just a treat
The technique was for Donald Owen Cameron, a Scottish-born psychiatrist, head of many medical societies and director of the Alan Memorial Institute in Montreal between 1943-1965 Passion up to the point of mania. Whereas his shabby twin suits and his mismatched socks gave him an absent-minded world, Cameron was obsessed with the future, beginning with his group of advanced cars, and his constant use of dictaphone dictaphone machines, to the piles of science fiction novels scattered on the side table of his bed.
In the 1950s, this passion for technology began to cast a shadow over his thinking and approach to psychiatry, putting Cameron at the head of a collision course with Cold War plots. Cameron believed that technology, in addition to its ability to facilitate daily life, could spark a revolution in psychiatry, denouncing the slow and ineffective traditional treatment.
With all this listening, listening, and building confidence, Cameron has instead subjected his patients to a new, radical treatment that promises to accelerate psychiatric treatment. The new treatment, called "psychic driving," used a new technology savior, the two-roller recorder.
Erasing the patterns was a two-stage treatment process. First, all disturbing memories and pathological behaviors must be “wiped” from the patient’s mind through a rigorous system of “electroconvulsive therapy”.
While most of his peers limited electrolytic therapy, to 12 sessions per month at most to avoid damaging patients ’short-term memory. Cameron raised the rate to 12 sessions per day to take advantage of that side effect. After that, patients sit in front of tape recorders, broadcasting messages, in an endless loop designed to push them toward specific psychological conclusions.
For example, the message said to one of those devices: “Beige, you have discovered that your mother has never wanted you. Do you see now that you have bestowed your children with passion? And why did you worry about sickness when your daughter decided to join a monastery?
The reels of the recording devices circulated with these messages for days, weeks, and even months without end, until the defenses of the patient''s consciousness were overcome. When patients agitated from the relentless, persistent Egyptian repetition, they were constrained by using strange and harsh methods, from installing earphones with adhesive tape to immobilizing them with the help of hallucinogenic substances.
The results were devastating: instead of overcoming their psychological problems, patients after treatment ended up suffering from severe memory loss, unable to even recognize their families. Cameron''s research attracted a number of sponsors, and it is not surprising that the CIA was one of them - Central Intelligence Agency.
With the return of the Korean prisoners of war in 1953 and their "brainwashing" of them, the CIA began to fund university and hospital research interested in behavioral modifications. The "Project MKUltra" is designed to produce interrogation techniques for cold war espionage.
For this reason, Cameron''s alleged abilities to dismantle and re-install minds seemed an unimaginable opportunity. About US $ 60,000 was pumped into Pattern Erase Research between 1957 - 1960. However, the effects of erasing destructive patterns were unmistakable, the CIA realized it was of no use to operational use, and links between them and Cameron were quickly broken. The involvement of the CIA in Cameron''s work will remain hidden until a mass court case was set off in 1980.
Cameron''s belief in erasing patterns is built on a fictional conception of a possible future psychiatric medicine, which has overcome evidence of his utter accumulation failure. Cameron''s treatment approach did not result from a comprehensive psychological theory, but rather was inspired by novels such as "Aldous Huxley". Brave New World 1931, announcements of "sleep-learning" records that claimed fluency in foreign languages overnight.
Cameron seemed oblivious to the extent of the harm he had caused, preoccupied with his hectic pursuit of "robotic" psychiatry, bypassing the conversations on the chaise longue to a mass-produced mental health assembly line. Erasing patterns, along with science fiction, leads us to a more critical evaluation of psychiatry in the twentieth century. It reveals how societies'' interests and priorities shape our knowledge of the human mind. Psychiatry is far from being a completely objective, impartial endeavor separated from anarchic political and civilized reality.
This is not a new point of view. She presented similar arguments, very convincing, more than half a century ago through books such as "The Myth of Mental Illness 1961" by the psychiatrist "Thomas Shas", and "the history of madness in the classic era." - Madness and Civilization 1964 »by researcher Michel Foucault.
The history of erasing patterns provides support for these criticisms, revealing how political pressures and moral dismay in the Cold War era can shape society''s approach to mental illness and its treatment. Erasing patterns can tell us something about the future of psychotherapy, not just its past.
Today, few psychiatrists are concerned with issues of communism and brainwashing, but Cameron''s intimate belief in the imperative fusion of technology and psychiatry is surprisingly resilient. Perhaps this is seen in the recent explosion in the market for smartphone applications concerned with mental health, as there are about 10,000 applications available ranging from "Mood Trackig", to "Mindfulness" programs, "Ambient noise", and "Automated hypnosis".
