Louis Jolyon West
Encyclopedia
Louis Jolyon West (1924 in Brooklyn
, New York
- January 2, 1999 in Los Angeles
) was an American
psychiatrist
, human rights
activist and expert on brainwashing, mind control
, torture
, substance abuse
, post traumatic stress disorder and violence
.
, he enlisted in the U.S. Army. In the Army Specialized Training Program he studied at the University of Iowa
and the University of Minnesota
School of Medicine, from which he graduated in 1948.
, he discussed with J.A. Winter the recently published book Dianetics
and concluded that the "auditing" described in Hubbard's book used hypnosis
. Winter introduced West to Hubbard on one occasion but West said: "I guess I didn't find the man very memorable. I was more interested in the book which described the auditing technique in which they had preclears—or prereleases if just beginners—count backwards from seven to zero repeatedly until they went into a trance, although Hubbard denied it was hypnosis." West followed the activities of Scientology from that time on and has openly said and written that he thought the organization dangerous.
He transferred to the U.S. Air Force Medical Corps, and five years later he was appointed Chief of Psychiatry Service at the Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas
. In this position he studied U.S. pilots and veterans after they had experienced torture
and brainwashing and been forced to give false confessions as prisoners in the Korean War
. He was ever since interested in the subject of brainwashing. He served as an expert witness in the case of Patricia Hearst.
One of the more unusual incidents of West's career came in August 1962, when he and two co-workers attempted to investigate the phenomenon of musth
by dosing Tusko
, a bull elephant at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Oklahoma City, with LSD. They expected that the drug would trigger a state similar to musth; instead, the animal began to have seizures 5 minutes after LSD administration. Beginning twenty minutes after the LSD, West and his colleagues decided to administer the antipsychotic promazine hydrochloride and a total of 2800 mg was injected over 11 minutes. This large promazine dose was not effective and may even have contributed to the animal's death, which occurred an hour and 40 minutes after the LSD was given.. Later, many had theories about why Tusko had died. One prominent theory was 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
.. Another theory was that while the LSD had caused Tusko distress, it was the drugs administered in an attempt to revive him that actually 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 as had been done with Tusko. Neither elephant expired or exhibited any great distress, although both behaved strangely for a number of hours.
At the age of 29 he was appointed professor
and Head of the Department of Psychiatry, Neurology and Biobehavioral Sciences at the University of Oklahoma
School of Medicine, the youngest man to have held a chairmanship in psychiatry in the United States so far.
1969 he was appointed as head of department and director of the Neuropsychiatry Institute at UCLA. His research covered many fields: alcoholism
, hallucinary drugs
, sleep deprivation
, violent behavior, the hippie
culture and cult
s.
explain how drug prohibition
can be used for selective social control:
On one American Psychiatric Association
panel on cults, where every speaker had received a long letter threatening a lawsuit if Scientology were mentioned, no one mentioned Scientology except West, who was the last speaker: "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." (Psychiatric Times, 1991)
Scientology's Freedom Magazine interpreted anti-apartheid trips to South Africa as pro-apartheid (Psychiatric Times, 1991).
activist. He was the first white psychiatrist who testified for black prisoners in South Africa
during the attempt to end apartheid. He was a member of the White House Conference on Civil Rights in 1966.
Brooklyn
Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
- January 2, 1999 in Los Angeles
Los Ángeles
Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...
) was an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
psychiatrist
Psychiatrist
A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in the diagnosis and treatment of mental disorders. All psychiatrists are trained in diagnostic evaluation and in psychotherapy...
, human rights
Human rights
Human rights are "commonly understood as inalienable fundamental rights to which a person is inherently entitled simply because she or he is a human being." Human rights are thus conceived as universal and egalitarian . These rights may exist as natural rights or as legal rights, in both national...
activist and expert on brainwashing, mind control
Mind control
Mind control refers to a process in which a group or individual "systematically uses unethically manipulative methods to persuade others to conform to the wishes of the manipulator, often to the detriment of the person being manipulated"...
, torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
, substance abuse
Substance abuse
A substance-related disorder is an umbrella term used to describe several different conditions associated with several different substances .A substance related disorder is a condition in which an individual uses or abuses a...
, post traumatic stress disorder and violence
Violence
Violence is the use of physical force to apply a state to others contrary to their wishes. violence, while often a stand-alone issue, is often the culmination of other kinds of conflict, e.g...
.
Early life
Louis "Jolly" West was born in Brooklyn to immigrant Russian Jewish parents and grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. His family was poor, but he was determined to get a good education. Shortly after he had entered University of Wisconsin–MadisonUniversity of Wisconsin–Madison
The University of Wisconsin–Madison is a public research university located in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. Founded in 1848, UW–Madison is the flagship campus of the University of Wisconsin System. It became a land-grant institution in 1866...
