CIA PROJECT MK-ULTRA (SADISTIC TORTURE & MURDER OF MASSES OF CHILDREN INCLUDED)
Note to readers:
This essay is an edited and abridged version, with content reformatted, of that originally posted here. It is updated with some new material and full references. A list of the most important references is at the end of the essay, before the notes. I deleted the small portion on P. W. Botha because I was unable to locate my primary reference which was text extracted from the Truth and Reconciliation hearings held in South Africa. The content was testimony by one of Botha’s underlings at a hearing that Botha refused to attend. Rather than leave questions about the validity of statements, I deleted that section
CIA Project MK-ULTRA
The United States government funded and performed countless psychological experiments on unwitting humans, especially during the Cold War era, perhaps partially to help develop more effective torture and interrogation techniques for the US military and the CIA, but the almost unbelievable extent, range and duration of these activities far surpassed possible interrogation applications and appear to have been performed from a fundamental monstrous inhumanity. To simply read summaries of these, even without the details, is almost traumatising in itself.
In studies that began in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the US Military began identifying and testing truth serums like mescaline and scopolamine on human subjects, which they claimed might be useful during interrogations of Soviet spies. These programs eventually expanded to a project of vast scope and enormous ambition, centralised under the CIA in what would come to be called Project MK-ULTRA, a major collection of interrogation and mind-control projects. Inspired initially by delusions of a brainwashing program, the CIA began thousands of experiments using both American and foreign subjects often without their knowledge or against their will, destroying countless tens of thousands of lives and causing many deaths and suicides. Funded in part by the Rockefeller and Ford foundations and jointly operated by the CIA, the FBI and the intelligence divisions of all military groups, this decades-long CIA research constituted an immense collection of some of the most cold-blooded and callous atrocities conceivable, in a determined effort to develop reliable techniques of controlling the human mind.
MK-ULTRA was an umbrella for a large number of clandestine activities that formed part of the CIA’s psychological warfare research and development, consisting of about 150 projects and sub-projects, many of them very large in their own right, with research and human experimentation occurring at more than 80 institutions that included about 50 of America’s best-known colleges and universities, 15 or 20 major research Foundations including Rockefeller, dozens of major hospitals, a great many prisons and mental institutions, and many chemical and pharmaceutical companies. At least 200 well-known private scientific researchers were part of this program, as were many thousands of physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists and other similar. Many of these institutions and individuals received their funding through so-called “grants” from what were clearly CIA front companies. In 1994 a Congressional subcommittee revealed that up to 500,000 unwitting Americans were endangered, damaged or destroyed by secret CIA and military tests between 1940 and 1974. Given the deliberate destruction of all the records, the full truth of the MK-ULTRA victims will never be known, and certainly not the death toll. As the inspector general of the US Army later stated in a report to a Senate committee: “In universities, hospitals and research institutions, an unknown number of chemical tests and experiments … were carried out with healthy adults, with mentally ill and with prison inmates.” According to one government report, “In 149 separate mind-control experiments on thousands of people, CIA researchers used hypnosis, electroshock treatments, LSD, marijuana, morphine, Benzedrine, mescaline, seconal, atropine and other drugs.” Test subjects were usually people who could not easily object – prisoners, mental patients and members of minority groups – but the agency also performed many experiments on normal, healthy civilians without their knowledge or consent.
EPSTEIN FILES - Max Lowen
There were 149 subprojects listed under the umbrella of MKULTRA. Project MONARCH has not been officially identified by any government documentation as one of the corresponding subprojects, but is used rather, as a descriptive “catch phrase” by survivors, therapists, and possible “insiders”. MONARCH may in fact, have culminated from MKSEARCH subprojects such as operation SPELLBINDER, which was set up to create “sleeper” assassins (i.e. “Manchurian candidates”) who could be activated upon receiving a key word or phrase while in a post-hypnotic trance. Operation OFTEN, a study which attempted to harness the power of occult forces was possibly one of several cover programs to hide the insidious reality of Project MONARCH. There were also operations BLUEBIRD, ARTICHOKE, MKNAOMI, and MKDELTA.
Another CIA Operation called Midnight Climax consisted of a network of CIA locations to which prostitutes on the CIA payroll would lure clients where they were surreptitiously plied with a wide range of substances including LSD, and monitored behind one-way glass.[1][2]Several significant operational techniques were developed in this theater, including extensive research into sexual blackmail, surveillance technology, and the possible use of mind-altering drugs in field operations. In the 1970s, as another part of its mind control program, the CIA conspired with Eli Lilly and Company to produce one hundred million doses of the illegal drug LSD, enough to send almost everyone in the United States on a trip. No explanation was ever given as to what the CIA did with a hundred million doses of acid but, since much of this activity was exported, reviewing international political events during this period may bring interesting possibilities to mind.
Frank Olson Project
Another part of the CIA mind-control project was aimed at finding a “truth serum” to use on spies. Test subjects were given LSD and other drugs, often without their knowledge or consent, and some were tortured. Many people died – or were killed – as a result of these experiments, and an unknown number of government employees working on these projects were murdered for fear they would tell what they had seen, perhaps the best-known being Frank Olson whose death I have described below.[3] The project was steadfastly denied by both the government and the CIA, but was finally exposed after investigations by the Rockefeller Commission. When this information became known, the US government paid many millions of dollars to settle the hundreds of claims and lawsuits that resulted. There exists much evidence that these programs had never been terminated.
Unit 731
As already noted, MK-ULTRA and its brethren grew out of Operation Paperclip in which more than 10,000 Japanese and some German scientists of all stripes were smuggled into the US after the Second World War, to provide the government with information on torture and interrogation techniques. It isn’t widely known but, as part of Operation Paperclip, the CIA recruited for MK-ULTRA Shiro Ishii, the head of Japan’s Unit 731 which conducted some of the most horrendous human atrocities in history, including the live vivisection of children. It also imported at the same time at least ten thousands of the staff from Unit 731, housed them on US military bases and gave them full immunity from prosecution for their war crimes and crimes against humanity.[4] It is for this reason almost no Japanese faced trial for their crimes: they were all in America, contributing their skills to MK-ULTRA. The CIA also imported some Germans who had performed human experimentation. It also isn’t widely-known, but this entire project had its birth not in the US but at The Tavistock Institute of Human Relations in the UK, an institute with an exceptionally cold-blooded past. I will return to Tavistock in later chapters.
