When I was in high school, we were assigned to read One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and we also watched the movie so we could discuss the relationship between movie versions and books; it was a great class.
Ken Kesey, the author, was one of the primary story-lines in The Electric Kool-Ade Acid Test, which I discovered on my dad’s bookshelf and read. I thought the stories of the merry pranksters, the magic bus, the Grateful Dead, and Augustus Owsley were all fascinating stuff. It was reading that book that made me want to someday try LSD. It sounded like fascinating stuff; yes my “gateway drug” was Tom Wolfe.
“Furthur” the magic bus
I was too late for hippie culture; I was stuck at the tail-end of the brief period of optimism before white college kids realized they were living between the jaws of a double-ended lie that was playing out in Mississippi and Vietnam. As an academic’s kid, all I felt was the despair as the summer of love turned into politics as usual, and white students realized that the national guard was serious; something that black people had known all along. I felt like all that was left was the music and the drugs, which is saying a lot. I’m glad I never got to try LSD when I was in high school – it’s too intense; it leaves a permanent mark on your life. My first experience with it was when I was just about 40, and I already had a pretty good idea who I was, what life was about, and so it didn’t profoundly divert me from any particular course that I was set upon.
Imagine my surprise when On The Media podcast did an episode, recently, about Ken Kesey. [otm] Imagine my surprise when it began by, casually, mentioning that Ken Kesey had his first LSD experiences as part of the CIA’s project MKULTRA. Prior to the OTM segment, I do not recall ever hearing that Kesey was one of the victims of that domestic atrocity. It’s interesting that it seems to have changed his life profoundly, in a positive way. For those of you not familiar with MKULTRA, it was an attempt to see if it was possible to chemically “deprogram” people using drugs. Some of the experiments were consensual, some were not, and the CIA finally brought everlasting shame upon itself by giving one of its own employees a massive dose of LSD, without telling him, which resulted in the poor fellow’s killing himself. From then on, the CIA’s conclusion was not, “we are horrible assholes who ought to throw ourselves in jail” it was “LSD bad.”
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest was, apparently, inspired by some trip-visions Kesey had while he was in the medical facility in Menlo Park. Kesey came out from the experiments a different person; imagine what that was like – you go into a “hospital” for an experiment, and they give you some kind of drugs. And you trip balls. None of the people giving you the drugs have actual experience with them; they’re just pseudoscientist hacks dosing unsuspecting subjects who have signed a barely legal blanket waiver. (How do you give someone informed consent when you are giving them powerful psychoactives you don’t understand?) The crimes committed during MKULTRA were many, but the CIA – does this sound familiar? – accidentally shredded all the documents they could find related to the program.
Congress: “Please save all the documents related to MKULTRA so that we can review them to see if there were any crimes committed.”
CIA: “OK, shredding all documents.”
Congress: “We said ‘save’ not ‘shred’!!”
CIA: (fingers in ears) “La la la la la we can’t hear you! Shredder too loud!”
MKULTRA was a huge program operated by psychologists at several universities including McGill. [mcg]
The CIA was initially interested in discovering a ‘truth serum.’ At the time, many believed in the possibility of a drug to use in interrogations that would eliminate all inhibitions, and prompt subjects to speak without reticence. The CIA first experimented with the use of LSD with little luck, and later delved into different types of psychotherapy and hypnosis in the hopes of discovering the secret of mind control.
The CIA always says that, but I think they’re just a bunch of sadists. ‘Truth serum’? They’d probably whine that it was necessary to find something like that because waterboarding people is illegal. Wait, what? We can waterboard people? Let’s give them LSD and waterboard them!
Seriously, the CIA can’t stop crimin’ in the same old way: [wired]
Prisoners inside the U.S. military’s detention center at Guantanamo Bay were forcibly given “mind altering drugs,” including being injected with a powerful anti-psychotic sedative used in psychiatric hospitals. Prisoners were often not told what medications they received, and were tricked into believing routine flu shots were truth serums. It’s a serious violation of medical ethics, made worse by the fact that the military continued to interrogate prisoners while they were doped on psychoactive chemicals.