, he enlisted in the U.S. Army. In the Army Specialized Training Program he studied at the University of Iowa
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa is a public state-supported research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. It is the oldest public university in the state. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees...
and the University of Minnesota
University of Minnesota
The University of Minnesota, Twin Cities is a public research university located in Minneapolis and St. Paul, Minnesota, United States. It is the oldest and largest part of the University of Minnesota system and has the fourth-largest main campus student body in the United States, with 52,557...
School of Medicine, from which he graduated in 1948.
Career
While West was on his internship at the Payne Whitney Psychiatric ClinicPayne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic
At his death in 1927, Payne Whitney bestowed the funds to build and endow the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic on the Upper East Side of Manhattan...
, he discussed with J.A. Winter the recently published book Dianetics
Dianetics
Dianetics is a set of ideas and practices regarding the metaphysical relationship between the mind and body that was invented by the science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard and is practiced by followers of Scientology...
and concluded that the "auditing" described in Hubbard's book used hypnosis
Hypnosis
Hypnosis is "a trance state characterized by extreme suggestibility, relaxation and heightened imagination."It is a mental state or imaginative role-enactment . It is usually induced by a procedure known as a hypnotic induction, which is commonly composed of a long series of preliminary...
. Winter introduced West to Hubbard on one occasion but West said: "I guess I didn't find the man very memorable. I was more interested in the book which described the auditing technique in which they had preclears—or prereleases if just beginners—count backwards from seven to zero repeatedly until they went into a trance, although Hubbard denied it was hypnosis." West followed the activities of Scientology from that time on and has openly said and written that he thought the organization dangerous.
He transferred to the U.S. Air Force Medical Corps, and five years later he was appointed Chief of Psychiatry Service at the Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
. In this position he studied U.S. pilots and veterans after they had experienced torture
Torture
Torture is the act of inflicting severe pain as a means of punishment, revenge, forcing information or a confession, or simply as an act of cruelty. Throughout history, torture has often been used as a method of political re-education, interrogation, punishment, and coercion...
and brainwashing and been forced to give false confessions as prisoners in the Korean War
Korean War
The Korean War was a conventional war between South Korea, supported by the United Nations, and North Korea, supported by the People's Republic of China , with military material aid from the Soviet Union...
. He was ever since interested in the subject of brainwashing. He served as an expert witness in the case of Patricia Hearst.
One of the more unusual incidents of West's career came in August 1962, when he and two co-workers attempted to investigate the phenomenon of musth
Musth
Musth or must is a periodic condition in bull elephants, characterized by highly aggressive behavior, accompanied by a large rise in reproductive hormones - testosterone levels in an elephant in musth can be as much as 60 times greater than in the same elephant at other times...
by dosing Tusko
Tusko
Tusko is a popular name given to elephants in captivity. Several notable elephants have been given this moniker.-Tusko: "The Meanest Elephant":Formerly known as "Ned," this Tusko was a giant circus elephant captured at age 6 in Siam...
, a bull elephant at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Oklahoma City, with LSD. They expected that the drug would trigger a state similar to musth; instead, the animal began to have seizures 5 minutes after LSD administration. Beginning twenty minutes after the LSD, West and his colleagues decided to administer the antipsychotic promazine hydrochloride and a total of 2800 mg was injected over 11 minutes. This large promazine dose was not effective and may even have contributed to the animal's death, which occurred an hour and 40 minutes after the LSD was given.. Later, many had theories about why Tusko had died. One prominent theory was 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
Basal metabolic rate
Basal Metabolic Rate , and the closely related resting metabolic rate , is the amount of daily energy expended by humans and other animals at rest. Rest is defined as existing in a neutrally temperate environment while in the post-absorptive state...
.. Another theory was that while the LSD had caused Tusko distress, it was the drugs administered in an attempt to revive him that actually caused death. Attempting to prove that the LSD alone had not been the cause of death, Ronald K. Siegel
Ronald K. Siegel
Ronald Keith Siegel is an American psychiatrist, research professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles , and the author of several noted studies and books on psychopharmacology, hallucination, and paranoia...
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 as had been done with Tusko. Neither elephant expired or exhibited any great distress, although both behaved strangely for a number of hours.
At the age of 29 he was appointed professor
Professor
A professor is a scholarly teacher; the precise meaning of the term varies by country. Literally, professor derives from Latin as a "person who professes" being usually an expert in arts or sciences; a teacher of high rank...
and Head of the Department of Psychiatry, Neurology and Biobehavioral Sciences at the University of Oklahoma
University of Oklahoma
The University of Oklahoma is a coeducational public research university located in Norman, Oklahoma. Founded in 1890, it existed in Oklahoma Territory near Indian Territory for 17 years before the two became the state of Oklahoma. the university had 29,931 students enrolled, most located at its...
School of Medicine, the youngest man to have held a chairmanship in psychiatry in the United States so far.
1969 he was appointed as head of department and director of the Neuropsychiatry Institute at UCLA. His research covered many fields: alcoholism
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
, hallucinary drugs
Hallucination
A hallucination, in the broadest sense of the word, is a perception in the absence of a stimulus. In a stricter sense, hallucinations are defined as perceptions in a conscious and awake state in the absence of external stimuli which have qualities of real perception, in that they are vivid,...