The CIA leadership had concerns about discovery of their unethical and illegal behavior, as evidenced in a 1957 Inspector General Report, which stated:
“Precautions must be taken not only to protect operations from exposure to enemy forces but also to conceal these activities from the American public in general. The knowledge that the agency is engaging in unethical and illicit activities would have serious repercussions in political and diplomatic circles”.
The CIA’s MK-ULTRA activities continued until well into the 1970s when CIA director Richard Helms, fearing that they would be exposed to the public, ordered the project terminated and all of the files destroyed. However, a clerical error had sent many documents to the wrong office, so when CIA workers were destroying the files, some of them remained and were later released under a Freedom of Information Act request by investigative journalist John Marks. Nevertheless, because the records have almost all been destroyed, the numbers and identities of the victims will never be known.
The Stanford Research Institute
The Stanford Research Institute (SRI) describes its mission as “creating world-changing solutions to make people safer, healthier, and more productive.” Wikipedia tells us the trustees of Stanford University established SRI in 1946 as “a center of innovation to support economic development in the region”. I have no evidence that SRI has made anyone safer or more productive and, whatever the original purpose of this institution, supporting economic development of the region wouldn’t appear to have been very high on the list. From my research, there are few institutions in America that have had their histories more thoroughly sanitised than SRI. Certainly all references to participation in the CIA’s MK-ULTRA and other inhuman projects have evaporated from the narrative. In August of 1977, the Washington Post exposed some of these projects; there were likely many more.
One of SRI’s past activities involved contracts awarded by the CIA and the US Navy to research and develop long-distance mind control using radio waves. The CIA had already funded MK-ULTRA projects at Honeywell for “a method to penetrate inside a man’s mind and control his brain waves over long distance”. In the 1960s, then-Director of the CIA, Richard Helms, was excited about what was termed “biological radio communication”, and the Washington Post published concrete evidence that electronic mind control was a major object of study at SRI at the time. The theory was that extremely low frequency electromagnetic waves from the brain could be used to control individual subjects, sometimes called “empaths”, a great many of whom (inexplicably) were drawn from L. Ron Hubbard‘s Church of Scientology.
“Stargate Research”
Experiments also under the SRI, in what was sometimes called “Stargate Research”,[5] done entirely with a military biotechnology focus, the American Institutes of Research (AIR) in Washington was also involved in researching and evaluating what was called “remote viewing” or the potential use of psychic phenomena (ESP) in military and domestic applications. For all of this, declassified government files disclosed the vastness of several series of mind control and behavior modification experiments conducted in prisons, mental hospitals and campuses from 1950 through the early 1970s, with about 45 institutions and laboratories engaged in this secret and inhumane brain research, of which SRI was an integral part.
MK-Programs Leadership and Scope
The project was under the direct command of a Dr. Sidney Gottlieb and received undisclosed but almost unlimited millions of dollars for hundreds of experiments on human subjects at hundreds of locations across the United States, Canada and Europe, the eventual budget for this program apparently having exceeded $1 billion per year. The evil in some of these MK-ULTRA documents is almost palpable, one such document from 1955 stating openly of a search for “substances which will cause (temporary or) permanent brain damage as well as loss of memory”. Part of the intent was to develop “techniques that would crush the human psyche to the point that it would admit anything”. In a US government memo from 1952, a program director asked, “Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature, such as self-preservation?” It also listed the wide range of horrid abuses to which the victims would be subjected. These people were not bashful about their intent.
The mechanics included primordial sex programming for women in attempts to eliminate learned moral convictions and stimulate primitive sexual instinct devoid of inhibitions, to create a kind of sex machine – the ultimate prostitute for diplomatic espionage. Several researchers have claimed the sexual appetite of these women was developed in young girls their formative years through constant incest with a government employee who had been deliberately developed as a father figure to the girls. In part, these programs involved conditioning the human mind through torture, with one portion of this program intended to train special agents as fearless terrorists lacking self-preservation instincts and who would willingly commit suicide if caught. They even experimented with electronic implants, inaudible sounds, messages embedded in the subconscious mind, mind altering drugs and much more. One portion of this extensive operation involved an attempt to create an assassins program, to learn if it were possible to kidnap a national in another country, conduct hypnosis and other techniques, then return them home to assassinate their leaders.
Dr. John Gittinger
There was also a Dr. John Gittinger who was Sidney Gottlieb’s protégé and who developed an astonishing complex of personality and psychological tests that were apparently quite accurate in guiding the CIA in determining the best approach toward manipulating and compromising individuals, including turning patriots into spies, as well as converting housewives, nurses, and high-priced fashion models into very effective espionage prostitutes, killers, and so much more.[6][7] Gittinger was so successful the CIA built him a special party room walled with one-way mirrors where CIA psychologists could watch these compromised people at work. Gittinger was apparently a “specialist” at making his victims lose touch with external reality, no doubt in conjunction with Gottlieb’s LSD. He also was apparently quite expert at identifying those individuals who could be easily hypnotised, those who would quickly go into a trance compared to those who would not, and also those who would faithfully comply with any and all post-hypnotic suggestions and experience total amnesia afterward. Perfect assassins.
Gittinger applied his “personality” tests to at least 30,000 people, since he had files on at least that many, so this was not a trivial exercise for the CIA. And, since this was the CIA, he was especially interested in deviant personalities, or those that could be made deviant, those with vices or with weaknesses that could be further programmed, especially to become traitors, and those who would be most susceptible to the influence of psychedelic drugs. He worked closely with Harris Isbell, who ran the MKULTRA mind-control drug program at the Lexington, Kentucky detention hospital, who would send him hundreds of people who could be pushed to “uncontrollable urges”, especially of a sexual or a murderous nature. Or both. This was one main use of the party room with the one-way mirrors. Ironically, it was Gittinger who inadvertently put the wheels in motion for the impeachment and resignation of then-US President Richard Nixon. When Daniel Ellsberg[8] released the Pentagon Papers, John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s personal assistant, arranged for the CIA to break into the office of Ellsberg’s psychiatrist to obtain a copy of Gittinger’s personality and emotional test on this man, meant to be used by the CIA “as a kind of psychological road map to compromise Ellsberg”, just as they did in exploiting the weaknesses of so many others. Unfortunately, the burglars bungled the job.
