48-54 The Problem of the Pavlovian Penis

[Thomas Eckhardt]

Thanks for the various public and private wows.

I am generally interested in Pynchon's knowledge about MKUltra. As far 
as I am concerned, COL49 makes quite clear that Pynchon had information 
about CIA human experimentation that only very few people had at the 
time -- Richard Helms ordered all MKUltra files destroyed in 1973, and 
the whole thing received publicity only after John Marks in 1979 
published his seminal study "In Search of the Manchurian Candidate" 
(which should be required reading in every political science class) 
based on a few boxes of files that escaped Helms' and Sidney Gottlieb's 
attention. I am of course thinking of the scene in which Dr. Hilarious 
comes clean about his work in Buchenwald (p. 112, which is *very* 
relevant for GR -- ovens, drugs, V-2s, psychiatry are all mentioned). In 
short: LSD experiments building on the "new drugs" (mescaline) 
experiments of the Nazis have written MKUltra all over it.

MKUltra was huge. According to Wiki:

"The scope of Project MKUltra was broad, with research undertaken at 80 
institutions, including 44 colleges and universities, as well as 
hospitals, prisons, and pharmaceutical companies. The CIA operated 
through these institutions using front organizations, although sometimes 
top officials at these institutions were aware of the CIA's involvement. 
As the US Supreme Court later noted, MKULTRA was:

'concerned with "the research and development of chemical, biological, 
and radiological materials capable of employment in clandestine 
operations to control human behavior.' The program consisted of some 149 
subprojects which the Agency contracted out to various universities, 
research foundations, and similar institutions. At least 80 institutions 
and 185 private researchers participated. Because the Agency funded 
MKUltra indirectly, many of the participating individuals were unaware 
that they were dealing with the Agency.'"

The programme was also obviously illegal and contradicted all those 
precious values that the West claimed separated democracies from 
communist dictatorships. Pynchon, in my opinion, deliberately obfuscates 
a lot, as if writing under censorship (there is also the rumour that he 
was at one time on the run from the CIA)...

But be that as it may. For now I ask: Is there another example, besides 
Dr. Ewen Cameron, of psychiatrists believing the human mind was a slate 
that could be wiped clean and newly inscribed? The metaphor is old, I 
know, but the idea that psychiatric science could actually perform a 
thing like that is relatively new, I suspect.



Am 06.05.2016 um 18:27 schrieb Keith Davis:
> Wow!
-
Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l