Donald Ewen Cameron ((1901-12-24)24 December 1901 (1967-09-08)8 September 1967)[1] was a Scottish-born psychiatrist. Ex-husband of Enid Agnes Maud Watson. Family 9 - Donald CAMERON 34, wife Agnes 30, children John 18, Margaret 13, Ann 12, Donald 10, Christian 8, Alexander 6, Dugald 2, Duncan 1/2 (see Donald Cameron) Family 10 - Duncan CAMERON 30 unmarried, sister Mrs McLENNAN 28 and Catherine McLENNAN 5 v USA, 1988] Tom Beauchamp, a leading American bioethicist was an expert witness for Camerons estate, arguing that Camerons treatment complied with the norm and practice of the day. (Beyond Nuremburg, ABA Journal March 1997; News accounts of five legal cases at: The Law and Mind Control Mind Control Through Five Cases). Duncan: Well, I think that I would feel sad about that. The title is The Understanding Man. Lake Placid in particular, and the northern Adirondacks in general, have lost suddenly, tragically, but in a sense, beautifully, probably their most distinguished citizen. Research genealogy for Donald Ewen Cameron of Minneapolis, Hennepin, Minnesota, USA, as well as other members of the Cameron family, on Ancestry. 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. She's the exception, though, and the CBC says that 2020 saw others like Lana Ponting, who was just 16 when she was sent to the sleep room hoping that year, it would finally be their year, thanks to a class action lawsuit filed in 2019. And in a lot of ways, modern psychiatry has completely left behind the man who once dominated its ranks. She was not staying in this little town. Cameron focused primarily on biological descriptive psychiatry and applied the British and European schools and models of the practice. You can buy the full book for only . Cameron titled this procedure "intrapsychic" (a term derived from the psycho-somatic relationship of hospital patients). Were they *destroyed* or did you just take the patients name out? She very slowly recovered mostly and died in 2017. Everyone who makes a monthly donation will get access to upcoming bonus content from the making of our series. It was reported that none of the patients sent to the Radio Telemetry Lab showed any signs of improvement. According to The Guardian, it started with playing tapes designed to tap into the reason the patient sought help in the first place. (McCoy, 2007), According to Leonard Rubenstein, an attorney for plaintiffs [Mrs. David Orlikow et al. Patients were tested in the Radio Telemetry Laboratory, which was built under Cameron's direction. Ewen passed away on month day 1915, at age 84 at death place. Ben Brock Johnson: So what do you have in front of you here? Advertisement. The legacy can be seen in the torture techniques employed in Northern Ireland and in Guantanamo Bay. So we reached out to one of the most comprehensive archives in the world: The Library of Congress. with distinction from the University of Glasgow in 1936.[8]. [citation needed][21]. 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. And they haven't been super successful. According to Cameron's psychiatric analysis of the German people, they were not suitable to have children or hold positions of authority because of a genetic tendency to organize society in a way that fostered fearsome aggression and would lead to war rather than peace; he would repeatedly use the German as the archetypal character structure on which to ground the most psychologically deviant humans. Here in the hospital Cameron could observe how the psychiatric patient resembled patients with other diseases that were not psychiatric in nature. Cameron used his ideas to implement policies on who should govern and parent in society. Velma Orlikow, for instance, was dealing with postpartum depression. For instance, he was careful to say he didnt know anything about his dads treatment regimen at the Allan, which may very well be true. Ben: But we also asked about something else, that he was a little uncomfortable talking about: Orlikow vs. United States, the 1980s lawsuit that ended up giving $750,000 total to 8 of Camerons victims. I think he wanted to be famous. 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. 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 furthered his diagnostic definitions of clinical states such as anxiety, depression and schizophrenia. Cameron quickly found patients didn't want to listen to the messages. Amory: Author Stephen Kinzer, who wrote the book about the CIA and Mind Control, says, after Vietnam, this same literature got used elsewhere. In this manner, somatic causes could be compared. You know, my job was to look out for the cops. Amory: Just not in the way he might have hoped. And he admits that the papers he removed are now destroyed. And you see this actual physical manual on how to break down the human mind. He was there when his legal partner, Joseph Rauh, took Camerons deposition. Rauh: So any documents that would show the treatment of the plaintiffs in this case were destroyed? He began to develop the discipline of social psychiatry which concentrated on the roles of interpersonal interaction, family, community and culture in the emergence and amelioration of emotional disturbance. Pregnant with son Lloyd, Esther was kept in a drug-induced coma in the sleep room for a month, where she lost 13 pounds. But none of us trained in psychiatry. Do you remember that? And, later on to guidebooks for what we now call enhanced interrogation at places like Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib. And people talk about the transmission of trauma through generations. 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. David Cameron's grandfather Ewen Donald Cameron (1906-1958) was a City of London figure who became a director at the stock brokerage house Panmure Gordon. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Cameron continued his work on memory and its relationship to aging. Duncan: No, he had some peculiar hobb-- he loved science fiction. Particularly because we put that question to him today. 