Louis Jolyon West (October 6, 1924 – January 2, 1999) was an American psychiatrist involved in the public sphere. In 1954, at the age of 29 and with no previous

tenure-track Tenure is a category of academic appointment existing in some countries. A tenured post is an indefinite academic appointment that can be terminated only for cause or under extraordinary circumstances, such as financial exigency or program disco ...

appointment, he became a full

professor Professor (commonly abbreviated as Prof.) is an academic rank at universities and other post-secondary education and research institutions in most countries. Literally, ''professor'' derives from Latin as a "person who professes". Professors ...

and chair of psychiatry at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine. From 1969 to 1989, he served as chair of psychiatry at the

University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine The University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine—known as the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA (DGSOM)—is an accredited medical school located in Los Angeles, California, United States. The school was renamed in 2001 in ...

and the

UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute The Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior is a research institute of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). It includes a number of centers, including the "Center for Neurobehavioral Genetics", which uses DNA sequencing, g ...

. West's work on brainwashing techniques allowed him to exonerate U.S. servicemen under suspicion of

treason Treason is the crime of attacking a state authority to which one owes allegiance. This typically includes acts such as participating in a war against one's native country, attempting to overthrow its government, spying on its military, its diplo ...

for making

false confessions A false confession is an admission of guilt for a crime which the individual did not commit. Although such confessions seem counterintuitive, they can be made voluntarily, perhaps to protect a third party, or induced through coercive interroga ...

during the

Korean War , date = {{Ubl, 25 June 1950 – 27 July 1953 (''de facto'')({{Age in years, months, weeks and days, month1=6, day1=25, year1=1950, month2=7, day2=27, year2=1953), 25 June 1950 – present (''de jure'')({{Age in years, months, weeks a ...

-era. This brought him to the attention of the

CIA The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gathering, processing, ...

. He pioneered research into the use and abuse of

LSD Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), also known colloquially as acid, is a potent psychedelic drug. Effects typically include intensified thoughts, emotions, and sensory perception. At sufficiently high dosages LSD manifests primarily mental, vi ...

. West was also active in studying the creation and management of

cults In modern English, ''cult'' is usually a pejorative term for a social group that is defined by its unusual religious, spiritual, or philosophical beliefs and rituals, or its common interest in a particular personality, object, or goal. This s ...

and anti- death penalty activism. Along with friend Charlton Heston, he supported the

Civil Rights Movement The civil rights movement was a nonviolent social and political movement and campaign from 1954 to 1968 in the United States to abolish legalized institutional racial segregation, discrimination, and disenfranchisement throughout the Unite ...

, frequently participating in

sit-ins A sit-in or sit-down is a form of direct action that involves one or more people occupying an area for a protest, often to promote political, social, or economic change. The protestors gather conspicuously in a space or building, refusing to mo ...

and rallies.

Early life

West was born in

Brooklyn Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, New York to a

Ukrainian Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * So ...

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

immigrant father and a mother who taught

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keybo ...

. He grew up in poverty in

Madison, Wisconsin Madison is the county seat of Dane County and the capital city of the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of the 2020 census the population was 269,840, making it the second-largest city in Wisconsin by population, after Milwaukee, and the 80th-lar ...

. He subsequently attended the

University of Wisconsin–Madison A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United Stat ...

for a year and, after completing prerequisite coursework at the

University of Iowa The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is organized into 12 col ...

under the aegis of the

Army Specialized Training Program The Army Specialized Training Program (ASTP) was a military training program instituted by the United States Army during World War II to meet wartime demands both for junior officers and soldiers with technical skills. Conducted at 227 American u ...

during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

, earned his

M.D. Doctor of Medicine (abbreviated M.D., from the Latin ''Medicinae Doctor'') is a medical degree, the meaning of which varies between different jurisdictions. In the United States, and some other countries, the M.D. denotes a professional degree. ...

from the

University of Minnesota Medical School The University of Minnesota Medical School is the medical school of the University of Minnesota. It is a combination of two campuses situated in Minneapolis and Duluth, Minnesota. The University of Minnesota Medical School is also part of one of ...

in 1949. Thereafter, he completed his

residency Residency may refer to: * Domicile (law), the act of establishing or maintaining a residence in a given place ** Permanent residency, indefinite residence within a country despite not having citizenship * Residency (medicine), a stage of postgra ...

at the

Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic The Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic (PWC) was a hospital in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, New York City, which was founded by an endowment bestowed by Payne Whitney (March 20, 1876 – May 25, 1927) upon his death. Whitney was an American ...

