The Envelope Please….
For those of you playing the home edition:
In 1956 Richard Price was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric hospital in Hartford, Connecticut called the Institute of Living. William Thetford was director of clinical psychology at the Institute for Living. True, the dates don’t match up exactly right, Thetford was there from 1954 to 1955 and Price was not admitted till ‘56, but the connection is important, I think.
Price was there for a year and subjected to electroshock (records show only ten treatments) and insulin shock “therapy”, which consists of shooting people up with insulin and inducing a coma. Repeatedly. Admittedly, this was standard fare (though on its way out) in the fifties. He did not find out till later that he’d been heavily dosed with Thorazine as well.
Thetford moved on to Cornell involved with the “Human Ecology Study Program,” a notorious CIA cutout, and ended up, as was mentioned, as the “transcriber” of the material channeled by Shucman for A Course in Miracles. Thetford also worked on MKULTRA in developing a personality assessment system with John Gittinger. Personality theories were of great interest to those at Esalen, especially the theories of Oscar Ichazo as contained in his “Enneagram” supposedly adopted from some secret mystical school of Sufis. Oscar, as we’ll see, was a bit of a Nazi but that didn’t keep most of the Esalen crowd from sojourns to Chile and his Arica institute.
Also at the Institute of Living, including during the time of Price’s imprisonment there, was Director of Research Karl Pribram, who intersects in a variety of ways with our SRI-Esalen crowd. For one thing, he had some involvement with the “Physics/Consciousness Research Group” founded by Jack Sarfatti and Esalen co-founder Michael Murphy. Pribram was also a researcher at Stanford University. Says Alex Constantine, though I can’t confirm this Pribram quote he gives:
EM mind control machines were championed at Stanford University
by Dr. Karl Pribram, director of the Neuropsychology Research
Laboratory: “I certainly could educate a child by putting an
electrode in the lateral hypothalmus and then selecting the
situations at which I stimulate it. In this was I can grossly
change his behavior.” Psychology Today feted Pribram as “The
Magellan of Brain Science.” He obtained his B.S. and M.D. degrees
at the University of Chicago, and at Stanford University studied
how the brain processes and stores sensory imagery.link
For what it’s worth, Pribram has spoken out against electro-shock. He and Price surely had a good laugh over those treatments at the Institute of Living, though to be fair, Pribram was poking on monkey brains at the time and not involved in clinical work.
Price seemed never really to have recovered from his ordeal. In 1985 he was found dead at the bottom of a nearby canyon. The body had been moved from the site by the time the police arrived and no investigation followed. Those at Esalen helpfully offered that a big rock was found near Price’s body and maybe it had fallen on his head. As was typical for untimely deaths at Esalen, no further police investigation ensued.
11:11 said,
April 10, 2007 at 9:59 pm
DE, I’ve not been keeping with your blog, so this is unrelated.
Just saw the designer of the Stanford prisoner experiment on Court TV, and thought you mught find this of value.
http://www.lucifereffect.com/
dreamsend said,
April 11, 2007 at 2:12 am
Nothing is ever what it seems. Have a look at some of Zimbardo’s other research at about the time of the Prison Experiment.
http://www.zimbardo.com/zimbardo.html
Here’s one of my favorites from 1972:
53. Zimbardo, P. G., Maslach, C., and Marshall, G. (1972). Hypnosis and the psychology of cognitive and behavioral control. In E. Fromm and R. Shor (Eds.), Hypnosis: Research Developments and Perspectives (pp. 539-571). Chicago, IL: Aldine-Atherton.
Just sayin’ is all…
WoodyWoodman said,
April 11, 2007 at 3:21 pm
First, sorry DE, I have no idea where else to post this info. You folks are the ones I think might benefit from it but I don’t like co-opting the comment section with irrelevent bullshit.
That said: wowio dot com offers free .pdf format ebooks with an acceptable sellection (some Joyce, Vonnegut, Huxely etc. no Cervantes and only one essay by Bertrand Russell, the villans) in trade for harvesting some data. (they ask you to fill out a survey that seems innocuous enough) They require a name, email address and a US zip code, apparently hotmail is fine but Gmail might be a probelm. It is sponsored by Verison which makes me skeptical of the offering, and the files you get are licenced specifically to the name ented, therefore not for intended for sharing. Free books free minds, my ass. On the plus side I have gotten 10 books so far (5 per day) with no spam and plan on continuing until my immediate horizon is filled with liturature. There is a free Ipod shuffle if you get 10 people to sign up and reference your email address. I want to be perfectly clear about this: DO NOT REFERENCE MY EMAIL ADDRESS. I HAVE NO INTEREST IN THIS ARTIFACT. MY INTENTIONS ARE STRICTLY TO REVEAL A POTENTIALLY USEFUL RESOURCE. I will leave it to each of you to decide if has value.
DE, I understand completely if you feel that this should be removed or redirected to a more appropriate location. If you feel the need you can always contact me by email to more directly chew me out for soap boxing on your blog.
Humbly yours,
WoodyWoodman
WoodyWoodman said,
April 11, 2007 at 3:32 pm
Oh, and thanks for the work, this series is getting better with every entry. You have my permission to continue kicking ass.
11:11 said,
April 11, 2007 at 5:15 pm
Oh, DE I’m with you on this. Notice he used his research to be an aplogist for the thug at Abu Grahib. The Good German defense. While I think we can glean beneficial information from some of these people, I DO NOT TRUST THEM.
From the site you linked:
“Zimbardo and colleagues have used post-hypnotic suggestions as a device to induce the experience of a sudden discontinuity (either symptoms of general physiological arousal, or partial deafness), with or without awareness of the true source. In addition they have also induced various search frames through other post-hypnotic suggestions, such as, to focus on one’s body/health, or the physical environment, or other people, or mystical/spiritual forces. Some aspects of this research make interesting connections between cognitive, emotional and social processes, as well as misattributional phenomena. ”
And he IS with Stanford, afterall. I don’t care if SRI was split off. I have ZERO doubt that the same “research” that you have been investigating continues to this day, in many institutions.
wonderer in the wilderness said,
April 11, 2007 at 9:47 pm
“I have ZERO doubt that the same “research” that you have been investigating continues to this day, in many institutions”
Privatization has been a very useful tool for the CIA for several decades..
11:11 said,
April 12, 2007 at 4:55 am
Plausible deniability
Crowmanic said,
April 12, 2007 at 10:04 am
I’m certainly not a dedicated expert on matters discussed in this article, however, I have found the article so far of affirmative interest. For a number of years I have kept a keen interest in “New Age” phenomena and the Pedlars of such affluent and narcissistic encouragements. As with many, I have formed a particular perspective that keeps my “Self” vigilant and discerning, and I stryve to maintain an awareness of such amongst the populace and my associates.
Enough of that for now… just conclude by complimenting you on the quality and readability of this article and thanks for the sharing. Thx…
daniel said,
April 13, 2007 at 7:56 pm
“Privatization has been a very useful tool for the CIA for several decades..”
So true, and what are the two privatized fields of business most controlled by “ex- CIA” ?
1. War
2. Prisons
Prisons figure prominently in the histories of serial killers, and private prisons are the perfect place to create more.
Also, you probably know this but now you can check patents through google. I’ve found some pretty standard EM mind control patents, but you know all the reall good stuff is classified…
Thirtyseven said,
April 13, 2007 at 8:22 pm
Daniel, if you have PDF copies of those, I’d archive ‘em at Skilluminati Research. You can click on my name to get my email.
Thirtyseven said,
April 13, 2007 at 8:22 pm
Actually, no, you can’t: wombaticusrex@gmail.com