A Subliminal Dr. Strangelove (Newsweek 22/8/1994)

A Subliminal Dr. StrangeloveUsing the power of hidden suggestions, this Russian scientist tries to rewire the brainBy Dorinda Elliott in Moscow with John Barry in Washington

When branch Davidian sect members hunkered down in their Waco compound last year and threatened to commit suicide, the FBI turned to an unlikely source. Experts from the FBI Counter-Terrorism Center secretly met in Arlington, Va., with a long-haired Russian Dr. Strangelove called Igor Smirnov. His plan: piping subliminal messages from sect members’ families through the phone lines during negotiations.

For David Koresh, the self-appointed prophet, the FBI had a special voice in mind: God, as played by Charlton Heston. The FBI backed out of Smirnov’s Waco Strategy, and the crisis ended in blazing disaster. But psychological-warfare experts on all sides still dream that they will one day control the enemy’s mind.

And in a tiny, dungeonlike lab in the basement of Moscow’s ominously named Institute of Psycho-Correction, Smirnov and other Russian psychiatrists are already working on schizophrenics, drug addicts and cancer patients. You’ve heard of subliminal advertising, right? The psychiatric community generally agrees that subliminal perception exists; a smaller fringe group believes it can be used to change the psyche. And that could be bad as well as good.

]“A knife can be used to cut sausage,” Smirnov warns cryptically, “or cut your throat.” Using electroencephalographs, he measures brain waves, then uses computers to create a map of the subconscious and various human impulses, such as anger or the sex drive. Then, through taped subliminal messages, he claims to physically alter that landscape with the power of suggestion.

At the University of Michigan, Howard Shevrin has also studied the relationship between brain responses and the unconscious, but he has doubts about therapeutic applications. “I’m not sure this should be tampered with. The effects could be harmful.” In Smirnov’s cluttered lab, Slava, a tattooed heroin addict, has electrodes attached to his chest and shaved head. He has just watched subliminal messages on a screen and listened through earphones to other impulses disguised as noise. Smirnov says he’s trying to stimulate the child-rearing cluster of Slava’s brain to encourage him to care more for his soon-to-be born baby and less about his next hit of heroin.

Smirnov says that in Soviet times, the government funded his lab generously. Now that Russia’s economy has collapsed, and with it funding for the security forces and military, Smirnov gets only $20.000 a year, he says. He hopes to attract Western investment. Meanwhile, Smirnov says that Russian gangsters regularly come to see him, looking, for example, for help in getting business partners to sign contracts that are against their interest. He won’t do it, he says: “That would be unethical.”

In any case, there is no doubt that somebody is watching him closely. Shortly after NEWSWEEK’s reporter visited his lab, two burly toughs in suits and diamond rings showed up at NEWSWEEK’S Moscow office asking questions about Smirnov. They claimed to be in business with him, but he says he doesn’t know them. KGB? Mafia? Smirnov shrugs them off, but, whoever they are, the doctor of subliminal subversion might be wise to watch his back.

Newsweek, Aug. 22, 1994.

Mind Control and Eugenics: “Redressing” Nature’s Randomness, Intolerant of Uncertainty in Human Behavior

Dead in the Bathtub. Psycho (1960)

Madness was made possible by all that milieu that repressed in man of his animal nature…madness then became the other side of progress. By multiplying mediations, civilisation offered men ever increasing means to become insane – Michel Foucault. History of Madness. Pg. 374

The individual may think that the most important reality is his own existence, but this is only his personal point of view. This lacks historical perspective. Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. This kind of liberal orientation has great appeal. We must electronically control the brain. Someday armies and generals will be controlled by electric stimulation of the brain. – Dr. Jose Delgado, Director of Neuropsychiatry Yale University Medical School – Congressional Record, No. 26, Vol. 118 February 24, 1974

—

The term designer babies is by and large just emblematic of the idea that genetic technology can do more than merely correct the frail aspects of human existence. It can redress nature’s essential randomness. Purely elective changes are in the offing. The industry argues over the details, but many assure that within our decade, depending upon the family and the circumstances, height, weight and even eye color will become elective. Gender selection has been a fact of birth for years with a success rate of up to 91 percent for those who use it.