There was one documented story of an American nurse who, after completing her training by Gottlieb and Gittinger, “had volunteered her body for her country”, and who was being programmed as the personal Mata Hari of a particular Russian diplomat and either get him to defect to the US or to become so compromised they could blackmail him into becoming an American spy. And, when necessary, “terminate” him. A great many of these encounters with what were called “recruitment targets” occurred in the room with the one-way mirrors and all recorded on film, one part of the sexual technology developed in the CIA safe houses in San Francisco as part of Operation Midnight Climax. Gottlieb’s Technical Services staff apparently amassed quite a wealth of experience and an abundance of “volunteers” in these sexual entrapment operations, claiming, “We had women ready – call them a stable”, who were quite adept at not only seduction but all manner of sexual activity and murder for the national security of their country.
Another portion of this same program designed to control individuals totally, “I was sent to deal with the most negative aspects of the human condition. It was planned destructiveness. First, you’d check to see if you could destroy a man’s marriage. If you could, then that would be enough to put a lot of stress on the individual, to break him down. Then you might start a minor rumor campaign against him. Harass him constantly. Bump his car in traffic. A lot of it is ridiculous, but it may have a cumulative effect.” The theory, according to Gittinger’s personality tests, was that the creation of sufficient stress from destructive personal loss, combined with other programming including the application of psycho-chemical drugs, would either turn an enemy or render him totally neutralised.
The CIA did all of these not only in America, but around the world, using Gittinger’s personality profiles to identify those military and other leaders in nations the US wanted to control. The psychological testing, combined with all the other dirty tricks of the trade, and certainly including the nurses, housewives and models who could be persuaded to develop “uncontrollable urges” to “volunteer her body for her country”, greatly assisted the US government in placing into power those who could be counted on to obey their colonial master. South Korea and Japan are two good examples of this, as are many countries in Latin America. The CIA, with the immense assistance of Gottlieb and Gittinger, could always spot those “who were most likely to succumb”.
Dr. Louis Jolyon West
Louis Jolyon (Jolly) West, M.D. (1924-1999)[9][10] was a well-known Los Angles psychiatrist who served as the chair of UCLA’s Department of Psychiatry and as director of the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute from 1969 to 1989. He was an expert on cults, coercive persuasion (“brainwashing”), alcoholism, drug abuse, violence, and terrorism, not in preventing these but in causing them. His “Violence Project” is famous.
From the reports, the CIA was so excited about the possibilities in these experiments at SRI that a great many millions of dollars were diverted to these projects, augmented by parapsychology experiments simultaneously undertaken at Fort Meade by the NSA. Medical oversight for this enormous range of experiments was under the control of yet another CIA pervert, Dr. Louis Jolyon West, then a professor of psychiatry at UCLA, one of the most notorious CIA mind-control specialists in the country. It is difficult to avoid the conclusion that these people were all crazy, since the CIA, NSA and even INSCOM and military intelligence (and of course the Church of Scientology) all cooperated with SRI in research that included Tarot cards, the channeling of spirits, communing with demons, and more.
But according to SRI itself, Dr. West’s work included not only radio waves and parapsychology, but the creation of dissociative personalities “that enabled the subjects of mind-control conditioning to adapt to trauma”. West referred to these people as “changelings” who produced alternate but actually schizophrenic insane mental states (multiple induced personalities) to permit them to deal with what was termed “prolonged environmental stress”, i.e. forced drug injections, physical, mental and sexual abuse, and psychic programming, all usually utilising large dosages of LSD, Gottlieb’s chemical of choice. There is adequate documentation that many individuals who were subjected to this CIA-sponsored “research”, developed multiple personalities, many of which were forcibly induced at a young age. There are documented stories by a few survivors who tell of enormous abuse of every kind being inflicted upon them from four or five years of age, and of having to deal with the terror of what appeared to be many different people living inside their minds. Dr. Jolyon West became a kind of research expert in these dissociative states and much of his work for the CIA’s MK-ULTRA program centered on their creation. The records reveal success in creating amnesia, false memories, altered personas, pseudo-identities, and much more, all horrifying and tragic to the individuals involved, all from West’s research in methods to “disrupt the normally integrative functions of personality”, and render people totally subject to remote control.
UCLA VIOLENCE Project
In Sid Gottlieb’s group there were also scientists who implanted electrodes into human and other brains in yet more mind-control experiments, even done on children as young as four or five years of age, all with the intention of creating a perfect ‘Manchurian Candidate’, as well as erasing memories and creating artificial ones and, of course, total control of the individual. This research into electrode implants was funded by the CIA and MKULTRA in conjunction with the Office of US Naval Research, and mostly supervised by our famous Dr. West. In fact, West began what was called the “UCLA Violence Project” at the Vacaville Prison where Donald Defreeze was apparently programmed. The projects received a great deal of funding, as I recall, much of it including West.
Dr. Harold Wolff
Many early interrogation studies were conducted by the Cornell University Medical School under the direction of a Dr. Harold Wolff[11] who requested from the CIA any information regarding “threats, coercion, imprisonment, deprivation, humiliation, torture, ‘brainwashing’, ‘black psychiatry’, and hypnosis, or any combination of these, with or without chemical agents”. According to Wolff, the research team would then: “…assemble, collate, analyze and assimilate this information and will then undertake experimental investigations designed to develop new techniques of offensive/defensive intelligence use … Potentially useful secret drugs [and various brain damaging procedures] will be similarly tested in order to ascertain the fundamental effect upon human brain function and upon the subject’s mood …”. He further, and rather chillingly, wrote, “Where any of the studies involve potential harm of the subject, we expect the Agency to make available suitable subjects and a proper place for the performance of the necessary experiments.”
Among the many other prominent universities and institutions participating in this travesty was Tulane University where both the CIA and the US military had funded what appeared to be very large-scale programs of trauma-based mind control experiments on children. In 1955, the US Army reported on studies in which their researchers had implanted electrodes into the brains of mental patients to assess the effects of LSD and a host of other untested drugs. It was at Tulane that some of the earliest sensory-deprivation experiments were conducted, isolating individuals in these chambers where they would be helplessly hallucinating for as long as one week at a time while being injected with drugs and bombarded them with taped messages, to see if individuals could be “converted to new beliefs”. These were all helpless victims who had no idea of what was happening to them. There is a long list of other famous American universities and hospitals that participated in similar human destruction, all of which have carefully santised their histories.