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." Cameron began to abandon the Freudian unconscious in favour of a social constructivist's view of mental illness. Canada. 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. We collect and match historical records that Ancestry users have contributed to their family trees to create each person's profile. The idea was to first "depattern" the person in question. 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." 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. 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. Her life was sad. One of the weirdest chapters in U.S. history was approved on April 13, 1953, and any time anyone says anything about "the good ol' days," when things were just better, simpler, and kinder, well, point to MKUltra and say, "Check out this madness!" Dr. Morrow, says The Washington Post, had applied for a fellowship in psychiatry with Cameron. Canada's McGill University has owned up to the part it played in MKUltra's Sub-project 68, and they say that it really started before Dr. Ewen Cameron even got involved. Duncan: Well, I think he was always fascinated in the future. The mentally ill were thus labelled as not only sick, but also weak. This personality type poses a danger to those closest to them, especially children. Thus, this group would have to be studied and controlled as a contagious social disease. Her family sued, first based on the treatment alone, then again, after discovering she was a part of the MKUltra program. [34], Naomi Klein states in her book The Shock Doctrine that Cameron's research and his contribution to MKUltra were not about mind control and brainwashing, but "to design a scientifically based system for extracting information from 'resistant sources.' Cameron would analyze what conditions produced the stronger worker, what would be the necessary conditions to replicate this personality and to reward the stronger while disciplining the weaker. They had 11 children: Allan Francis Cameron, John Donald Cameron and 9 other children. 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. The paper stated that German culture and its people would have offspring bound to become a threat to world peace in 30 years. 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. His father, grandfather and great-grandfather were all senior partners in the company. Marian: There was a picture of my mom there and somebody commented, Ugh that's the Johanna that's her name I remember. And my sister looked at him and said, But what was she like? Ben: The study also said that these treatments, the de-patterning and psychic driving programs including LSD injections, induced comas, sensory deprivation and electroshock had a detrimental impact on patients memories, which, in retrospect, might have been part of the point. It's hardwired into the brain. And he was searching for ways of doing something about them. In the late 1940s, Cameron presented his ideas in a lecture entitled Dangerous Men and Women. And I think it affected a lot more people than anybody even realizes today. Donald Ewen Cameron was born in Bridge of Allen, a small town in Scotland, on December 24, 1901. Donald Ewen Cameron 24 December 1901 - 8 September 1967)[1] was a Scottish-born psychiatrist. Very different. He served as president of the American Psychiatric Association , Canadian Psychiatric Association ,[2] American Psychopathological Association . Results were telling: They became super sensitive to the sensory stimuli they did receive, and then, things started getting really weird. Now, a recent court decision has. Patients would be subjected to messages repeated hundreds of thousands of times, as they were kept in their coma for up to a month. Jim: But again, you know, the deposition transcript, you're going to have to rely on that, like we did. If I put you through this program, within 24 hours to 48 hours you'll be in a diagnosable psychotic state. Cameron believed firmly in clinical psychiatry and a strict scientific method. In his 1946 paper entitled "Frontiers of Social Psychiatry", he used the case of World War II Germany as an example where society poisoned the minds of citizens by creating a general anxiety or neurosis.[19]. Amory: Jim Turner was one of two prosecutors on the case. Cameron also hoped to generate families capable of using authority and techniques to take measures against mental illness, which would later be apparent in Cameron's MKULTRA and MKDELTA experiments. Theres no clear approach to the summit only overgrown pathways. She wasn't able to joke and laugh She would blurt out something like: 'We must do the right thing!'" Dr. Ewen Cameron wanted to win a Nobel Prize for his work in psychiatry. And they found his work next to worthless. 22 As the Watergate scandal broke in 1973, MKUltra was officially ordered to be shut down by the CIA. Some would bang their heads against the walls relentlessly, trying to get the helmets off and that's when he realized he could just put them back into a medically-induced coma and play the tapes for as long as he wanted. Being compared to the Nazi's most notorious doctor probably isn't the life goal of most medical professionals, so let's look at what he did to deserve this dubious title. Harvey: Here he is trying to reach the peak, trying to climb the mountain, reach this goal. Alison Steel says her mother was never the same after undergoing. To see some of the things that have happened are very upsetting. On March 12, her records show she was considered "depatterned": She could no longer stand, speak, could barely swallow, was incontinent, and required treatment by an obstetrician for severe bleeding. Ben: He looks like hes having a good time. Cameron wanted to build an inventive psychiatric institution to determine rapid ways for societal control while demanding a psychological economy that did not center itself around guilt and guilt complexes. Duncan: You see, he doesn't have a scowl. Marian Read: So for me, the importance of all of this is to get it out of the shadows of pulp fiction, you know Amory: This is Marian Read. 