…

It goes much further than designer babies. Mass social engineering is still being advocated by eminent voices in the genetics community. Celebrated geneticist James Watson, codiscoverer of the double helix and president of Cold Springs Harbor Laboratories, told a British film crew in 2003, “If you are really stupid, I would call that a disease. The lower 10 per cent who really have difficulty, even in elementary school, what’s the cause of it? A lot of people would like to say, ‘Well, poverty, things like that.’ It probably isn’t. So I’d like to get rid of that, to help the lower 10 percent.” For the first half of the twentieth century, Cold Spring Harbor focused on the “submerged tenth”; apparently, the passion has not completely dissipated.

Following in the footsteps of Galton, who once amused himself by plotting the geographic distribution of pretty women in England, Watson also told the film crew,” People say it would be terrible if we made all girls pretty. I think it would be great.” Watson gave no indication of what the standard for beauty would be.

War Against the Weak: Eugenics and America’s Campaign to Create a Master Race. By Edwin Black. Pg. 442-443

—

Though [John B.] Watson’s work was the beginning of mans attempts to control human actions, the real work was done by, B.F. Skinner, the high priest of the behaviorists movement. The key to Skinner’s work was the concept of operant conditioning, which relied on the notion of reinforcement, all behavior which is learned is rooted in either a positive or negative response to that action. There are two corollaries of operant conditioning Aversion therapy and desensitization.

Aversion therapy uses unpleasant reinforcement to a response which is undesirable. This can take the form of electric shock, exposing the subject to fear producing situations, and the infliction of pain in general. It has been used as a way of “curing” homosexuality, alcoholism and stuttering. Desensitization involves forcing the subject to view disturbing images over and over again until they no longer produce any anxiety, then moving on to more extreme images, and repeating the process over again until no anxiety is produced. Eventually, the subject becomes immune to even the most extreme images. This technique is typically used to treat people’s phobias. Thus, the violence shown on T.V. could be said to have the unsystematic and unintended effect of desensitization.

Skinnerian behaviorism has been accused of attempting to deprive man of his free will, his dignity and his autonomy. It is said to be intolerant of uncertainty in human behavior, and refuses to recognize the private, the ineffable, and the unpredictable. It sees the individual merely as a medical, chemical and mechanistic entity which has no comprehension of its real interests.

Skinner believed that people are going to be manipulated. “I just want them to be manipulated effectively,” he said. He measured his success by the absence of resistance and counter control on the part of the person he was manipulating. He thought that his techniques could be perfected to the point that the subject would not even suspect that he was being manipulated.

Dr. James V. McConnel, head of the Department of Mental Health Research at the University of Michigan, said, “The day has come when we can combine sensory deprivation with the use of drugs, hypnosis, and the astute manipulation of reward and punishment to gain almost absolute control over an individual’s behavior. We want to reshape our society drastically.”

Mind Control by Harry V. Martin and David Caul/ Napa Sentinel August/September/October/November 1991

It is safe to say at this point that if you even remotely have a heart, courage or much of a brain left, the epicenter of this New World Order (the U.S.) has become so degraded as to be rendered almost completely unlivable. And it is also safe to say that the ‘spark’ within experience that used to make each of us unique, individual beings has been brutally snuffed out by human arrogance and greed. – ce399. 16 February 2008

Left Gatekepper Naomi Klein on MK-ULTRA: Disasterous Disinformation

…the true purpose of MK-ULTRA was not to research brainwashing (that was a mere side project) but to design a scientifically based system for extracting information from “resistant sources.”49 In other words, torture. Pg 39-40. Naomi Klein. The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. 

Related Archives:

Markos Moulitsas Zúniga, owner of the DailyKos website, now admits that he spent six months in the employ of the US Central Intelligence Agency in 2001,” writes Holland. “In a one-hour interview on June 2, 2006 at the Commonwealth Club, Moulitsas, also known as ‘Kos,’ admitted that he was a CIA employee and would have ‘no problem working for them’ in the present.–Kurt Nimmo

—

I was and still remain strongly for military action in Afghanistan as a legitimate and necessary act in response to 9/11: an attack on two American cities and on the infrastructure of government cannot be ignored… – Dave Neiwert aka ‘Hunter‘  – Daily Kos, May 10, 2006

—

ce399 note, 11 April 2008:

No mention of Sanger and Eugenics in a recent Democracy Now! program detailing the history of  Reproductive Rights and Abortion Activism. No mention of Sanger or Eugenics at all in the DN! online archive.

