Donald Ewen Cameron: The Man Who Put the “Shock” in Shock Therapy
Buckle up, buttercups, for the wild ride that is Donald Ewen Cameron. Born in 1901 in Scotland, little Donnie Cameron grew up dreaming of being a doctor. But why cure boring old diseases when you can play God with people’s minds? By the 1950s, our boy Ewen had climbed the psychiatric ladder faster than you can say “electroconvulsive therapy,” becoming the big kahuna at Montreal’s Allan Memorial Institute.
Picture this: It’s the height of the Cold War, and the CIA’s thinking, “Hey, wouldn’t it be neat if we could control people’s minds?” Enter Cameron, stage left, with a twinkle in his eye and a car battery in his hand. “Hold my scotch,” he says, “I’ve got just the thing!”
Cameron’s “psychic driving” technique was like a greatest hits album of terrible ideas:
-Knock ’em out with a cocktail of drugs that would make Keith Richards say, “Whoa, take it easy!”
-Blast their unconscious minds with repetitive messages. Because nothing says “cure” like being told “Your mother never loved you” on loop for 16 hours a day.
-Zap ’em with enough electricity to power a small Canadian town. Who needs pesky memories anyway?
-Throw in some LSD, because why the hell not? It’s not like the CIA’s watching… oh wait, they are!
But wait, there’s more! Cameron’s piece de resistance was “depatterning.” Think of it as a factory reset for your brain, if the reset button was a sledgehammer. Patients would be put into drug-induced comas for weeks, emerging with the mental capacity of a newborn. Congratulations! You’ve just been “cured” back to infancy!
The best part? Cameron genuinely thought he was helping. He wasn’t just mad, he was “mad scientist” mad. He once said, “Every man has his breaking point. The purpose of this experiment is to find that point and break the man.” Spoiler alert: He succeeded.
Meanwhile, the CIA was rubbing its hands together, thinking, “This is great! We can use this to… uh… protect democracy! Yeah, that’s it!” Project MKUltra was born, and Cameron was its poster boy.
The results? Patients left the Allan Memorial Institute with exciting new skills like:
-Incontinence (who needs toilets?)
-Amnesia (what family?)
-The inability to recognize their own children (who are these small humans?)
But hey, at least they weren’t depressed anymore! Probably because they couldn’t remember what depression was.
Cameron’s legacy lives on in the nightmares of his patients and the ethical guidelines he inspired. Because nothing says “we need stricter rules” quite like a psychiatrist who thinks erasing your personality is a valid treatment option.
So next time you’re feeling blue, just remember: it could be worse. You could’ve been one of Cameron’s patients, forced to listen to “You are a bad person” for 23 days straight while getting enough electricity pumped through you to power the Montreal Winter Carnival.
Donald Ewen Cameron: Proving that sometimes, the cure really is worse than the disease. And that’s not just in your head – or is it?
Bibliography
- Pettit, M. (2023). The work of Donald Ewen Cameron: from psychic driving to MK Ultra. History of Psychiatry, 34(2), 135-153.
- McGill University. (n.d.). Donald Ewen Cameron Fonds. Archival Collections Catalogue.
- Goodreads. (n.d.). Profile for Ewen Cameron from The Shock Doctrine.
- Wikipedia contributors. (2024). Donald Ewen Cameron. In Wikipedia.
- Spartacus Educational. (2018). Donald Ewen Cameron.
- American Psychiatric Association Foundation. (n.d.). D. Ewen Cameron, M.D.
- ThriftBooks. (n.d.). List of books by author Donald Ewen Cameron.
- Cameron, D.E. (1934). Heat production and heat control in the schizophrenic reaction. Archives of Neurology & Psychiatry, 32(4), 704-714.
