Vol. 6, No. 1 - Psychiatric Survivor Archives of Toronto

14 Phoenix Risingsuffered from depression or "feelingsof inadequacy" while being treated inthe Allan. They were all subjected tointense psychic driving, for hours,and without their consent. One"highly defensive" woman, forexample, became very upset aftershe was forced to hear her ownstatements repeated 30 to 45 times.Another woman, who felt"intensely rejected by her husband,"was forced to listen to this sequence:"I hate to hear that - it upsets me;look at me shaking." (19 repetitions)"It upsets me enough ... I can'tcount on my husband and mymother." (21 repetitions)At this point, Cameroncommented, "the patient becamered, restless and began to breatheheavily." Nevertheless, he continuedthe barrage ..."It makes me mad when I think ofmy past, when I was so lonely ... I amso lonely." (45 repetitions)At this point, Cameron said hestopped the psychic driving becausehis patient "continued to shake ... ")22Another woman was so upset bythe procedure, which triggeredpainful memories of incest with herfather, that she ran out of thebuilding; Cameron drily noted thathe later had her committed.And yet another woman wassubjected to 25 hours of psychicdriving, "part of it with her thinkingdisorganized under LSD-25."23In the same article, Cameronproposed using even more drasticmethods, including "prolongedsleep" with sodium amytal,combined with 10 to 15 days (10 to20 hours a day) of psychic driVing;the McGill"psychological isolation"procedure, and hypnosis under thedrug Desoxyn, an experimentalamphetamine later taken off themarket.The experiments Cameron carriedout in the 1950s were published inCanadian and American medicaljournals between 1958 and1961.24.27Nevertheless, Health andWelfare continued to support theresearch: from 1961 to 1964, asecond grant of $57,750 wasawarded for more research intopsychic driving.The final report of his project, "AStudy of Factors Which Promote orRetard Personality Change inIndividuals Exposed to ProlongedRepetition of Verbal Signals, "28wassubmitted in 1965, and officiallyreceived and signed by variousgovernment officials, includingWride and Dr. J.A. Dupont ofHealth and Welfare and DenisLazure, Assistant Deputy HealthMinister in Quebec.In the report, Cameron described61 tests on 50 patients at the Allan,and an "intensive study" of 18 ofthese patients during a two-yearfollow-up period. He claimedrecovery for as long as five years,including three years of"ambulatory" (outpatient' driving forthree to six hours a week.Several of these people, he wrote,broke down or "decompensated";his "treatment" for this reactionconsisted of more driving, drugs,electroshock, or a combination of allthree.cAOnce again, the vast majority ofhis human guinea pigs were"psychoneurotic" women31The results of this governmentfundedresearch were later publishedin 1956 in the Canadian PsychiatricAssociation Journal. The article,titled "The Effects of Long- TermRepetition of Verbal Signals," wasco-written by Cameron,Leonard Levy, Thomas Ban andLeonard Rubinstein, all staffmembers at the Allan or McGill.continued on p. 36