Meanwhile, Dave Neiwert the pseudo anti-fascist who apparently has never heard of  the term Zionism, yet likes to assume National Alliance related screen names while writing mainstream Democratic ‘con and bullshit‘ (or is it endlessly blathering kitsch?) at CIA-Mockingbird front Daily Kos, stoops to the level of outright disinformation and lying regarding Sanger and Eugenics:

Foremost among these was the founder of Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger, as well as other multiculturalists such as Margaret Mead and Franz Boas. These thinkers specifically and ardently rejected the tenets of white supremacism and “negative” eugenics. Of course, in subsequent years, all of these people have been tarred — mostly by anti-abortion activists — with guilt by association to the eugenics movement. (Planned Parenthood has a thorough and well-argued defense of Sanger up on its Web site.) But there was no mistaking the differences between them at the time.

Dave Neiwert is now managing editor at Firedoglake.

With gatekeepers like Neiwert at the levers of information control for citizens seeking an alternative to the corporate media, is it any wonder the U.S. has become an uninhabitable Fourth Reich, populated by selectively bred ‘imbeciles’ ? .

Dave Neiwert (aka ‘Hunter’) Daily Kos, Left ‘Gate Keeping,’ the CIA and Two Minutes Hate

Amy Goodman Omits and Dave Neiwert Whitewashes History of Margaret Sanger, Eugenics

Amy Goodman and James Bamford Omit ECHELON, UKUSA Agreement from NSA Discussion

Michael Parenti Shreds JFK Assassination Conspiracy Debunkers (mp3 file)

Operation Mind Control: Zombie States of America (& pdf file)

Please keep fearfully in mind that the astonishing information published in this seminal work of investigative reporting, concerning avenues taken to decision and execution by our secret police to fracture or dissolve human minds, then to operate those minds as a small boy, might operate a Yo-Yo, for purposes of counter-intelligence military “efficiency,” and the destruction of democratic institutions, was drawn directly from federal records and from official laboratory archives of the highest educational purpose—as well as from the reviving memories of those who had already undergone the dehumanizing process. … [p. 14]

Zombie is a quaint, old-fashioned folklore word but its meaning becomes obscene when our children’s minds are being controlled … [p. 17][Note:1]

It may have been the biggest story since the atom bomb. The headline, however, was small and ignored the larger issue. “Drug Tests by CIA Held More Extensive Than Reported in ’75,” said the New York Times on July 16, 1977. …

The testing of drugs by the CIA was just a part of the United States government’s top-secret mind-control project, a project which had spanned thirty-five years and had involved tens of thousands of individuals. It involved techniques of hypnosis, narco-hypnosis, electronic brain stimulation, behavioral effects of ultrasonic, microwave, and low-frequency sound, aversive and other behavior modification therapies. In fact, there was virtually no aspect of human behavioral control that was not explored in their search for the means to control the memory and will of both individuals and whole masses of people.

The CIA succeeded in developing a whole range of psycho-weapons to expand its already ominous psychological warfare arsenal. With these capabilities, it was now possible to wage a new kind of war—a war which would take place invisibly, upon the battlefield of the human mind. … [p. 19]

The psychological techniques described in The Manchurian Candidate were to become a reality less than a decade after Condon saw his story set in type. As if Condon’s fiction had been used as the blueprint, a group of hypno-programmed “zombies” were created. Some were assassins prepared to kill on cue. Others were informers, made to remember minute details under hypnosis. Couriers carried illegal messages outside the chain of command, their secrets secured behind posthypnotic blocks. Knowledge of secret information was removed from the minds of those who no longer had the “need to know”—they were given posthypnotic amnesia. … [p. 21]

The objective of Operation Mind Control during this period has been to take human beings, both citizens of the United States and citizens of friendly and unfriendly nations, and transform them into unthinking, subconsciously programmed “zombies,” motivated without their knowledge and against their wills to perform in a variety of ways in which they would not otherwise willingly perform. This is accomplished through the use of various techniques called by various names, including brainwashing, thought reform, behavior modification, hypnosis, and conditioned reflex therapy. For the purpose of this book the term “mind control” will be used to describe these techniques generically.REF

