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I recently read an article from The Atlantic Monthly online titled “Harvard and the Making of the Unabomber.” The author, Alston Chase, has corresponded with Ted Kaczynski at length and also wrote the book A Mind for Murder: The Education of the Unabomber and the Origins of Modern Terrorism. I first came across Alston Chase’s work when I listened to a Radio Lab podcast about an experiment conducted at Harvard during the 1950s. The experimenter, psychologist Harry Murray, had worked for the OSS, the precursor to the CIA, studying (and creating experiments on) stress in interrogations. It’s unclear whether his experiments at Harvard were under the auspices of the OSS or whether they were independently motivated. According to Chase, it’s even unclear what the real purpose of the Harvard experiments were.
The experiments, conducted over a period of 3 years, deceived Harvard students and subjected them to severe stress and cruelty. At one point in the experiments, students were asked to write an autobiography and detail very personal accounts related to their sexuality, toilet training, and other intimate experiences. They were told they’d be meeting with another student, who had also written an autobiography, to discuss their various experiences. Instead, they were placed in brightly lit interrogation rooms, hooked to electrodes to monitor their responses, filmed through a one-way mirror — from which they were being observed — and then ridiculed, humiliated, insulted and victimized by an older stooge, not a peer as they were expecting. They were later required to watch the videos of themselves undergoing this humiliation and trauma.
Ted Kaczynski was one of the students in these experiments, and although he wouldn’t talk about them with Chase, it turns out that he had a huge negative response, according to the monitors of his stress levels. Chase explores whether these experiments influenced Kaczynski such that he became more predisposed to carry out his murders as the Unabomber.
When I heard about these experiments, and after getting over my shock that they were ever conducted, I couldn’t help but wonder what might have happened had a different experiment been performed. In one of the experiments Murray did, the students wrote their life philosophies. What if an experimenter asked students to write a combination autobiography, personal philosophy and goals for their lives and a “stooge” validated their ideas and encouraged their interests and supported their goals, and rather than humiliate them, extolled their virtues. What if they went over the top in the other direction? I’m not suggesting that this would be a good thing to do, but I wonder what the result would be. What might the students do with such praise and validation? Who might they become? How might Ted Kaczynski’s life have been different had this been the experimental protocol conducted over three years? And lastly, where are the social psychology experiments that seek to bring out the best in people so that we can learn how better to foster compassion, courage, honesty and integrity for a healthier world?
Zoe Weil
Author of Most Good, Least Harm and Above All, Be Kind
Image courtesy of myguerrilla via Creative Commons.
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Filed under: Cultural Issues, human rights, responsibility, social psychology Tagged: | cruelty, experiments, human rights, humiliation, interrogation techniques, responsibility, science, social psychology, stress, Ted Kaczynski, terrorism, torture
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I just wanted to say thank you for your insight!! I was asked to do a research project for the history of psychology class that I am attending, and I must say that I was not prepared to discover the mistreatment that was inflicted upon the students that Murray did his “research” on. I like how you turned around a situation to make it ” what if” I truly believe a budding young mind was destroyed and distorted due to the cruelty that was afflicted upon it.
Thank you
Thanks Lauren. Glad your project brought you here and that you’re thinking about these things! Would love to hear your insights as well.
Harvard University, other colleges/universities, schools, and hospitals are still involved in these heinous NAZI inspired experiments, destroying innocent lives. I KNOW, me and my children were victims of these MONSTERS. People are being bred for this BS from military/mob families, used/abused/manipulated/mutilated and TORTURED in the most heinous ways, especially when you start to put the pieces of the puzzle together and decide to try to expose it. They then use mobster tactics in all kinds of ways using D4 tactics/deny, discredit, disable, destroy to try to shut you up, terrorizing you, orchestrating car accidents, drugging you, poisoning you, using weaponry on you and then they go after your children to destroy their lives. MA and NH child support enforcement, child protective services, among other gov’t agencies, are involved in this to deny women/children whats rightfully theirs, blackball them, terrorise them in coordination with other criminal aspects, including cult churches, to make the victims life into a living hell. All types of extortion tactics are used for purposes of control, then those involved are rewarded, hospitals get new wings via contractors with questionable connections, colleges get new campuses and other players get rewarded for their part. The victims are used as pawns for political agenda’s/sadistic amusement/monetary agenda’s, like a modern day coliseum. I sent evidence CRR to the WH, JCS, SOD, NSA, CIA, FBI civil rights dept., HJC, SIC Sen. Feinstein and Rockefeller, hand delivered evidence to Michelle Obama on the Campaign trail, all to no avail. The Pres. himself said to my daughter, who confronted him in public about this, that the evidence was good evidence and he definitely was going to do something about it, yet did nothing. I called the police screaming, begging and crying for them to stop the torture and no one would help me. I also watched helplessly, as my daughter was tortured, as I was on the phone. The next day she couldn’t remember the incident, since her memory was erased with acoustic weapons. Also all of the techniques and weapons listed in MKULTRA and on H.R. 2977 Sen. Kucinich/John Glenn bill, were used on me and some on my children. The media is intimately involved in this, esp. CNN. This program was used on us where we were the TARGETS.