Cornell University Cornell University is a private statutory land-grant research university based in Ithaca, New York. It is a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1865 by Ezra Cornell and Andrew Dickson White, Cornell was founded with the intention to tea ...

on the

Upper East Side The Upper East Side, sometimes abbreviated UES, is a neighborhood in the borough of Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 96th Street to the north, the East River to the east, 59th Street to the south, and Central Park/Fifth Avenue to the wes ...

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

in 1952.

Korean War POWs and brainwashing

West was an officer in the

United States Air Force Medical Service The United States Air Force Medical Service (AFMS) consists of the five distinct medical corps of the Air Force and enlisted medical technicians. The AFMS was created in 1949 after the newly independent Air Force's first Surgeon General, Maj. ...

from 1948 to 1956, attaining the rank of major. While assigned to

Lackland Air Force Base Lackland Air Force Base is a United States Air Force (USAF) base located in Bexar County, Texas. The base is under the jurisdiction of the 802d Mission Support Group, Air Education and Training Command (AETC) and an enclave of the city of S ...

after his residency, he was appointed to a panel to discover why 36 of 59 airmen captured in the

had confessed or cooperated in Korean allegations of

war crimes committed by the United States United States war crimes are violations of the law of war committed by members of the United States Armed Forces after the signing of the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907 and the Geneva Conventions. The United States prosecutes offenders throu ...

. Amid speculation that the airmen had been

brainwash Brainwashing (also known as mind control, menticide, coercive persuasion, thought control, thought reform, and forced re-education) is the concept that the human mind can be altered or controlled by certain psychological techniques. Brainwashin ...

ed or drugged, West came to a simpler conclusion: "What we found enabled us to rule out drugs,

hypnosis Hypnosis is a human condition involving focused attention (the selective attention/selective inattention hypothesis, SASI), reduced peripheral awareness, and an enhanced capacity to respond to suggestion.In 2015, the American Psychologica ...

or other mysterious trickery," he said. He observed that " was just one device used to confuse, bewilder and torment our men until they were ready to confess to anything. That device was prolonged, chronic loss of sleep." The airmen avoided being

court-martialed A court-martial or court martial (plural ''courts-martial'' or ''courts martial'', as "martial" is a postpositive adjective) is a military court or a trial conducted in such a court. A court-martial is empowered to determine the guilt of memb ...

for these events as a result of West's research. He then published a paper with the title "United States Airforce prisoners of the Chinese Communist. Methods of forceful indoctrination: Observations and Interviews."

Project MKUltra

, where West completed his residency in psychiatry, was an

MKUltra Project MKUltra (or MK-Ultra) was an illegal human experimentation program designed and undertaken by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), intended to develop procedures and identify drugs that could be used in interrogations to weak ...

institution and the site of the Human Ecology Fund. He later became a subcontractor for MKUltra subproject 43, a 20,800

USD The United States dollar (symbol: $; code: USD; also abbreviated US$ or U.S. Dollar, to distinguish it from other dollar-denominated currencies; referred to as the dollar, U.S. dollar, American dollar, or colloquially buck) is the official ...

grant by the

while he was chairman of the department of Psychiatry at the

University of Oklahoma , mottoeng = "For the benefit of the Citizen and the State" , type = Public research university , established = , academic_affiliations = , endowment = $2.7billion (2021) , pr ...

. The proposal submitted by West was titled "Psychophysiological Studies of Hypnosis and Suggestibility" with an accompanying document titled "Studies of Dissociative States". Ross, Colin A. (2006). ''The CIA Doctors: Human Rights Violations by American Psychiatrists''. Richardson, TX: Manitou Communications (2006). . ::Original title: ''BLUEBIRD: Deliberate Creation of Multiple Personality by Psychiatrist'' (2000).