, sleep deprivation
Sleep deprivation
Sleep deprivation is the condition of not having enough sleep; it can be either chronic or acute. A chronic sleep-restricted state can cause fatigue, daytime sleepiness, clumsiness and weight loss or weight gain. It adversely affects the brain and cognitive function. Few studies have compared the...
, violent behavior, the hippie
Hippie
The hippie subculture was originally a youth movement that arose in the United States during the mid-1960s and spread to other countries around the world. The etymology of the term 'hippie' is from hipster, and was initially used to describe beatniks who had moved into San Francisco's...
culture and cult
Cult
The word cult in current popular usage usually refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre. The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices...
s.
Social Control
In Hallucinations: Behavior, Experience, and Theory, West and Ronald K. SiegelRonald K. Siegel
Ronald Keith Siegel is an American psychiatrist, research professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles , and the author of several noted studies and books on psychopharmacology, hallucination, and paranoia...
explain how drug prohibition
Prohibition (drugs)
The prohibition of drugs through sumptuary legislation or religious law is a common means of attempting to prevent drug use. Prohibition of drugs has existed at various levels of government or other authority from the Middle Ages to the present....
can be used for selective social control:
Conflict with Scientologists
According to West, the problems started after he published a textbook in 1980, in which he called Scientology a cult.On one American Psychiatric Association
American Psychiatric Association
The American Psychiatric Association is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the most influential worldwide. Its some 38,000 members are mainly American but some are international...
panel on cults, where every speaker had received a long letter threatening a lawsuit if Scientology were mentioned, no one mentioned Scientology except West, who was the last speaker: "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
Scientology
Scientology is a body of beliefs and related practices created by science fiction and fantasy author L. Ron Hubbard , starting in 1952, as a successor to his earlier self-help system, Dianetics...
a cult and L. Ron Hubbard a quack and a fake. I wasn't about to let them intimidate me." (Psychiatric Times, 1991)
Scientology's Freedom Magazine interpreted anti-apartheid trips to South Africa as pro-apartheid (Psychiatric Times, 1991).
Civil rights activist
West was also a civil rightsCivil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from unwarranted infringement by governments and private organizations, and ensure one's ability to participate in the civil and political life of the state without discrimination or repression.Civil rights include...
activist. He was the first white psychiatrist who testified for black prisoners in South Africa
South Africa
The Republic of South Africa is a country in southern Africa. Located at the southern tip of Africa, it is divided into nine provinces, with of coastline on the Atlantic and Indian oceans...
during the attempt to end apartheid. He was a member of the White House Conference on Civil Rights in 1966.
Death
Aged 74, Dr. West died at his home in West Los Angeles. Dr. West was suffering from an incurable tumor, and his son, John West, helped him to commit suicide using prescription medication. John later wrote a book on the experience, "The Last Goodnights: Assisting My Parents With Their Suicides."Works
- Alcohol and Related Problems: Issues for the American Public, The American Assembly, Columbia University, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1984
- "Cult Phenomenon - Mental Health, Legal and Religious Implications" Several lectures by Jolly West in audio
- Pseudo-Identity and the Treatment of Personality Change in Victims of Captivity and Cults, From Dissociation: Clinical and Theoretical Perspectives. 1994
- Drug Testing : Issues and Options, 1991
- Farber. I.E., Marlow. H. F. & West L.J. (1956). Brainwashing conditioning and DDD (debility, dependency, and dread)
- West. L.J. & Singer. M.T. (1980). Cults, quacks and nonprofessional psychotherapies. In H.I. Kaphm A. M. Freedman, & B.J. Sadock (Eds.), Comprehensive textbook of psychiatry III. Baltimore: Williams & Willtens.
- In Memory of Louis J. West, Presentation held in Bonn, 1981
- West, L.J., Pierce, C.M., & Thomas, W.D. Lysergic acid diethylamide: Its effects on male Asiatic elephant. Science, 138, 1100–1103, 1962
Additional sources
- Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain, Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, The Sixties, and Beyond. New York: Grove Press, 1992.
- Siegel, R. K. (1984). LSD-induced effects in elephants: Comparisons with musth behavior. Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society, 22(1), 53-56.
See also
- CultCultThe word cult in current popular usage usually refers to a group whose beliefs or practices are considered abnormal or bizarre. The word originally denoted a system of ritual practices...
s - List of cult researchers
- John Gordon ClarkJohn Gordon ClarkJohn 'Jack' Gordon Clark was a Harvard psychiatrist and authority in research on the alleged damaging effects of cults.He was the target of harassment from Scientologists after he testified against them to the Vermont congress in 1976....
- Robert Jay LiftonRobert Jay LiftonRobert Jay Lifton is an American psychiatrist and author, chiefly known for his studies of the psychological causes and effects of war and political violence and for his theory of thought reform...