http://web.elastic.org/~fche/mirrors/cryptone.org/af050302.txt
See Boston Globe articles from 11-19-10 where the probation corruption is just the tip of the iceberg. Note also some of the other articles esp. regarding Harvard and Yales “frat” fight. My doctor of 20 years that wrote a letter, that I was of sound mind was found hung last year, allegedly suicide, although his family and collegues said he was not suicidal. Numerous other murders too. Also media involvement regarding massive insider trading linked to terrorist attacks and so called “natural disasters” (In 1999 SOD William Cohen talked about the use of electromagnetic weapons for eco-terrorism, producing earthquakes, hurricanes, weather modification) Sadistic “insider jokes” regarding this on investment and insurance commercials, ect. 2003 Adm Poindexter of Total Info. Awareness aka Codename Basketball (Tenet its a slam dunk) resigned due to Senators saying it was a betting operation on terrorist attacks (use of datamining), but in actuality went deeper into DARPA. Evidence of all of this on libertyforum.com from 11-04 to 9-08 under username ManhattanPROJECT and reported to authorties, then was shut down to obstruct justice and hide criminal acts. Numerous correct warnings/”predictions” sent in to authorites before terrorist attacks and so called “natural disasters” with for the most part no response. So who are the terrorists? Seems Gaddafi is not the only one that should be sent to the International Criminal Court for WAR CRIMES/CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY.
Put the movie The Changeling, Shutter Island, The Recruit and Eagle Eye together and you might get an idea of what they put the victims through.
Also see 2000 PNAC reference to the need for TRANSFORMATION (mind control victim book is called TRANCEFORMATION) and short of another cataclysmic attack like a New PEARL Harbor that it was going to be slow going, then on 9-11-01 kamakazee type attacks and comics ON THAT DAY had Garfield wearing a string of PEARLS, Little Orphan Annie with reference to militia and calamity of a federal bld. and ZIGGY with a sign This DREAM brought to you by MEGACORP. (American Dream). Also see book with very symbolic black and white pictures called Requiem World Trade Center by Hideaki Sato, ICG MUSE with reference to an American Dream that failed. 1973 Readers Digest novel THE TOWER bragging in advance how 9-11 would happen. ALOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THE TRUTH. So THIS is America.
It’s ironic how CNN is portraying an alleged victim of government brutality who allegedly went to court today and had an employee pull a gun on her. “Coincidentally”, I have to go to court this week (having been stalked when I’ve gone in the past). The sadistic psycho’s involved in this love to use all kinds of overt and covert psych ops to terrorize the victims. I picked up on a lot of this media BS one time when Reuters had an article by someone allegedly named OPHERA (OH FEAR AH) McDOOM, (who probably ate a McDonalds) who wrote an article about Al Qaeda. Then an alleged communique by OBL on waaqiah.com called “Letter To The American People” in which they forgot to edit, leaving a Hollywood studio symbol after the communique. I remember how we didn’t hear any communiques during the writers strike so I posted about the “coincidence” then the next day Al Qaeda CENTRAL had CENTRAL Casting put Al Zawahiri on. Funny how those regular communiques stopped since the 2006 elections. JUST KEEPIN THEM HONEST.
Ironically, I’m doing a history report on this subject. The reason i even thought of such a subject was because of the radiolab broadcast i heard during a car trip. The first result I got off my search was the same article, too.