LSD-related death of an elephant

One of the more unusual incidents in West's career took place in August 1962. He and two co-workers attempted to investigate the phenomenon of

musth Musth or must (from Persian, )''The Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus: American edition'', published 1996 by Oxford University Press; p. 984 is a periodic condition in bull (male) elephants characterized by aggressive behavior and accompanied ...

in elephants by dosing Tusko, a bull elephant at the Lincoln Park Zoo in

Oklahoma City Oklahoma City (), officially the City of Oklahoma City, and often shortened to OKC, is the capital and largest city of the U.S. state of Oklahoma. The county seat of Oklahoma County, it ranks 20th among United States cities in population, a ...

, with

. They expected that the drug would trigger a state similar to musth; instead, the animal began to have seizures 5 minutes after LSD was administered. Beginning twenty minutes later, West and his colleagues administered the

antipsychotic Antipsychotics, also known as neuroleptics, are a class of psychotropic medication primarily used to manage psychosis (including delusions, hallucinations, paranoia or disordered thought), principally in schizophrenia but also in a range of ...

promazine hydrochloride; they injected a total of 2800 mg over 11 minutes. This large promazine dose was not effective and may have contributed to the animal's death. It died an hour and 40 minutes after the LSD was given. Later, many theories developed about why Tusko had died. Some researchers thought 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 Metabolism (, from el, μεταβολή ''metabolē'', "change") is the set of life-sustaining chemical reactions in organisms. The three main functions of metabolism are: the conversion of the energy in food to energy available to run ce ...

. Another theory was that while the LSD had caused Tusko distress, the drugs administered in an attempt to revive him caused death. Attempting to prove that the LSD alone had not been the cause of death, Ronald K. Siegel of

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California ...

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. Neither elephant expired or exhibited any great distress, although both behaved strangely for a number of hours.

Jack Ruby

Following the murder of

Lee Harvey Oswald Lee Harvey Oswald (October 18, 1939 – November 24, 1963) was a U.S. Marine veteran who assassinated John F. Kennedy, the 35th president of the United States, on November 22, 1963. Oswald was placed in juvenile detention at the age of 12 fo ...

Dallas, Texas Dallas () is the third largest city in Texas and the largest city in the Dallas–Fort Worth metroplex, the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the United States at 7.5 million people. It is the largest city in and seat of Dallas County ...

in 1963, his assassin Jack Ruby was held in an isolation cell in police custody. West was appointed as Ruby's psychiatrist, and pronounced him psychotic and delusional, and suggested further interrogation under the influence of

sodium pentathol Sodium thiopental, also known as Sodium Pentothal (a trademark of Abbott Laboratories), thiopental, thiopentone, or Trapanal (also a trademark), is a rapid-onset short-acting barbiturate general anesthetic. It is the thiobarbiturate analog of ...

and

Patty Hearst trial

During Patty Hearst's 1976

trial In law, a trial is a coming together of parties to a dispute, to present information (in the form of evidence) in a tribunal, a formal setting with the authority to adjudicate claims or disputes. One form of tribunal is a court. The tribunal ...

, West was appointed by the court in his capacity as a brainwashing expert and worked without fee. Believing that Hearst displayed all the classic signs of coercion, brainwashing, and the Stockholm effect, he wrote a newspaper after the trial article asking

President Carter James Earl Carter Jr. (born October 1, 1924) is an American politician who served as the 39th president of the United States from 1977 to 1981. A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 76th governor of Georgia from 19 ...

to release Hearst from prison. Some weeks after her arrest, Hearst repudiated her SLA allegiance.

NBC News NBC News is the news division of the American broadcast television network NBC. The division operates under NBCUniversal Television and Streaming, a division of NBCUniversal, which is, in turn, a subsidiary of Comcast. The news division's var ...

Documentary
/ref>

Conflict with Scientologists

According to West,

Scientologist Scientology is a set of beliefs and practices invented by American author L. Ron Hubbard, and an associated movement. It has been variously defined as a cult, a business, or a new religious movement. The most recent published census data in ...

s attempted to discredit him and get him fired, using methods similar to those used in

Operation Freakout Operation Freakout, also known as Operation PC Freakout, was a Church of Scientology covert plan intended to have the U.S. author and journalist Paulette Cooper imprisoned or committed to a psychiatric hospital. The plan, undertaken in 1976 follo ...