Medical ethics? Oh, yeah, the CIA goons who did MKULTRA and the enhanced interrogation program: psychologists. Not only were the 1960s MKULTRA experiments illegal, immoral, and abusive, they were pointless and unsuccessful. They were stupid experiments; anyone who had actually tried the drug cocktails they were slinging around could have told them that it wasn’t going to work.
Ken Kesey’s book One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest takes on a whole different tone, when you realize that the author had personally experienced unregulated brainwashing experiments, and had come out the other side vehemently anti-authoritarian.
I think Kesey did remarkably well with the situation he was given. Others’ minds were broken, and Frank Olson killed himself when he unknowingly drank the equivalent of 40 hits of LSD in a drink spiked by CIA poisons expert Sid Gottlieb. [wik]
Nobody from the CIA, or any of the doctors involved in MKULTRA suffered any consequences for their actions. The CIA’s cover-up allowed them to run out the clock, so that when the story of what had happened started to get out, the perpetrators were safely dead of old age.
Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron – [wik] was the President of the American Psychiatric Association. Please don’t tell me that I’m being hard on psychologists and psychiatry when I describe these sorts of things as criminal activities. And it’s kind of hard to say that Cameron wasn’t a “mainstream” psychiatrist, given his high stature and role in that community. He should have been put against a wall and shot, but instead he used his lab at McGill to try to wipe patients’ memories using electroshock and curare. If there’s a hell, I’m sure he’s down there with Shiro Ishii, Joseph Mengele, and Dusty Rhoades [wik] [Rhoades was an oncologist, not a psychologist, so … psychology is off the hook for Rhoades’ attempt to reduce the population of Puerto Rico]
The main drug that was involuntarily/nonconsensually used on victims at gitmo was Haldol. Haldol has all sorts of nasty side-effects including depression and suicidal ideation. Remember: most of the internees at gitmo were innocent of crimes and were not terrorists; they were people who got swept up in the CIA’s “sell us a terrorist, we pay you a briefcase full of cash” program.
Abuse of Haldol appears to have been a common element of the CIA’s torture program (designed by psychologists Jessen and Mitchell) Abu Zubaydah was apparently routinely overdosed with haldol; i.e.: he was tripping his brains out while they were waterboarding him and slamming him into walls while disorienting sounds were playing at high volume.
We are the baddies.
Please don’t tell me that I’m being hard on psychologists and psychiatry
I would not dream of it. It is a pity though that you do not understand that psychology and psychiatry are different disciplines.
Dr Cameron was a psychiatrist with the requisite medical degrees and training. . Josef Mengele was a medical doctor. Shirō Ishii of Unit 731 of the Imperial Japanese Army was a medical doctor. it is medical doctors who commit the atrocities.
@jrkrideau
Plenty of psychologists who would do that shit given half a chance. Look up applied behaviour analysis, or the treatment of trans people. For every person who wants to help others there’s one who wants to use these tools to beat us into the mould society proscribed
jrkrideau@#2:
I would not dream of it. It is a pity though that you do not understand that psychology and psychiatry are different disciplines.
You have offered that argument before. For one thing, it doesn’t refute anything I’m saying one way or another – if someone identifies as a psychologist, or a psychiatrist (i.e: Dr. Donald Ewen Cameron) it’s not my problem what they are, I’m considering their actions not their job title. Dr Cameron is a perfect example of this: He held a doctorate in psychology and he was practicing as a psychiatrist at McGill and served as president of the American Psychiatric Association. Was the asshole a psychiatrist or a psychologist? He was, in fact, blurring any distinction between the fields, not as though the difference between the fields matters.
I’ve said before: psychiatry’s practices are informed by psychology’s theories. You can’t simply say “oh, that’s a psychiatrist no a psychologist” and claim I am ignorant of a difference, therefore – what – what they did does not matter?
Dr Cameron was a psychiatrist with the requisite medical degrees and training.
Dr Cameron’s PhD was in Psychology. He also had psychiatric training.
I refer to him as a psychologist in this case because his mind wiping experiments were based on psychological theories, not psychiatric practice – certainly not normal psychiatric practices even for his time.
