disorder (MPD), until then
extremely rare and reported in less than 100 cases, became, according to some
prominent psychiatrists (e.g. Frank W. Putnam, of NIMH), the psychiatric
equivalent of AIDS. Thousands of cases were being diagnosed and treated, and
this was not the end of the story. Some psychiatrists then claimed that MPD,
later called DID (dissociative identity disorder) was the result of childhood
experiences of “satanic ritual abuse” (SRA), carried out by a secret religion
dedicated to the sacrifice of babies, preferably by their own parents. The
MPD-SRA phenomenon had its heyday in the early 1990s. Since then it has been in
decline (one of its leaders, Bennett Braun, lost his license to practice
medicine in 1999). Colin A. Ross has been an active proponent of the MPD-SRA
epidemic and over the years published several books dealing with DID and SRA.

While
the CIA realized a long time ago that its various “mind control” programs were
a failure, Ross does not. He believes that Manchurian candidates, programmed
with the required multiple personalities, are roaming the earth ready to carry
out their secret missions. The technology utilized to create these agents
remains just as much a secret (or a fantasy) as it ever was. Actually, Ross
believes that “In the interest of national security, it is important that the
CIA and military intelligence agencies have mind control programs in place.
This is true, for one reason, because mind control methods are being used by
leaders of destructive cults, dictators and terrorists… The problem is the
conflict between the National Security Act and the Hippocratic Oath” (p.
266). The book’s aim is not only to
expose CIA conspiracies, but to promote
a theoretical claim. Against those doubting the reality of tens of thousands of
MPD (or DID) cases, all identified since 1980, Ross suggests that these cases
cannot be iatrogenic, because “the creation of iatrogenic multiple personality
requires much more control and influence than is possible in one or two hours
of outpatient therapy per week” (p. 267). This sounds reasonable enough, but
Ross does not consider a more parsimonious explanation of the MPD-DID epidemic,
i.e. that those diagnosed with MPD do not have a “iatrogenic MPD” because they
may be suffering from a whole variety of problems, none helped by the MPD
diagnosis, which is simply spurious.

This
book is in a sense a replay of the problems it exposes. Ross criticizes the
American Psychiatric Association for its unwillingness to censure its members
who were involved in the MK-Ultra scandal. The same question may be raised
about the MPD-SRA epidemic of the past two decades. The American Psychiatric
Association (as well as the American Psychological Association) usually keeps
silent when its members promote claims about Satanism and alien abductions. It
will probably keep silent about other conspiracy theories promoted by members.
Those who think that psychiatry is a weird kind of business have no idea what
is really going on. The Spokane Spokesman Review reported on January 14,
2001 that a jury in the state of Washington awarded
$2.1M to a patient who was harmed by the hidden agenda of the late psychiatrist
Donald Dudley. Dudley, according to his own notes, was trying, via drugs, to
erase part of the patient’s brain and turn him into a trained killer. Later on,
the psychiatrist was himself diagnosed as suffering from a bipolar disorder, and lost his
license to practice. Colin A. Ross demonstrates in this book once again that the
fringes of psychiatry, where ideas about “mind control” and Satanism
proliferate, are actually quite wide, and sometimes reach pretty close to its
center.

© 2002 Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi

Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, Department of
Psychology, University of Haifa, Israel, is the author of several books,
including The
Psychology of Religious Behaviour, Belief and Experience (Routledge,
1997).

Categories: Ethics, MentalHealth

Tags: Dissociative Disorders, Psychiatry