Donald Ewen Cameron And Psychiatry As Manipulation

There is a great contradiction around the name of Donald Ewen Cameron. On the one hand, he is remembered as one of the most important psychiatrists in history. He was nothing more and nothing less than the first president of the World Psychiatric Association and also of the American Psychiatric Association and the Canadian Psychiatric Association.

On the other hand, he was also the protagonist of one of the darkest episodes in psychiatry. In many circles, he is remembered as ‘the father of torture’. This nickname was given to him for having been behind some of the most barbaric thought experiments of which there is news.

In fact, a group of people in Canada is currently promoting a review of the events in which Donald Ewen Cameron was involved. Most of them are relatives of the victims of this psychiatrist and what they are looking for is that what happened is made fully public and, finally, that it be sanctioned historically and morally.

In this article, we propose a brief review of his life and these actions that have been (and continue to be) heavily censored.

Who was Donald Ewen Cameron?

Donald Ewen Cameron was born in Bridge of Allen, a small town in Scotland, on December 24, 1901. He studied Medicine at the University of Glasgow and obtained his degree in 1924 and subsequently specialized in Psychology.

In 1926, he emigrated to the United States thanks to a research fellowship in psychiatry offered by the Phillips Clinic, based in Baltimore. Later, he practiced in various institutions in the United States, Canada, and Europe, becoming a prominent figure in the field of psychiatry.

Donald Ewen Cameron made several publications in those years, all of them academic and did not offer major innovations. However, in 1937, he published a particularly striking article about epilepsy.

Back then, epileptics were viewed as mentally ill. In his text, Cameron spoke about treatments that, according to him, generated improvements; these treatments included practices to completely dehydrate patients and infect them with malaria. In addition to the indiscriminate application of insulin, electroshocks and lobotomies. In this way, Cameron put aside his purely academic texts to enter a path full of controversy.

A CIA man

With the outbreak of World War II, the US OSS (Office of Strategic Services) recruited Donald Ewen Cameron; the organization was the forerunner of the CIA. In 1943, Cameron settled in Canada to create the department of psychiatry at McGill University in Montreal; he also became the director of the Allan Memorial Institute.

At the latter institution, several macabre thought experiments were carried out between 1950 and 1965. They were led by Donald Ewen Cameron and most of these investigations were conducted clandestinely and heavily funded by the CIA and the Canadian government.

Cameron implemented a brain ‘deprogramming’ treatment. For their development, they had various mental health patients that included children, women with postpartum depression and schizophrenics, among others.

Treatment included three phases: in the first, a coma was induced for a period of up to three months or more; the second phase consisted of the application of electroshocks that caused severe amnesia; finally, during the third phase, the patient was isolated in a cell and administered high doses of LSD.

At that point, the patient was ready for his mind to be ‘reprogrammed’. Many of them behaved like babies, to the point of thumb-sucking like children do. The treatment left the patients absolutely defenseless and unable to decide. For these reasons, Cameron has been seen as ‘the father of torture’, an unscrupulous man capable of pushing his investigations to the limit, leaving aside all ethics and morals.

A crime against humanity without consequences?

It is not known how many people in total were deprogrammed. In Canada, the victims are counted at a minimum of 100, but the exact number is not known. Many of the patients subjected to these harassments died or never recovered, being completely annulled and subjected.

It is known that the North American government compensated nine patients with permanent damages. In Canada, 77 victims received financial compensation for such torture and at least 12 other patients have received extrajudicial compensation, but with nondisclosure clauses.

The truth is that in May 2018, for the first time, the families of the victims met. Together, they decided to file a lawsuit against the Canadian government. Its main objective is for the State to publicly admit its participation in these events, apologize for it, and commit itself to preventing something like this from happening again.

Meanwhile, Donald Ewen Cameron died in 1967, his prestige intact. His death occurred while climbing a mountain. As soon as it was known that he had died, his family burned all the files that this man kept in their possession.