Mind control is the most terrible imaginable crime because it is committed not against the body, but against the mind and the soul. Dr. Joost A. M. Meerloo expresses the attitude of the majority of psychologists in calling it “mind rape,” and warns that it poses a great “danger of destruction of the spirit” which can be “compared to the threat of total physical destruction . . .” … [p. 23]

“I can hypnotize a man—without his knowledge or consent—into committing treason against the United States,” boasted Dr. George Estabrooks in the early 1940s.

Estabrooks, chairman of the Department of Psychology at Colgate University, … [p. 58]

From one such think tank, the Rand Corporation, came a report [1949] … [p. 67]
“ … a hypnotized subject will often accept and confess to an implanted memory as a real event in his own past life.” …

A number of experienced hypnotists had been able to train their subjects to perform “in such a way that observers could not tell that the subject was in a trance or that he was acting under hypnotic suggestions.” … [p. 69]

To induce hypnosis in an unwilling subject, the report suggested any of three possibilities which were then well supported by research findings:

1. As part of a medical examination, talk relaxation to the subject, thus disguising the hypnotic induction. For example, the person could be given a blood pressure test, told that he must relax completely in order to give an adequate test record, and then be given suggestions to go to sleep which would result in a hypnotic trance.

2. Induce hypnosis while the person is actually asleep from normal fatigue. This could be done by simply talking softly into the sleeper’s ear.

3. Use injections of drugs to induce hypnosis. The hypnotic drugs would relax the subject and put him in a “twilight state” where the subconscious mind is very susceptible to suggestion.

Subjects who refuse or resist the simple “talking” methods of hypnotic induction could be given a few grams of paraldehyde or an intravenous injection of sodium pentothal or sodium amytal. … Subsequently the subject could be allowed to practice carrying out posthypnotic suggestions. He could then be rehypnotized, still without his conscious cooperation, but this time without the use of drugs. …

Another important use of hypnosis … the report said, would be the induction of amnesia: “Once a deep hypnotic trance is achieved, it is possible to introduce posthypnotic amnesia so that [a subject] . . . would not know . . . that he had been subjected to hypnosis, to drugs, or to any other treatment.” …

The report then said, “Conceivably, electroshock convulsions might be used as an adjunctive device to achieve somnambulism in a very high percentage of the cases. … It is conceivable, therefore, that electroshock treatments might be used to weaken difficult cases in order to produce a hypnotic trance of great depth.”

In 1958 the Bureau of Social Science Research (BSSR), a subcontractor to the Rand Corporation, issued a “technical report” on hypnosis to the air force …

“it is conceivable . . . that these techniques could have been used and covered up so successfully that they might be impossible to recognize . . .” …

All of these techniques, involving drug-induced hypnosis and electroshock convulsions, were eventually developed and used to reduce some of our own citizens to a zombie state in which they would blindly serve the government. Regardless of the Constitution and the laws which supposedly protect the individual against government coercion, “zombies” were covertly created to do the government’s more unsavory bidding. Such “zombies” asked no questions about the legality of their assignments. Often their assignments were never consciously known. And if they were ever questioned about their own actions, amnesia protected them from self-incrimination. … [p. 70-73]

In 1951, a former naval officer described “a secret” of certain military and intelligence organizations. He called it “Pain-Drug-Hypnosis” and said it “is a vicious war weapon … The extensiveness of the use of this form of hypnotism in espionage work is now so widespread that it is long past the time when people should have become alarmed about it . . .” … [p. 75]

Mind control arranges that “slaves” of the intelligence community—witnesses, couriers, and assassins—are “protected” from their own memories and guilt by amnesia. These “slaves” may be left alive, but the knowledge they possess is buried deep within the tombs of their own minds by techniques which can keep the truth hidden even from those who have witnessed it. It is the ultimate debriefing, the final security measure short of assassination. ... [p. 148]

José Delgado was a neurophysiologist at the Yale University School of Medicine. By 1964, … he had already been experimenting with electronic stimulation of the brain (ESB) for nearly two decades. His work, supported by the Office of Naval Research, … [p. 250]

