Louis Jolyon West

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Louis Jolyon West
Born(1924-10-06)October 6, 1924
Brooklyn, New York, U.S.
DiedJanuary 2, 1999(1999-01-02) (aged 74)
Los Angeles, California, U.S.
OccupationPsychiatrist

Louis Jolyon West (October 6, 1924 – January 2, 1999) was an American psychiatrist involved in the public sphere, known mainly for his work/involvement with the MKUltra project, a CIA mind control project in the late 1960s.

In 1954, at the age of 29 and with no previous post-residency fellowship or

UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute
.

West's work on

CIA. He pioneered research into the use and abuse of LSD
.

West was also active in studying the creation and management of

Civil Rights Movement, frequently participating in sit-ins and rallies.[2] He was a trustee of the American Psychiatric Association and served as a consultant to a variety of governmental organizations, including the United States Air Force, the Peace Corps and the United States Information Agency
.

Early life

West was born in

M.D. from the University of Minnesota Medical School in 1949.[2][3] Thereafter, he completed his residency at the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic of Cornell University on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in 1952.[2]

Korean War POWs and brainwashing

West was an officer in the

brainwashed or drugged, West came to a simpler conclusion: "What we found enabled us to rule out drugs, hypnosis or other mysterious trickery," he said. He observed that "[i]t was just one device used to confuse, bewilder and torment our men until they were ready to confess to anything. That device was prolonged, chronic loss of sleep." The airmen avoided being court-martialed for these events as a result of West's research.[1]

He then published a paper with the title "United States Airforce prisoners of the Chinese Communist. Methods of forceful indoctrination: Observations and Interviews."[6]

Project MKUltra

Further information:
Project MKUltra

Cornell University, where West completed his residency in psychiatry, was an MKUltra institution and the site of the Human Ecology Fund.[7][8] He later became a subcontractor for MKUltra subproject 43, a 20,800 USD grant by the CIA while he was chairman of the department of Psychiatry at the University of Oklahoma. The proposal submitted by West was titled "Psychophysiological Studies of Hypnosis and Suggestibility" with an accompanying document titled "Studies of Dissociative States".[9]

LSD-related death of an elephant

One of the more unusual incidents in West's career took place in August 1962. He and two co-workers attempted to investigate the phenomenon of

LSD. They expected that the drug would trigger a state similar to musth; instead, the animal began to have seizures 5 minutes after LSD was administered. Beginning twenty minutes later, West and his colleagues administered the antipsychotic promazine hydrochloride; they injected a total of 2800 mg over 11 minutes. This large promazine dose was not effective and may have contributed to the animal's death. It died an hour and 40 minutes after the LSD was given.[10] Later, many theories developed about why Tusko had died. Some researchers thought that West and his colleagues had made the mistake of scaling up the dose in proportion to the animal's body weight, rather than its brain weight, and without considering other factors, such as its metabolic rate.[11][12] Another theory was that while the LSD had caused Tusko distress, the drugs administered in an attempt to revive him caused death. Attempting to prove that the LSD alone had not been the cause of death, Ronald K. Siegel of UCLA repeated a variant of West's experiment on two elephants; he administered to two elephants equivalent doses (in milligrams per kilogram) to that which had been given to Tusko, mixing the LSD in their drinking water rather than directly injecting it. Neither elephant expired or exhibited any great distress, although both behaved strangely for a number of hours.[13]

1967 San Francisco "crash pad"

After completing a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California while on leave from Oklahoma during the 1966–1967 academic year, West "led a group of researchers to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, where they rented an apartment and studied the hippie culture"[14] during the latter half of 1967 under a contract with the Foundations Fund for Research in Psychiatry, Inc.[15] University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa psychologist Anthony J. Marsella has alleged that the Foundations Fund was employed as a CIA funding conduit during the Vietnam War.[16]

Jack Ruby

Following the murder of

Dallas, Texas in 1963, his assassin Jack Ruby was held in an isolation cell in police custody. West was appointed as Ruby's psychiatrist, and pronounced him psychotic and delusional, and suggested further interrogation under the influence of sodium thiopental and hypnosis.[17][18]

Lance Rentzel

West disclosed his treatment of

concussions," presaging contemporary medicine's greater understanding of chronic traumatic encephalopathy among American football players. He also asserted that he was "required to make periodic reports of [Rentzel's] progress to several public and private agencies."[19]

As a friend of Hugh Hefner, Rentzel went on to reside at the Playboy Mansion in the late 1970s. In his 2022 memoir, former Mansion butler Stefan Tetenbaum wrote that he saw Rentzel "[masturbate] in front of the primates" at the Mansion zoo and alleged that Hefner "thought Lance could be cured, by allowing him to be free to explore himself sexually [...] Lance constantly walked and ran about the Mansion grounds with his penis hanging out of his shorts [...] We were instructed not to pay attention to his public [masturbation]."[20] It is not known if Rentzel was domiciled at the Playboy Mansion through the intercession of West.