Philip J. Hilts
When West died in 1999, the New York Times, again true to form, published a delightful obituary written by a Philip J. Hilts,[12] who described West as “a charismatic leader in psychiatry”, a man whose work “centered on people who have been taken to the limits of human experience, like “brainwashed” prisoners of war, kidnapping victims and abused children”, without bothering to mention that West’s supposed centering on these people did not mean he was caring for them, but that he created those conditions. West was in fact the man who was doing the brainwashing and abusing of children, not repairing their damage. Hilts told us West once witnessed an execution and was forever after against the death penalty for prisoners. It would seem unfortunate he wasn’t against a death penalty for his own victims. The NYT tells us West was “a colorful figure, an alive person”. How nice. All obituaries tend to be complimentary when written by family or friends, though when the compliment-only obituaries are written by the primary news media that has a powerful effect on whitewashing, air-brushing and re-writing history – which would certainly be the intent of the New York Times. Nothing else could account for the glowing description.
Dissociative Personality Disorder
I must digress for a moment to discuss a condition generally referred to as Multiple Personality Disorder or Dissociative Personality Disorder, a condition in which a person develops several distinct personas or personalities within his or her mind, generally totally closed off from each other, and most often created as a defense mechanism to protect a vulnerable mind from destruction due to horrors it has experienced. In simple terms, a tortured mind that witnesses and experiences unspeakable horrors, events too terrible to live with, will create an additional personality in which this mind will live, closing off the other from consciousness. It is the horrors themselves, consisting of every manner of physical and sexual abuse, torture, drug and electroshock treatment, perhaps witnessing the deaths or killings of other children, that force the creation of these multiple personas, this apparently being quite easy to accomplish when done to children at a young age.
Amnesia between these multiple personalities is total: When functioning in one persona, the individual (in this case, the child) has no knowledge of the existence of the others and functions as would a totally different person. The walls between these different personas are built of steel. The purpose of creating these multiple personalities is that the “physician” can control them, can evoke any one of them at any time, and can in a real sense “design” each one, creating for it false memories, histories, attitudes, behavior patterns, loyalties, moralities, everything, and especially obedience. To understand this, you can loosely think of a person under hypnosis, acting out and following to the letter various post-hypnotic suggestions, and with total amnesia later. Many psychiatrists have claimed this is not very difficult to accomplish in practice; the theory and methods have been well proven.
In fact, one thread that ran through all facets of Gottlieb’s MK-ULTRA program, and stated clearly in an MK-ULTRA document from 1955, was a search for “substances that will produce total amnesia and loss of memory [even at the cost of] permanent brain damage” in individuals who had been thus conditioned by CIA psychiatrists, the amnesia including not only the actions performed by their alternate personalities but the very fact of their ever having been programmed.
You can already see the military and espionage potential of such persons when groomed from childhood to early adulthood by this method. The alternate personas can be couriers of information, that information residing in a hidden persona and not available to the conscious knowledge of another and able to be recalled only by an agent at the receiving end. One persona could be a drug courier, or an assassin trained not only to kill remorselessly but to willingly commit suicide if caught. Another persona, and one in which Gottlieb and his men specialised, was the creation of a Lolita, a child sexual pervert without morals or inhibitions, whose entire training and purpose are in the art of appealing sexually to men, to compromise them in preparation for blackmail or even to kill them if the compromise fails. In effect, a robot who will unhesitatingly follow any commands or instructions. And the method for forcing the creation these programmable multiple personalities lies in abuse of the child. Physical and sexual abuse, torture, pain, electroshock, drug treatments, and not only personally experiencing but also witnessing unspeakable horrors to others, will automatically create the fertile field of multiple personalities the physician can now program. [13]
George Estabrooks
Hypnotism too, was a major portion of the CIA’s program of mind control. George Estabrooks was an expert on hypnotism, which he oddly equated with the creation of multiple personalities, almost insisting they were two sides of the same coin.[14] Perhaps they are; I have no idea. Estabrooks had apparently utilised his version of hypnosis to “program” US government agents, though on what basis the record is unclear. However, he was quoted as having said, “The key to creating an effective spy or assassin rests in splitting a man’s personality, or creating multipersonality, with the aid of hypnotism … This is not science fiction. I have done it.”
The following is an extract from a document I received, but I was unable to confirm the source. With recognition to the original author, I present it here as I received it.
“In his published works, Estabrooks candidly stated that what was needed is a subject suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD), which he said “could already exist within the subject or be created by the therapist”. In all cases, however, the condition is created by severe trauma – so severe in fact that the traumatic episode cannot be integrated into the experiences of the core personality. Far and away the most common cause of MPD is early childhood abuse, usually inflicted by a parent or other adult guardian. As Dr. Frank Putnam stated in 1989: “I am struck by the quality of extreme sadism that is reported by most MPD victims. Many multiples have told me of being sexually abused by groups of people, of being forced into prostitution by family members, or of being offered as sexual enticement to their mother’s boyfriends. After one has worked with a number of MPD patients, it becomes obvious that severe, sustained, and repetitive child abuse is a major element in the creation of MPD.”
When the abuse is of an extreme nature, the natural human reaction is to build a wall around such experiences, so to speak, by creating a separate and distinct personality to deal with future episodes of abuse. Once the core personality is split, it is then possible to control one or more of the [alternative personalities] that have been created, without the conscious knowledge of the main personality. This, according to Estabrooks, creates the ‘Super Spy’, willing to follow orders unquestioningly without even being aware that he is doing so.
Estabrooks wrote that:
“everyone could be thrown into the deepest state of [this kind of] hypnotism by the use of what [I] termed … no holds barred, deliberate disintegration of the personality by psychic torture … The subject might easily be left a mental wreck but war is a grim business.”
He also said that children made especially good subjects because they were “notoriously easy to hypnotize” or, as another writer so perfectly said, “Which is to say, children are particularly vulnerable to abuse and have more of a tendency to dissociate traumatic experiences, thereby creating [alternate] identities that can be later exploited and controlled.”