A number of government agencies were actually at work on projects similar to Delgado’s, and through these projects the cryptocracy had gained the technology for direct access to the control of the brain and through it, the mind. … [p. 251]

ESB, however, used in conjunction with psycho-surgery and behavior modification, offered unlimited possibilities. After experiments on laboratory animals met with success, human experimentation was enthusiastically undertaken in quest of the most reliable and absolute method of remote control of the mind. … [p. 253]

ESB has, meanwhile, been strikingly successful in other areas. It has been used to modify mental mechanisms, to produce changes in mood and feelings, to reinforce behavior both positively and negatively. It has been used to activate sensory and motor regions of the brain in order to produce elementary or complex experiences or movements, to summon memories, and to induce hallucinations. It also has been used to suppress or inhibit behavior and experience and memory—outside of the conscious control of the owner of the brain. … [p. 256]

And, in 1974, the first victim of Parkinson’s disease treated by ESB walked gracefully out of a San Francisco hospital under his own power, thanks to portable ESB. He had a “stimoceiver” implanted in his brain … The “stimoceiver” which weighed only a few grams and was small enough to implant under his scalp, permitted both remote stimulation of his brain and the instantaneous telemetric recording of his brain waves. … [p. 256-257]

And by the late 1960s, the “remote control” of the human brain—accomplished without the implantation of electrodes—was well on its way to being realized.

A research and development team at the Space and Biology Laboratory of the University of California at the Los Angeles Brain Research Institute found a way to stimulate the brain by creating an electrical field completely outside the head. Dr. W. Ross Adey stimulated the brain with electric pulse levels which were far below those thought to be effectual in the old implanting technique. … [p. 257]

In 1975 a primitive “mind reading machine” was tested at the Stanford Research Institute. The machine is a computer which can recognize a limited amount of words by monitoring a person’s silent thoughts. This technique relies upon the discovery that brain wave tracings taken with an electroencephalograph (EEG) show distinctive patterns that correlate with individual words—whether the words are spoken aloud or merely subvocalized (thought of).

The computer initially used audio equipment to listen to the words the subject spoke. (At first the vocabulary was limited to “up,” “down,” “left,” and “right.”) At the same time the computer heard the words, it monitored the EEG impulses coming from electrodes pasted to the subject’s head and responded by turning a camera in the direction indicated. After a few repetitions of the procedure, the computer’s hearing was turned off and it responded solely to the EEG “thoughts.” It moved a television camera in the directions ordered by the subject’s thoughts alone! … [p. 258]

While Dr. Reed conceded that it was “conceivable that thoughts could be injected” into a person’s mind by the government, he indicated that he did not believe it had already been done. … [p. 259]

Typically, the scientists have not been vigilant enough, for the cryptocracy already has developed remote-controlled men who can be used for political assassination and other dangerous work, … [p. 260]

In 1967 a writer named Lincoln Lawrence published a book … [Were We Controlled? presented] a sophisticated technique known as RHIC—EDOM … Radio Hypnotic Intra-Cerebral Control—Electronic Dissolution of Memory. …

“Under RHIC, a ‘sleeper’ can be used years later with no realization that the ‘sleeper’ is even being controlled! He can be made to perform acts that he will have no memory of ever having carried out. In a manipulated kind of kamikaze operation where the life of the ‘sleeper’ is dispensable, RHIC processing makes him particularly valuable because if he is detected and caught before he performs the act specified . . . nothing he says will implicate the group or government which processed and controlled him.” …

… according to Lawrence, … during the operation a small electrode was implanted inside … [the person’s] mastoid sinus. The electrode responded to a radio signal which would make audible, inside … [the person’s] head, certain electronic commands to which he had already been posthypnotically conditioned to respond. …

In 1975 the RHIC-EDOM story surfaced again. … The journalist, James L. Moore, said that the papers in his possession described the details of “a military technique of mind-control called Radio-Hypnotic Intra-Cerebral Control—Electronic Dissolution of Memory.” …

According to Moore, in the initial (RHIC) stage of programming the … [person] is put into a deep hypnotic trance, and conditioned to go intro trance at the sound of a specific tone. “A person may be placed under this control with or without his knowledge, programmed to perform certain actions and maintain certain attitudes” whenever he hears the tone. …

