relatives of grigori, Pointsman, Slothrop

[Ian Livingston]

EST was all the rage at the time. My step-mother got some dandy zaps
as a psych patient in Manhattan while she was working on her MA in
physical therapy. She walked away from it all with severe tonic-clonic
epilepsy thanks to her medically-induced brain damage. Many years
later psychologists discovered that abused children may develop
symptoms of PTSD that manifest in abnormal behavior in adult life.
Electroshock was not the appropriate treatment. No apologies from the
perpetrators, of course.

On Thu, Dec 29, 2011 at 9:19 AM, Joseph Tracy <brook7 at sover.net> wrote:
> No one needs to respond to this. My paranoia is put to rest.
>
> There is a good article in Orion Magazine about octopi and current studies/knowledge about these really oddly intelligent creatures .
> 1) they change color and have some optical receptors in their skin
> 2) if an arm is cut off it will still grab food and try to put it where the mouth would have been.
> 3)they can solve physical puzzles and even open child proof containers
>  all this and more
>
> I'm re-reading GR and was struck by some parallels to Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine. This is one example:
> For those who have not read  Shock Doctrine, it describes the history of a Canadian Doctor in the 50s who did research for the CIA's MK Ultra program giving very severe shock treatments, sensory deprivation and overload etc.  to patients with the intent of wiping out their personalities and creating a "clean slate" which he intended to set aright with positive thinking style tape messages. What bears a striking resemblance to human experiment stories in GR with  Pointsman, Jamf,  Slothrop, Katje children in Klein's account is the story of a Canadian woman who was a nurse with only very minor psychological cconcerns/issues who was roped into these studies. She was subjected to a particularly intense battery of shock treatments and sensory abuse. She was released in a barely functional state and began a lifelong process of figuring out what happened to her. Her memories were gone and she was in real bad shape. She married a concentration camp victim with whom she had much in common. She  read an article decades later after  the experiments  were exposed by Canadian right-to-know laws and finally discovered what had happened to her.  Her pursuit of truth, and her instincts about where that truth might lie  reminded me of Pynchon stories, particularly GR and Slothrop.
>  The only use of the experiments was the US 60 year employment of enhanced interrogation techniques .
>
>



-- 
"Less than any man have I  excuse for prejudice; and I feel for all
creeds the warm sympathy of one who has come to learn that even the
trust in reason is a precarious faith, and that we are all fragments
of darkness groping for the sun. I know no more about the ultimates
than the simplest urchin in the streets." -- Will Durant