Another CIA document dated January 7, 1953, deals at length with one medical practitioner reporting to his colleagues on some of his successes, at one time boasting that with his access to congressional offices he was able to call in dozens of young women to take part in a brief “experiment” in hypnosis, to then have sexual intercourse with all of them, then introduce total amnesia so they had no recollection of anything happening. He described another example of hypnotising one young woman clerk and telling her that another young woman was an evil foreign agent who meant to kill her, and she apparently picked up and fired an unloaded gun (which she believed to be loaded) in obedience to his commands to kill. She had complete amnesia after the event. He described yet another event where he hypnotised another young woman and had her steal Top Secret files, remove them from the building and give them to a complete stranger on the street. The trauma-induced multiple personalities, hypnosis included, were the largely unknown but major portion of MK-ULTRA and, as you will see, certainly the most depraved and deadly.
Dr. Karl Pribram
The idea of mind control was front and center in many CIA programs during this period, most involving political subterfuge and all generally designed to serve American geopolitical ambitions until well after the Vietnam War. For many years, SRI was described as being a “hive of covert political subterfuge”, and there exist a great many reasons to suspect that the small floods of terror that suddenly emerged in California during this time, all had their origins in the CIA’s MK-ULTRA programs and SRI. For one, the CIA operated a desperately secret mind-control program at the Vacaville Prison in California, using drugs like LSD, EM mind control machines and more, all with funds secretly channeled through SRI. Dr. Karl Pribram,[15] director of the Neuropsychology Research Laboratory, was a strong proponent of these mind control machines, stating, “I certainly could educate a child by putting an electrode in the lateral hypothalamus and then selecting the situations at which I stimulate it. In this was I can grossly change his behavior.” The magazine ‘Psychology Today’ lavishly praised Pribram at the time as “The Magellan of Brain Science.”
The CIA and US military had engaged in substantial behavioral modification experiments involving children for decades, with most of this activity having been deeply buried, the accounts sanitised and the records destroyed. In one such reported case, Drs. Sidney Malitz, Bernard Wilkens and Harold Esecover conducted experiments, this time funded by both the CIA and the Public Health Service, on 100 psychiatric patients, using various drugs and other mind-control and psycho-surgical techniques, after which all 100 patients received lobotomies and were then discarded. Many similar tests and experiments occurred at the Bordertown juvenile reformatory in New Jersey, a horrid site of many CIA behavior-modification and mind-control experiments on children, largely perpetrated by a Dr. Carl C. Pfeiffer of Emory University.
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CIA PROJECT MK-ULTRA (SADISTIC TORTURE & MURDER OF MASSES OF CHILDREN INCLUDED)
Guidelines to Differential Diagnosis between Schizophrenia and Ritual Abuse/Mind Control Traumatic Stress
Purpose of these Guidelines
The purpose of this chapter is threefold; 1) to identify the problem of mis-diagnosis of Schizophrenia in adults with trauma-based disorders originating in ritual abuse and trauma-based mind control (we will refer to these hereon as Ritual abuse/mind control traumatic stress), 2) to provide diagnosticians unfamiliar with the clinical presentation of Ritual abuse/mind control traumatic stress with guidelines to facilitate recognition of such cases and to thereby reduce the likelihood of their being mis-diagnosed as Schizophrenia, and 3) to provide diagnosticians experienced with Ritual abuse/mind control traumatic stress with guidelines to facilitate differential diagnosis between such trauma and Schizophrenia in cases with complex clinical features and diagnostic questions.
2024 - Understanding Ritual Abuse I Casey Gilboy I Ep. 08
Mis-diagnosis results in harmful outcomes for ritual abuse and mind control victims in both the mental health and the legal arena. Harmful treatment decisions based on mis-diagnosis include lack of provision of treatment for trauma, incorrect and excessive use of medications, sometimes with severe and irreversible side effects, reinforcement of victims’ fears that they are hopelessly crazy and untreatable, long-term hospitalization, and involuntary hospital commitment. Harmful legal outcomes include incorrect findings of insanity, valid reports of abuse being viewed as delusional within law enforcement investigations and judicial proceedings, and forced conservatorship removing victims’ basic freedoms.
In order to judge the veracity of victims’ reports of these abuses, the clinician must have a basis for understanding what ritual abuse and trauma-based mind control programming are, that they do exist, the kinds of torture endured by victims of these abuses, and familiarity with the most common ritual symbols, artifacts, and holidays utilized by these abuser groups. A general overview of these now follows.
The Existence of Ritual Abuse
The term ritual abuse is often used broadly to include any organized abusive practice that furthers the abuser group’s ideology. However, the term is usually restricted to organized physical or sexual assault, often including homicide and severe psychological abuse, within the context of a spiritual practice or belief. Some definitions encompass any spiritual belief. But, most definitions use the term to refer to practices that involve physical and sexual abuse of children and adults, and human sacrifice, to propitiate and empower malevolent deities, such as Satan, but also including many polytheistic gods and goddesses.