The second part of the process, electronic dissolution of memory (EDOM), Moore said, “… By electronically jamming the brain, acetylcholine creates static which blocks out sights and sounds. You would then have no memory of what you saw or heard; your mind would be a blank.” …

The claims of James L. Moore would sound fantastic were it not for the abundance of information to support the possibility of their validity. … [p. 261-264]

The cryptocracy has gone to absurd lengths to develop remote-controlled beings. Victor Marchetti revealed that the CIA had once tried to create a cyborg cat. He said that the Agency wired a live feline for sound in an attempt to use the pet for eavesdropping purposes. The cat was first altered electronically so that it would function as a listening device in areas where potential enemy agents would be discussing covert plots.[Note:2] …

After the electronic feline was at last ready for its assignment, it was turned loose on the street and was followed by a CIA support van loaded with electronic monitoring gear. … [p. 273]

The cryptocracy has used mind control for the past thirty years. It has used it on its own agents and employees, on enemies and friends alike. It has used it on thousands of Americans without their knowledge or consent. The CIA has programmed assassins and couriers by it. The CIA has even openly confessed to its conspiracy of mind control.

Many people will believe that since the CIA has publicly disclosed its interest in mind control, it has now ceased its activities. The earlier CIA records, however, contain a number of termination dates for aspects of Operation Mind Control, yet evidence clearly suggests that it continued past those dates.

In 1975, following the release of the Rockefeller Commission Report and the subsequent investigations by Senator Church’s and Congressman Pike’s committees, a public accounting was given and apologies were made. The intelligence community was reprimanded and small changes made. … [p. 275]

Recent history documents the fact that the CIA, as the whipping boy of the cryptocracy, covers up and routinely lies about its activities, heaping one lie on another, in a labyrinthine network of falsehood. It stretches credibility to believe, therefore, that the CIA and especially lower-profile members of the cryptocracy have terminated the mind-control research and development that has been going on for thirty years. … If it has ceased, it has ceased only because it is obsolete and the new technology of radiation and electronic brain stimulation has given the cryptocracy a more powerful form of control. … [p. 276]

With advancements in electronic technology—increasingly sophisticated microphones, transmitters, and surveillance devices—the erosion of privacy becomes a mudslide. … [p. 280]

Mind control remains above United States law, making it a most attractive tool for clandestine operators. [p. 281]

Note:1] Richard Condon, author of The Manchurian Candidate (1958), the forward to Operation Mind Control (1978).

REF … The mind control examined is this book is the control of one individual’s mind by another.

[Note:2] José Delgado, M.D., conducted experiments (circa 1961) that attached an electrode to the eardrum (middle ear) of a cat. The device picked-up people’s whispered conversations and transmitted them to a receiver for monitoring. The CIA attached their tiny radio implant to the cat’s cochlea (inner ear).

http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/operation-mindcontrol.htm

Xtreme Defense (WaPo 28/8/2005) (pdf file)

Xtreme Defense

Hear Voices? It May Be an Ad (Advertising Age 2/1/2008)

Advertising Age 01/02/2008 09:25 PM
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Hear Voices? It May Be an Ad
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By Andrew Hampp
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NEW YORK (AdAge.com) — For “Paranormal State,” a ghost-themed series premiering on A&E this week,
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Diana Napolis v Michael Aquino Lawsuit 2008 (pdf file)

4981526-Diana-Napolis-vs-Michael-Aquino-lawsuit-2008

NSA Has Database of All US Phone Calls (AP 2/1/2008) (pdf file)

NSA Has Database of All US Phone Calls

Report 01/02/2008 09:19 PM

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NSA Has Database of All US Phone Calls: Report

From Alexander Graham Bell’s, “Mr. Watson–come here–I want to see you,” to that pizza order you just called in, the NSA is
trying to assemble a database of every phone call ever made inside the United States, according to a USA Today report.

NSA Has Database of All US Phone Calls_ Report

Citing people whose names are a secret, the newspaper claims the National Security Agency, whose business is secrecy, has
been secretly amassing “the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans,” with the contracted assistance of telecom giants

AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth. The purpose of the mission is, of course, to fight terror. No secret there.