This applies to many other disastrous experiments carried out by psychologists. Zimbardo, for another example. Was he a “psychiatrist” because he was actually doing things to experimental subjects? No, he was a psychologist, described himself as such, and was a member of the faculty of the psychology department at Stanford, and was a holder of the American Psychological Foundation’s lifetime achievement award (presumably for making the field of Psychology look like shit)
In other words, I’m perfectly fucking aware of the difference between psychiatrists and psychologists; I am simply referencing them in the role in which they define themself.
I think you’re just making a specious argument that somehow the actions of practitioners of two fields which are largely joined at the hip are separable. Basically, you’re doing the “no true psychologist/scotsman” argument – and it’s bullshit. Furthmore, I think you make it knowingly, which is dishonest as fuck. You know I have a BA in psychology; I’ve studied the field, I know the fucking difference. I believe you also know that I know the fucking difference and are just being a dishonest apologist for psychology. If you’ve got to lie to obscure the horrible history of a field, you’re admitting that it’s got a horrible history.
it is medical doctors who commit the atrocities.
I listed Mengele and Ishii as examples of other people who committed crimes against humanity, and was implying that Dr of Psychology Cameron would find them companionable spirits. They were all committing atrocities, and the common thread connecting them is that their science and their humanity were shit.
I don’t consider Zimbardo to have committed crimes against humanity; he was just a rotten hack who did a lot to discredit his field. That would be the field of psychology.
dangerousbeans@#3:
Plenty of psychologists who would do that shit given half a chance
Well, there’s also psychologist (with a PhD) James Mitchell [wik] who designed the CIA’s “enhanced interrogation” program, and even did some waterboardin’ personally.
Or is it only “psychiatry” when you’re waterboarding someone, not “psychology” because something mumble something difference between the fields? He was so egregious that the American Psychological Association (Mitchell was never a member) did make a statement that his actions were egregious and made the field of psychology look bad. So I guess they thought he was a psychologist, not a psychiatrist, at the time.
PS – I fully support science-based medicine. That’s generally psychiatry based on neuroscience, but anything that has been subjected to controlled studies and clinical trials and shown it’s effective is fine.
There’s a lot of dark ages stuff in the history of psychology, and it’s exactly why we should demand good science from the field. Hack psychologists like Zimbardo, Mitchell, Cameron, etc. – their work needs to be challenged, exposed for the malicious pseudo-science that it is, and they need to be repudiated. Unfortunately, their work will linger like a bad smell, and it keeps cropping up in “popular science” – hence the need for repudiation.
jrkrideau @#2
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sluggish_schizophrenia You might find this one interesting, this is another example of how mental health professionals abused and incarcerated people.
In many countries a trans person cannot get access to hormones or surgeries before having had some mandatory psychiatrist consultations. Online you can find numerous accounts on how these so called “mental health professionals” abused their trans patients. Alternatively, you can look up how some doctors abuse their patients who are on the autism spectrum.
Of course, it is possible to say “not all psychiatrists,” but personally I wouldn’t want to get anywhere near any of them. And, yes, of course I have been abused by transphobic doctors in general. On countless occasions.
Andreas Avester@#7:
In many countries a trans person cannot get access to hormones or surgeries before having had some mandatory psychiatrist consultations. Online you can find numerous accounts on how these so called “mental health professionals” abused their trans patients.
In general, we should be suspicious any time a person (especially a male) places themself as a gateway in a process – it’s an expression of a desire to control, which is a big red flag. Why do these people want that responsibility? So they can make others suffer. (apologies to Orwell)
Marcus @#8
Or because they patronize me and imagine that I am not capable of making decisions for myself. The idea is that all trans people are inherently mentally unstable, thus some psychiatrist needs to decide for them.
Andreas Avester@#9:
The idea is that all trans people are inherently mentally unstable, thus some psychiatrist needs to decide for them.
Then why would anyone want to be a psychiatrist and shoulder such a responsibility? It only makes sense if they’re sadists.
Marcus @#10
Some people take responsibility very casually. Just think about all those people who casually choose to have some kids just because.
Personally, I contemplate my decisions a lot. I have the impression that most people don’t do the same. Those doctors who denied me healthcare were 100% certain that they were making the right decision. They were sure that they are doing the right thing by preventing me from engaging in self-mutilation. They didn’t even contemplate the possibility that maybe their attitudes are wrong.