A substantial body of psychological literature supports that ritualistic abuse is a real phenomenon that must be correctly assessed and treated (Belitz & Schacht, 1992; Bernet & Chang, 1997; Bloom, 1994; Boat, 1991; Boyd, 1991; Brown, 1994; Clark, 1994; Clay, 1996; Coleman, 1994a, 1994b; Comstock, 1991;, Comstock & Vickery, 1992; Cook, 1991; Coons, 1997; Cozolino, 1989, 1990; Crabtree, 1993; deMause, 1994; Driscoll & Wright, 1991; Edwards, 1991; Ehrensaft, 1992; Faller, 1994; Feldman, 1993; Fine, 1989; Finkelhor, Williams, & Burns, 1988; Fraser, 1990, 1991, 1993a, 1993b, 1997a, 1997b; Friesen, 1991, 1992, 1993; Golston, 1993; Gonzalez, Waterman, Kelly, McCord, & Oliveri, 1993; Goodman, Quas, Bottoms, Qin, Shaver, Orcutt, & Shapiro, 1997; Goodwin, 1993, 1994; Goodwin, Hill, & Attias, 1990; Gould, 1992, 1995; Gould & Cozolino, 1992; Gould & Graham-Costain, 1994; Gould & Neswald, 1992; Greaves, 1992; Groenendijk & van der Hart, 1995; Hammond, 1992; Harvey, 1993; Hill & Goodwin, 1989; Hornstein, 1991; Hudson, 1990, 1991; Ireland & Ireland, 1994; Johnson, 1994; Jones, 1991; Jonker & Jonker-Bakker, 1991, 1997; Katchen, 1992; Katchen & Sakheim, 1992; Kelley, 1989; King & Yorker, 1996; Kinscherff & Barnum,
1992; Kluft, 1988, 1989a, 1989b, 1994, 1995; Lawrence, Cozolino, & Foy, 1995; Leavitt, 1994, 2000a, 2000b; Leavitt & Labott, 1998a, 1998b, 2000; Lockwood, 1993; Lloyd, 1992; MacHovec, 1992; Mandell & Schiff, 1993; Mangen, 1992; Mayer, 1991; McCulley, 1994; McFadyen, Hanks, & James, 1993; McFarland & Lockerbie, 1994; Moriarty, 1991, 1992; Neswald & Gould, 1993; Neswald, Gould, & Graham-Costain, 1991; Noblitt, 1995; Noblitt & Perskin, 2000; Nurcombe & Unutzer, 1991; Oksana, 1994, 2001; Paley, 1992; Pulling & Cawthorn,1989; Raschke, 1990; Rockwell, 1994, 1995; Rose, 1996; Ross, 1995; Ryder, 1992, 1997; Ryder & Noland, 1992; Sachs, 1990; Sakheim, 1996; Sakheim & Devine, 1992; Scott, 2001; Sinason, 1994; Smith, C. 1998; Smith, M. 1993; Smith, M.R., 1992; Smith & Pazder, 1981; Snow & Sorenson, 1990; Stafford, 1993; Steele, H., 2003; Steele, K, 1989; Stratford, 1993; Summit, 1994; Tamarkin, 1994a, 1994b; Tate, 1991; Uherek, 1991; Valente, 1992, 2000; Van Benschoten, 1990; van der Hart, 1993; Vesper, 1991; Waterman, Kelly, Olivieri, McCord, 1993; Weir & Wheatcroft, 1995; Wong & McKeen, 1990; Woodsum, 1998; Young, 1992, 1993; Young, Sachs, Braun, & Watkins, 1991; Young & Young, 1997; Youngson, 1993.
The publishing arm of the American Psychiatric Association, the American Psychiatric Press, published a text in 1997 explaining the importance of correct assessment and treatment of victims of ritualistic abuse (The Dilemma of Ritual Abuse: Cautions and Guides for Therapists, edited by Fraser). One national survey of 2709 clinical psychologists found that 30% claimed to have seen at least one case of "ritualistic or religion-based abuse" and 93% of these psychologists believed the harm actually occurred (Goodman, Qin, Bottoms, & Shaver, 1994).
A review of the empirical evidence of ritual abuse is included in a book by Noblitt and Perskin (Cult and Ritual Abuse, 2000, Chapter 6). Noblitt and Perskin (2000) propose that “Cult and Ritual Trauma Disorder” be added as a new diagnosis to the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). Inclusion of this diagnosis in the upcoming DSM would facilitate proper diagnosis and treatment of individuals with Ritual abuse/mind control traumatic stress, and would reduce mis-diagnosis of these individuals as having Schizophrenia and other psychotic or delusional disorders.
Trauma-Based Mind Control Programming
Organizations with a wide range of political and criminal agendas have historically relied on coercive interrogation and brainwashing of various types to force submission and information from enemies and victims, and to indoctrinate and increase cooperation in members and captives. In modern times, these techniques are used by political/military/espionage organizations, race/ethnic hate-groups, criminal groups (e.g., child pornographers and sex rings, and international traffickers of women, children, guns, and drugs) and exploitative and destructive cults with spiritual or other agendas. Methods of “thought reform” used by such groups include intimidation, social isolation, religious indoctrination, threats against victims or their loved ones, torture, torture of co-captives, and brainwashing through social influence or deprivation of basic needs, such as sleep or food (see Releasing the Bonds: Empowering People to Think for Themselves (2000), by Steven Hassan).
Trauma-based mind control programming is a term generally used for thought reform that goes beyond the above-described overt torture, intimidation, and brainwashing of the conscious mind, to covert installation of information in the unconscious mind through sophisticated, often technological, Machiavellian means. Mental health and law enforcement professionals working with severe trauma are increasingly seeing victims of such torture (Boyd, 1991; Coleman, 1994b; Hersha, Hersha, Griffis, & Schwarz, 2001; Katchen & Sakheim, 1992; Keith, 1998; Marks, 1979; Neswald & Gould, 1993; Neswald et al., 1991; Noblitt & Perskin, 2000; Oksana, 2001; Ross, 2000; Rutz, 2001; Ryder, 1992; Sheflin & Opton, 1978; Smith, 1993; Weinstein, 1990), and evidence has begun to surface in the legal arena (e.g., Orlikow v. U.S., 682 F.S. 77 (D.D.C. 1988).
Trauma-based mind control programming can be defined as systematic torture that blocks the victim’s capacity for conscious processing (through pain, terror, drugs, illusion, sensory deprivation, sensory over-stimulation, oxygen deprivation, cold, heat, spinning, brain stimulation, and often, near-death), and then employs suggestion and/or classical and operant conditioning (consistent with well-established behavioral modification principles) to implant thoughts, directives, and perceptions in the unconscious mind, often in newly-formed trauma-induced dissociated identities, that force the victim to do, feel, think, or perceive things for the purposes of the programmer. The objective is for the victim to follow directives with no conscious awareness, including execution of acts in clear violation of the victim’s volition, moral principles, and spiritual convictions.
One common function of trauma-based mind control programming is to cause the victim to physically and psychologically re-experience the torture used to install the programming should the victim consider violating its directives. The most common programs are unidimensional directives communicated during torture and impaired states of consciousness to, "Remember to forget" the abuse, and "Don't tell" about the abuse. Similar to this are pronouncements; claims, curses, covenants, etc., paired with abuse, that convince personalities they are controlled by evil entities, or forever malevolently defined as evil, physically or mentally ill, socially devalued and isolated, sexually enslaved, a murderer, a willing cult member, a coven member, etc.
Much trauma-based mind control programming is significantly more complex, more technological in its methods of installation, and utilizes the individual’s dissociated identities (personalities) to effect greater layering of psychological effects. Personalities are usually programmed to take executive control of the body in response to particular cues (hand signals, tones, etc.), and then follow directives, with complete amnesia for these events. Personalities are programmed to become flooded with anxiety or feel acutely suicidal if they defy program directives. Personalities are often programmed to believe that explosives have been surgically implanted in their bodies and that these will detonate if the individual violates orders or begins to recall the programming, the torture used to install it, or the identities of the programmers.