The newspaper’s sources claim the NSA and the three telephone companies began collecting the call data shortly after the Sept.
11 terrorist attacks, in an effort to identify calling patterns related to terrorist activity.

While the actual conversations are not being recorded, the phone numbers being collected could easily be traced to personal
information about the callers, states the report.

Also See:

President Promises More Secret Wiretaps
Bush Defends Eavesdropping
Number of Authorized Wiretaps Growing

Thursday May 11, 2006 | comments (4)

—

Courtesy of Covert History

Psychiatry: Remote-Control Hypnosis (Time Magazine 2/7/1965)

The notion that some evil eminence might use mass hypnosis over television is older than 1984, but nobody outside fiction has ever proved it possible. Last week a reputable Manhattan psychiatrist who has nothing of the Svengali about him told the A.M.A. that it is indeed possible. He knows, because he has done it.

Psychiatrist Herbert Spiegel, an assistant professor in Columbia University’s College of Physicians and Surgeons, and Dr. James H. Ryan, a Columbia instructor, asked themselves the question: Is the physical presence of the hypnotist necessary to evoke the trance state? Theoretically, the answer should be no, they thought, because the capacity to go into a trance lies within the subject. To make sure, they ran tests on two subjects. Both were known to be hypnotizable, but only one of them had ever been hypnotized by either Spiegel or Ryan.

Using a closed-circuit system, Spiegel sat in front of a TV camera in Columbia’s Psychiatric Institute. A 20-year-old girl, whom he had hypnotized several times before, watched a receiver four floors above. After some chitchat, Spiegel told the girl, “I’m going to count one, two, three, and your eyes will close and you’ll go into a relaxed state,” and she promptly went into a trance. Spiegel told her that her left forearm would become paralyzed and numb, arid that this condition would persist, even after she “came to,” until he touched her elbow. When he ended the trance, the girl remained rooted before the receiver, her left arm numb and inert. After the usual wait for a hospital elevator, Spiegel walked into the laboratory and touched her elbow. Only then did she regain sensation in the arm and the power to move it independently.

Since this girl was a subject known to be susceptible to Spiegel’s hypnotic techniques, the next question was whether a stranger could be similarly influenced. Such a subject was a 30-year-old man who went through the same TV routine. This time he was told that he would not be able to unclasp his hands until the psychiatrist touched his head. Sure enough, he kept his hands gripped together after the trance and released them only on the prearranged signal.

Spiegel and Ryan suggest that TV hypnosis might be useful “in mass education, group treatment and research.” It might be valuable, they add hopefully, for pilots in long space flights, to help them cope with feelings of isolation and loneliness—a radio message from Earth, for example, could activate a previously implanted suggestion of encouragement and companionship. But they also warn that unscrupulous operators might “confuse, exploit and deceive hypnotizable subjects.” This experiment, they concluded, “emphasizes the compelling need to maintain responsible, stringent safeguards and control over the personnel having access to public broadcasting systems.”

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,833859,00.html

Trauma, in the Right Amount, Can Help People Bounce Back (NYT 4/1/11)

On Road to Recovery, Past Adversity Provides a Map

Whatever else it holds, this new year is sure to produce a healthy serving of redemption stories, against-the-odds tales of people who bounced back from the layoffs, foreclosures and other wreckage of 2010. They landed better jobs. They started successful companies. They found time to write a book, to study animal husbandry, to learn a new trade: to generate just the sort of commentary about perseverance, self-respect and character that can tempt anyone who’s still struggling to throw things at the TV.

Character is a fine thing to admire, all right — once the storm has passed and the rigging is repaired.

But when people are truly sinking, because of job loss, illness, debt or some combination of ills, they have no idea what mix of character, connections and dumb luck will be enough to pull through. To use the psychologists’ term, they don’t know how “resilient” they are, or how much resilience even matters.

Do I have the right stuff? Or is this sinkhole simply too deep?

“As with so many of life’s experiences, humans are simply not very good at predicting how they’ll behave when hit by a real adversity,” said Laura King, a psychologist at the University of Missouri.

Researchers aren’t so good at it, either. It is clear that with time, most people can and do psychologically recover from even devastating losses, like the death of a spouse; but reactions to the same blow vary widely, and no one can reliably predict who will move on quickly and who will lapse into longer-term despair.

