The Sleep Room
Benek’s Fun Times in CIA Ville Presents, a Dr. Ewen Cameron Production
I woke up from being awake
Talked out of my talk
All this new nothing that I have
I gotta take stock
Shocked to still be here
Shocked being the operative word
All roads lead back here
When I can't remember any roads
And where is here anyway?
Here is not there I suppose
So many things I reckon
Only the Scottish god knows
Patterns depatterned
He sees patterns in everything
I am too tired to hear his thoughts
As I fall asleep the insulin sings
Am I not who I was?
Was he not I?
That's the beauty of depatterned patterns
It is always seen by new eyes
Qui custodiet ipsos custodes? *
As they sow that which Ill never reap
And in a room such as this
Tis' better to be asleep
Recently I've been reading a lot of books about the CIA and two figures really stood out to me - Allen Dulles and Dr. Ewen Cameron. I chose to put up this one about Cameron because, for all of how horrific he was, I never heard of him before these readings.
Born in Scotland, Dr. Cameron was considered something of the maestro when it came to psychology and psychiatry in the 50s and 60s. But over time as his ambitions grew, his methods for achieving them became more and more extreme.
One of his most controversial ideas was something called de-patterning. Where an unwitting patient with some mental problem (and it's that vague, anything from postpartum depression to schizophrenia) would come into Cameron's clinic, the Allan Memorial Clinic, and he would basically use insulin and electric shock to erase what they were. The idea being to remove harmful patterns by means of a system overhaul.
After that, the good doctor would place the patients into what was known as The Sleep Room. This was a large room where patients would "sleep" (i.e enter a comatose phase) and undergo what he termed, "psychic driving." Psychic driving was basically a form of brainwashing where the comatose patients would be subjected to looping audio recordings of positive psychological ideas for up to 20 hours a day, every day. Sometimes for as long as two to three months.
And then, voila, it didn't fucking work.
*Qui custodiet ipsos custodes is a Latin phrase, attributed to Juvenal (Decimvs Ivnivs Ivvenalis) meaning "who guards the guardians?"