In highly sophisticated mind control, the individual is programmed to perceive inanimate structures in the unconscious inner landscape. “Structures” are mental representations of objects, e.g., buildings, grids, devices of torture, and other containers, that “hold” programmed commands, messages, information, and personalities. In many cases, walls are also installed that serve as barriers to hide deeper levels of programming and structures. Dissociated personalities perceive themselves as trapped within, or attached to, these structures, both visually (in internal imagery), and somatically (in experiences of pain, suffocation, electroshock, etc.).
Structures are mentally installed in early childhood, generally between two and five years of age. Torture, drugs, and even near death, are used in a variety of ways that make it extremely difficult for the child to mentally resist any of the programmer's input, and to ensure that memories of programing sessions remain dissociated. The child may be tortured on a device, and the personalities formed in this process then perceive themselves trapped on these devices. Or an image of an object may be projected on the child’s body or on a screen, or in virtual reality goggles, or a physical model of the object is shown. The programmer then tells the child that this object is now within him or her. Because the child is in an altered, disoriented state, and because the mind of the small child does not easily discriminate reality and fantasy (this process relies on the pre-school child’s use of magical thinking), the child now perceives the object as a structure within. Then, a code is installed, for the programmer to gain future access to the structure, to erase it, or to input new information.
Immediately after the structure is installed, the programmer will generally command traumatized personalities go to places in the structures, e.g., “Go inside the grid”. The programmer will generally also mentally install the perception of wires, bombs, and re-set buttons, to prevent removal of the structure. The child is usually shown something to make him or her perceive these as real, e.g., a button on the belly-button.
Kinds of Torture Endured in Ritual Abuse and Trauma-Based Mind Control
Knowledge of the methods of torture used within ritual abuse and trauma-based mind control provides a basis for recognition of related trauma disorders. Individuals subjected to these forms of torture may experience intense fear, phobic reactions, or physiological symptoms in response to associated stimuli. In some cases, the individual, or particular dissociated identities, experience a preoccupation with, or attraction to, related stimuli.
Victims may be able to describe the torture they have endured, or they may fear doing so. In many cases of ritual abuse and mind control trauma, the abuse remains dissociated when the individual first seeks treatment. Typically, the initial presenting problems are symptoms of anxiety, depression, or trauma derived from childhood sexual abuse, usually by a family member, who is eventually understood as a participant in the abuser group.
The following is a partial list of these forms of torture:
1. Sexual abuse and torture.2. Confinement in boxes, cages, coffins, etc., or burial (often with an opening or air-tube for oxygen).3. Restraint; with ropes, chains, cuffs, etc.4. Near-drowning.5. Extremes of heat and cold, including submersion in ice water, burning chemicals, and being held over fire. 6. Skinning for sacrifice or for torture. Pain-inducing drugs, chemicals, and/or adhesive tape can create an illusion of being skinned without permanent injury or scars.7. Spinning.8. Blinding or flashing light.9. Electric shock.10. Forced ingestion of offensive body fluids and matter, such as blood, urine, feces, flesh, etc.11. Being hung upside down or in painful positions.12. Hunger and thirst.13. Sleep deprivation.14 Compression with weights and devices.15. Sensory deprivation.16. Changes in atmospheric pressure (for example, using rapid pressure changes in a hyperbaric chamber to produce the "bends" and intense ear pain).17. Drugs to create illusion, confusion, and amnesia, often given by injection or intravenously.18. Oral or intravenous delivery of toxic chemicals to create pain or illness, including chemotherapy agents. 19. Limbs pulled or dislocated.20. Application of snakes, spiders, maggots, rats, and other animals to induce fear and disgust.21. Near-death experiences; such as by drowning or suffocation with immediate resuscitation.22. Forced to perform or witness abuse, torture and sacrifice of people and animals, usually with knives.23. Forced participation in child pornography and prostitution.24. Raped to become pregnant; the fetus is then aborted for ritual use, or the baby is taken for sacrifice or enslavement.25. Spiritual abuse to cause victims to feel possessed, harassed, and controlled internally by spirits or demons. 26. Desecration of Judeo-Christian beliefs and forms of worship; e.g., dedication to Satan or other deities.27. Abuse and illusion to convince victims that God is evil, such as convincing a child that God has raped her. 28. Surgery to torture, experiment, or cause the perception of physical or spiritual bombs or “implants”.29. Harm or threats of harm to family, friends, loved ones, pets, and other victims, to force compliance.30. Use of illusion and virtual reality to confuse and create non-credible disclosure.
To illustrate, ritual abuse survivors may experience intense phobic reactions to spiders or maggots (item 20). They may fear water and baths (items 4 and 5). They often fear hypodermic needles (item 18). They become easily too cold, too hot (item 5), or thirsty (item 12). They may have aversive reactions to cameras (item 23). They may become upset upon seeing babies, dolls, or particular animals, or they may strongly identify with abused and abandoned animals and children (items 22, 24, and 29). Sexual aversions are common (items 1, 23, and 24), as is vulnerability to repeated sexual victimization. Sexual compulsions and paraphilias, such as sadism, can also occur (Young et al., 1991).
Food aversions and eating disorders are common. Ritual abuse survivors may not be able to eat food that is brown or red because these remind them of feces and blood. They are often repulsed by meat, are vegetarian, or fast excessively, or regurgitate food, derived from forced ingestion of body matter and fluids (item 10).
Ritual abuse survivors, by and large, believe in the presence and power of spiritually evil forces, and often feel personally plagued by these (items 25, 26, 27, and 28). They may experience anxiety or an aversion to God and religion (items 26 and 27), or may alternatively be devout in their spiritual beliefs and practices.
Art productions, creative writing, and sandtrays, will often reflect their torture; including knives, religious symbols, frightening figures, coffins, burials, etc. Children unconsciously reenact elements of torture they have witnessed or experienced with toys and other objects. For example, a three-year-old boy wrapped a rope three times around his neck and pulled upward, as if to hang himself. A three-year-old girl sang about marrying Satan.
