FROM THE ARCHIVES: A FORGOTTEN PAST By Charlotte Volk
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The truth behind this reveals a dark and unbelievable past
The Allan Memorial Institute, part of the McGill University Health Centre, houses a portrait of a man with no name. Visitors or patients at "the Allan" may glance at the portrait, wondering why it is the only nameless one among the portraits of all the past directors. The truth behind this reveals a dark and unbelievable past, one that spans decades and has ripped through generations.
Source: montrealinpictures.com foundation in Cameron's previous psychiatric research on the treatment of schizophrenia, which included brutal techniques such as the administration of hard drugs and severe sensory deprivation to erase memories and reprogram his patients' minds. The CIA was especially interested in this research during the Cold War because of one of its potential applications – mind control.
As the new CBC podcast Brainwashed relates, one of these patients was a pregnant woman named Esther Schrier. Esther, suffering from what was most Between 1957 and 1960, Dr. Don- likely postpartum depression or ald Ewan Cameron, who was the anxiety after a previous infant first director of the Allan Memo- loss, arrived at the Allan Memorial rial Institute, and remained so for Institute hoping that the famous over 20 years, received over USD Cameron, who was the head of $60,000 from the CIA to fund the Canadian Psychiatric Associhis experiments. The project, ation, American Psychiatric Assocodenamed MK-ULTRA, had its ciation, and the World Psychiatric 7 January 2021
Association at different points in his lengthy career, would be able to help her. Instead, until she was more than 8 months pregnant, she underwent a series of brainwashing experiments that would become the foundation of modern torture. She was put into medically induced comas for up to 30 days at a time, given huge quantities of drugs such as amphetamines, LSD, and barbiturates, and forced to undergo electroshock therapy up to twice a day. The aim of these treatments was something Cameron called "depatterning", which aimed to reduce unsuspecting psychiatric patients to an unthinking, child-like state, unable to speak or take care of themselves. The patients were then "reprogrammed" through something called psychic driving: forcing patients to listen to recorded messages up to 20 hours a day through headphones or other devices they couldn't remove, in the hopes of brainwashing them. Cameron took advantage of the lost patients who showed up at the Allan looking for help and pressured them into continuing his "treatments" until they were too weak to know what was happening anymore. MK-ULTRA was abandoned in 1964, but the techniques Cameron pioneered became the inspiration for state-sponsored and military torture for decades. The CIA's training manuals for interrogation and torture made direct reference to the "experiments at McGill