Patty Hearst trial

During

Stockholm effect, West wrote a newspaper article after the trial, asking President Carter to release Hearst from prison.[21] Some weeks after her arrest, Hearst repudiated her SLA allegiance.[22][23]

Conflict with Scientologists

According to West,

Scientologists attempted to discredit him and get him fired, using methods similar to those used in Operation Freakout. This was allegedly done after his contributions to a 1980 textbook that classified Scientology as a cult.[24]

West participated in an American Psychiatric Association panel on cults. Each speaker had received a letter threatening a lawsuit if Scientology were mentioned; apparently others were intimidated. Only West, the last speaker, referred to the letter and the cult:

"I read parts of the letter to the 1,000-plus psychiatrists and then told any Scientologists in the crowd to pay attention. I said I would like to advise my colleagues that I consider Scientology a cult and L. Ron Hubbard a quack and a fake. I wasn't about to let them intimidate me."[25]

Personal life

In 1999, West died at his home in Los Angeles at age 74. His family said the cause of death was metastatic cancer.[1] However, West's son John would later assert in a 2009 memoir that he helped his father end his life at the latter's choice by using prescription medication due to the terminal illness.[26]

Works

References

  1. ^ a b c Hilts, Philip J. (January 9, 1999). "Louis J. West, 74, Psychiatrist Who Studied Extremes, Dies". The New York Times. Retrieved November 22, 2014.
  2. ^ a b c "West (Louis Jolyon) papers". oac.cdlib.org.
  3. ^ a b Helmore, Edward (January 11, 1999). "Obituary: Dr Louis Jolyon West". The Independent. Retrieved April 16, 2020.
  4. ^
    The Los Angeles Times
    . Retrieved April 16, 2020.
  5. ^ Myrna Oliver (January 7, 1999). "Louis J. West—Psychiatrist, Rights Activist". Los Angeles Times.
  6. ISBN 978-0976550808
    .
    Original title: BLUEBIRD: Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality by Psychiatrist (2000).
  7. ^ Price, David (June 2007). "Buying a piece of anthropology" (PDF). Anthropology Today. Archived from the original (PDF) on October 6, 2021.
  8. ^ "1953: Dr. Wolff and Dr. Hinkle investigate Communist Brainwashing". AHRP. Alliance for Human Research Protection. January 18, 2015.
  9. ISBN 978-0976550808
    .
    Original title: BLUEBIRD: Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality by Psychiatrist (2000).
  10. PMID 17772968
    .
  11. PMID 17788362
    .
  12. ^ Schmidt-Nielsen, K. (1972) How Animals Work, pp. 86-89. Cambridge University Press.
  13. doi:10.3758/bf03333759
    .
  14. ^ "Inside the Archive of an LSD Researcher with Ties to the CIA's MKUltra Mind Control Project". November 24, 2019.
  15. ^ Louis Jolyon West; James R. Allen. "The Green Rebellion" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on November 24, 2021.
  16. ISBN 9781506353487
    .
  17. ^ "After he shot Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby's psychosis was diagnosed by the same CIA doctor who had once killed an elephant with psychedelics". Muckrock. December 19, 2017.
  18. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved December 18, 2022.
  19. ^ "When All the Laughter Died in Sorrow". December 19, 1963.
  20. ISBN 9781957788906
    .
  21. Eugene Register-Guard
    . Retrieved March 5, 2024.
  22. ^ "Interview with Patty Hearst [Transcript]". Larry King Live. CNN. January 22, 2002.
  23. ^ NBC News: Documentary
  24. ^ Welkos, Robert W.; Sappell, Joel (June 29, 1990). "On the Offensive Against an Array of Suspected Foes". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved November 5, 2007.
  25. ^ "Prozac Frees Ex-Scientology Leader from Depression". Psychiatric Times. VIII (6). CME, Inc.: 28 June 1991. Retrieved April 28, 2015.
  26. ^ West, John (February 4, 2009). "Excerpt: 'The Last Goodnights'". Good Morning America. ABC News. Retrieved March 18, 2010.
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