The role of genes is likewise uncertain. In a paper published online Monday in The Archives of General Psychiatry, researchers at the University of Michigan who analyzed more than 50 studies concluded that variations in a single gene determine people’s susceptibility to depression following stressful events. But an earlier analysis, of fewer but similar studies, concluded that the evidence was not convincing.

New research suggests that resilience may have at least as much to do with how often people have faced adversity in past as it does with who they are — their personality, their genes, for example — or what they’re facing now. That is, the number of life blows a person has taken may affect his or her mental toughness more than any other factor.

“Frequency makes a difference: that is the message,” said Roxane Cohen Silver, a psychologist at the University of California, Irvine. “Each negative event a person faces leads to an attempt to cope, which forces people to learn about their own capabilities, about their support networks — to learn who their real friends are. That kind of learning, we think, is extremely valuable for subsequent coping,” up to a point.

In a study appearing in the current issue of The Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Dr. Cohen Silver, E. Alison Holman, also of the University of California, Irvine, and Mark D. Seery, of the State University at Buffalo, followed nearly 2,000 adults for several years, monitoring their mental well-being with online surveys. The participants, a diverse cross section of Americans between the ages of 18 and 101, listed all of the upsetting life events they had experienced before entering the study and any new ones that hit along the way. These included divorce, the death of a friend or parent, a serious illness, and being in a natural disaster.

Or, none of the above: A subset of the participants, 194, reported that they had experienced not one of the fairly comprehensive list of 37 events on the survey. “We wondered: Who are these people who have managed to go through life with nothing bad happening to them?” Dr. Cohen Silver said. “Are they hyper-conscientious? Socially isolated? Just young? Or otherwise unique?”

They weren’t, the researchers found. Stranger still, they were not the most satisfied with their lives. Their sense of well-being was about the same, on average, as people who had suffered up to a dozen memorable blows.

It was those in the middle, those reporting two to six stressful events, who scored highest on several measures of well-being, and who showed the most resilience in response to recent hits.

In short, the findings suggest that mental toughness is something like the physical strength: It cannot develop without exercise, and it breaks down when overworked. Some people in the study reported having had more than a dozen stressful events, and it showed.

“These people were truly suffering,” Dr. Cohen Silver said, “and we do not minimize in any way the pain of such events when you’re going through them. But it does appear that if you’ve had several such experiences but not too many, you learn something.”

Other researchers who looked at the study were more cautious. George Bonanno, a psychologist at Columbia University, said that the results may partly reflect a trick of memory. In particular, “people who are more distressed will tend to recall more stressful life events,” Dr. Bonanno, the author of the book “The Other Side of Sadness,” said by e-mail. That by itself could explain the correlation between high numbers of lifetime crises and low current mood, he said.

It does not as easily explain the correlations at the lower end, Dr. Seery said. “The people in the study who recalled zero or one negative events were worse off than those with some adverse events,” he said. “So they were willing to admit to not doing so well, yet did not recall stressful life events.”

Experience may provide more than a sense of what to expect and who one’s real friends are. In a recent study in the journal Emotion, researchers at the University of Denver and the University of Basel in Switzerland tested the ability of 78 women to reduce the amount of sadness they felt after watching an upsetting film clip, using a technique called reappraisal. Reappraisal comes naturally to many people and is a way of taking the sting out of a situation by reframing how it’s understood: “I wasn’t afraid to act, I was uncertain; I didn’t have all the information.” The study found that the women who were adept at this sort of self-therapy were less susceptible to depressive symptoms after significant crises in their own lives.

It may be that experience with a few threatening or upsetting events refines these types of psychological skills, in a person’s own thinking through of the problem or in discussion with friends.

Either way, the lifetime resilience study suggests that the pain, the self-doubt, the disorientation and the anger that swarm the consciousness in the wake of a job loss, a foreclosure or a divorce can have some upside, even though it’s not remotely visible at the time.

“Perhaps the one most fundamental thing you learn in living through an experience like this is that you can come out the other end of almost anything,” Dr. King said. “You say, ‘Well, it may have crushed me, but I survived.’ ”

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/04/health/04mind.html?pagewanted=print