. This was allegedly done after his contributions to a 1980 textbook that classified Scientology as a cult. West participated in an

American Psychiatric Association The American Psychiatric Association (APA) is the main professional organization of psychiatrists and trainee psychiatrists in the United States, and the largest psychiatric organization in the world. It has more than 37,000 members are involv ...

panel on cults. Each speaker had received a letter threatening a lawsuit if Scientology were mentioned; apparently others were intimidated. Only West, the last speaker, referred to the letter and the cult:

"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 is a set of beliefs and practices invented by American author L. Ron Hubbard, and an associated movement. It has been variously defined as a cult, a Scientology as a business, business, or a new religious movement. The most recent ...
a cult and
L. Ron Hubbard Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (March 13, 1911 – January 24, 1986) was an American author, primarily of science fiction and fantasy stories, who is best known for having founded the Church of Scientology. In 1950, Hubbard authored '' Dianeti ...
a quack and a fake. I wasn't about to let them intimidate me."

Personal life

In 1999, West died at his home in

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...

at age 74. His family said the cause of death was

metastatic cancer Metastasis is a pathogenic agent's spread from an initial or primary site to a different or secondary site within the host's body; the term is typically used when referring to metastasis by a cancerous tumor. The newly pathological sites, the ...

. However, West's son John would later assert in a 2009

memoir A memoir (; , ) is any nonfiction narrative writing based in the author's personal memories. The assertions made in the work are thus understood to be factual. While memoir has historically been defined as a subcategory of biography or autobiog ...

that he helped his father end his life at the latter's choice by using

prescription medication A prescription drug (also prescription medication or prescription medicine) is a pharmaceutical drug that legally requires a medical prescription to be dispensed. In contrast, over-the-counter drugs can be obtained without a prescription. The r ...

due to the

terminal illness Terminal illness or end-stage disease is a disease that cannot be cured or adequately treated and is expected to result in the death of the patient. This term is more commonly used for progressive diseases such as cancer, dementia or advanced h ...

Works

* "Pseudo-Identity and the Treatment of Personality Change in Victims of Captivity and Cults." In: ''Dissociation: Clinical and Theoretical Perspectives'', with Steven Jay Lynn and Judith W. Rhue, eds. New York: Guilford Press (Aug. 1994). . * ''Drug Testing: Issues and Options'', with Robert H. Coombs, eds. New York:

Oxford University Press Oxford University Press (OUP) is the university press of the University of Oxford. It is the largest university press in the world, and its printing history dates back to the 1480s. Having been officially granted the legal right to print books ...

(Apr. 1991). . * ''Alcoholism and Related Problems: Issues for the American Public''. American Assembly Series. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall (Oct. 1984). . * "Cults, Quacks and Non-professional Psychotherapies" (with M.T. Singer). In: ''Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry'', with H. Kaplan and B. Sadock. 3rd ed. Baltimore:

Williams and Wilkins Lippincott Williams & Wilkins (LWW) is an American imprint of the American Dutch publishing conglomerate Wolters Kluwer. It was established by the acquisition of Williams & Wilkins and its merger with J.B. Lippincott Company in 1998. Under the L ...

(1980), pp. 3245–58. * ''Hallucinations: Behavior, Experience, and Theory'', with Ronald K. Siegel, eds. New York:

John Wiley & Sons John Wiley & Sons, Inc., commonly known as Wiley (), is an American multinational publishing company founded in 1807 that focuses on academic publishing and instructional materials. The company produces books, journals, and encyclopedias, ...

(Oct. 1975). . *
"Brainwashing, Conditioning and DDD (Debility, Dependency, and Dread),"
with I. E. Farber and Harry F. Harlow. ''

Sociometry Sociometry is a quantitative method for measuring social relationships. It was developed by psychotherapist Jacob L. Moreno and Helen Hall Jennings in their studies of the relationship between social structures and psychological well-being, and u ...

'', vol. 20, no. 4 (1957), pp. 271-285. .

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:West, Louis Jolyon 1924 births 1999 deaths 20th-century American physicians United States Air Force personnel of the Korean War American psychiatrists Critics of Scientology Lysergic acid diethylamide Mind control theorists People of the Central Intelligence Agency Project MKUltra Psychedelic drug researchers United States Air Force Medical Corps officers University of Minnesota Medical School alumni University of Oklahoma alumni University of Wisconsin–Madison alumni Deaths from cancer in California American people of Ukrainian-Jewish descent Human subject research in the United States