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. Today, we're talking to one of the only people who will stand up for Dr. Cameron. While more is known about the experiments of Dr. Ewen Cameron than about some of the other MKUltra projects, there's still a lot of information missing. Take a guess. She went from apartment to apartment, mental hospital to mental hospital. (Rubenstein LS. Other similar psychiatric diagnoses of Germany were published during this time. Cameron began to develop broader theories of society, new concepts of human relations to replace concepts he deemed dangerous and outdated. Allan Cameron. Old '45" Cameron Major Cameron (1663 - 1718) family tree on Geni, with over 230 million profiles of ancestors and living relatives. He died of a heart attack while climbing a mountain in the Adirondacks in 1967. So we don't have. There must have been records of experiments. 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. He reported that "the subject's very identity had begun to disintegrate," and that's when someone should, ya know, stop. She said: "She wasn't able to talk to me about life and regular stuff. Ben: Her dad couldnt afford childcare, so soon after Marians mother went into the Allan, social services took Marian and her two younger brothers away because there was no parent to take care of them. Duncan: Not really, I certainly don't know anything about the treatments he was using, I didnt know anything about that. [38], Cameron died of a heart attack while hiking with his son in the Adirondack Mountains on September 8, 1967. Lloyd has continued to fight for recognition, recompense, and an apology. Ben: But some key documentation of Camerons time at the Allan is straight up missing. According to The Washington Post, Cameron was recruited in 1957, and he was a big deal. There is no incontinence, there is no mutism, and we are continuing this intense treatment of her until we get complete depatterning.". Region. In 1946, Cameron introduced the practice of the day hospital, the first of its kind in North America, permitting patients to remain at home while receiving treatment at the institute during the day, thus avoiding unnecessary hospitalization and allowing the patients to maintain ties with their community and family. And then she came back from Montreal and she was never the same. He is largely known today for his central role in unethical medical experiments, and development of psychological and medical torture techniques for the CIA. [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. The goal, says CBC, was to reduce the patient to what was called a "childlike state," with some people destroyed so completely that they could no longer walk, talk, or dress themselves Shoelaces? [25], Cameron had been hoping to correct schizophrenia by "erasing" existing memories and "reprogramming" the psyche. What started as short-term depression before the Allan, morphed into chronic depression, as well as diagnosed schizophrenia and bipolar disorder afterwards. Ben: But do you even though you had nothing to do with it do you have any feelings of sadness about those folks and what they've gone through? Any documents that related to patient treatment were destroyed? The guilt of her baby's deadly staph infection stayed with her, and when she became pregnant with her second, and the CBC says she went into Cameron's care in February of 1960. As the CBC notes, it's sourced pretty heavily from Cameron's work, and talks about things like "deprivation of sensory stimuli, threats and fear, pain, hypnosis and narcosis," and the source of their research? That could be heightened with various drugs, eventually was replaced by positive messages, and the so-called "psychic driving" would continue. And these are pictures of him, these are both in the Adirondack Mountains. [citation needed] Characteristics were thus diagnosed as syndromes emerging from the brain. Ewen Donald Cameron. That's how quick it is because it removes your time and space. Because it would seem to me, or I was concerned as a lawyer, that it might be a breach of the patient-doctor privilege. "[35] She then cites Alfred W. McCoy: "Stripped of its bizarre excesses, Cameron's experiments, building upon Donald O. Hebb's earlier breakthrough, laid the scientific foundation for the CIA's two-stage psychological torture method. He wanted to know if it was possible to wipe a person's mind and reinstall a new personality. John Marks observes, Ewen Cameron did not need the CIA to corrupt him. [6] Decades after his own death, the psychic driving technique he developed continued to see extensive use in the torture of prisoners around the world. Duncan: It's really a very moving editorial. 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: When Amory and I spoke to Duncan Cameron about his dad, he also told us about his own work, as a lawyer. The described types would have to be eliminated from society if there was to be peace and progress. Those who are privileged to know him, even briefly, will not soon forget the warmth and kindliness of this understanding man.. Amory: He doesnt explicitly say that he was the one who did the destroying. 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. 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. And one of these risks was the treatment that he was using. My recollection was that I wasn't able to provide him with much information that he didn't already have. 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. The idea that people needed to sit down and talk about their problems was the old way of doing things, and Cameron was living in an era where things were getting more and more automated. John Marks: There must have been clinical documents. "He was supposed to do wonders with people with depression or mental health issues." 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. 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