External or internal reminders of torture-related stimuli often precipitate dissociative responses, such as entering a trance state, falling asleep, or an other personality taking executive control of the individual. Torture-associated stimuli may also elicit disturbing impulses to re-enact unprocessed trauma, such as impulses to self-mutilate, or stab or sexually assault an other person.
Somatoform and conversion reactions occur frequently in response to ritual abuse and mind control trauma-reminders. Individuals often experience localized pain, especially genitourinary, musculoskeletal, and gastrointestinal, motor inhibitions, nausea, or even swelling in the affected area, prior to retrieval of any visual or narrative memory of the related torture. These are generally very distressing to the affected individual. Once the trauma is re-associated and processed within the context of psychotherapy or other forms of support, these somatoform and conversion reactions usually dissipate.
Survivors of trauma-based mind control often respond with distress to fluorescent lighting, since so much programming utilizes intense lighting (item 8). They may startle in response to a telephone ringing, related to programming to receive or make calls to abusers. They may believe they have microphones inside their heads that will relay their disclosures to their abusers (item 28). Fears of electronic or spiritual surveillance, and threats to loved ones (item 29), inhibit their ability to defy and escape their abusers or to disclose their abuse.
Victims of trauma-based mind control also usually experience intense or odd reactions to benign stimuli that were used in their programming. For example, they may have been programmed to “remember to forget” every time they see an apple, or to remember they are being watched every time they hear a police or fire siren. Similarly, they may make repetitive, robotic statements that do not make sense in the context of dialogue, e.g., "I want to go home", a common programmed statement intended to keep victims obedient to abuser groups and reporting to their abusers. Specific songs may be compulsively sung for similar programmed purposes.
All of these symptoms can occur prior to the individual having any conscious knowledge of the related abuse. This point is critical. Dissociative and neurobiological responses to overwhelming trauma (van der Kolk, McFarlane, & Weisaeth, 1996) often prevent these experiences from being processed into a coherent narrative memory. The diagnostician cannot rely on the patient to “put the pieces together” of their clinical picture.
Finally, generalized guilt and survivor guilt are strongly associated with ritual abuse, since participation in victimization of others is a mainstay of ritual abuse and mind control torture (items 22 and 29).
For more on recognition of symptoms specific to ritual abuse trauma, see Boyd 1991; Coleman 1994a; Gould 1992; Hudson 1991; Mangen 1992; Oksana 2001; Pulling and Cawthorn, 1989; Ross 1995; Ryder 1992; Young 1992; and Young and Young 1997.
Ritual Symbols, Artifacts, and Holidays Utilized by Groups Practicing Ritual Abuse
Practitioners of ritual abuse observe holidays and employ symbols and artifacts particular to their spiritual practices and beliefs. Victims may describe these, draw them, or be preoccupied with them. Commonly, victims experience increased distress as these dates approach and in relation to these symbols and artifacts. Recognition of ritual symbols, artifacts, and holidays alert the clinician to possible victimization in affected individuals.
Ritual holidays vary between groups, but some of the most common of these include victims’ birthdays, many Christian holidays (often in opposition to Christian doctrine and practice), All Hallows Eve through Samhain (October 29 through November 4), Candlemas (February 2), Beltane (May 1, and 10 days prior in preparation), Lammas (August 2), the vernal and autumnal equinoxes (March 21 and September 21), the summer and winter solstices (June 21 and December 21), full moons, new moons, and “Marriage to the Beast” in some practitioners of Satanism (September 5 to 7). Extreme distress, increased self-mutilation, suicidality, and hospitalizations in relation to ritual holidays are a strong indicator of ritual trauma (Ross, 1995).
Symbols and artifacts also vary, but commonly-reported ones include the five-pointed star within a circle (inverted in Satanism, upright in abusive witchcraft), the six-pointed star, the inverted Christian cross, the symmetrical cross in a circle, the letter “A” within a circle (the cross of the “A” extends beyond the circle), the Swastika within a circle (also utilized by Nazi-agenda groups), the circle, the triangle (upright or inverted), the Ankh, the infinity sign, lightening bolts, the Nero cross (peace symbol), the “all-seeing eye” in a triangle atop a pyramid (as on the United States dollar bill), altars upon which people are physically or sexually abused or sacrificed, black candles (often associated with sacrifice), white candles, other-colored candles, chalices, robes (often black, sometimes white and other colors), masks, swords and knives, snakes, spiders, the head of the goat, red (blood), black (death), brown (feces), and fixation on particular numbers (often, 6, 7, 8, 9, or 13).
The above-described holidays, symbols, and ritual artifacts, are generally not associated with victimization by political/military/espionage, race/ethnic hatred, or criminal groups (except the Swastika), unless they have a concurrent spiritual agenda. More detailed information on common ritual symbols, artifacts, and holidays utilized by groups with malevolent spiritual agendas are available in published accounts (See Boyd, 1991; Coleman, 1994b; Edwards, 1991; Katchen & Sakheim,1992; Pulling & Cawthon, 1989 (good illustrations); Ross, 1995; Ryder, 1992 (good illustrations); Oksana, 2001).
Primary Psychiatric Diagnoses for Individuals with Ritual Abuse and/or Mind Control Trauma
Using present diagnostic criteria, individuals with ritual abuse and/or mind control trauma generally hold a primary diagnosis of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), Disorders of Extreme Stress-Not Otherwise Specified (DESNOS), or a Dissociative Disorder, most commonly Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). Secondary diagnoses often include other Anxiety Disorders (especially Panic Disorder and Phobias),
Mood Disorders, Eating Disorders, Sleep Disorders, Personality Disorders, Substance Abuse Disorders, Sexual Dysfunctions, Somatoform Disorders, Pain Disorders, Conversion Disorders, and stress-related physical diseases. The first step in accurate differential diagnosis from Schizophrenia is good working knowledge of the three primary diagnoses.
The reader is already likely familiar with the diagnostic criteria for PTSD. Briefly, these include three clusters of symptoms in response to having been exposed to a traumatic event. The first is persistent re- experiencing of the trauma in intrusive distressing recollections, recurrent distressing dreams, and the experience of the trauma re-occurring, as in re-living the experience, illusions, hallucinations, and dissociative flashback episodes, and intense psychological distress or physiological reactivity at exposure to internal or external cues associated with the trauma. The second is persistent avoidance of stimuli associated with the trauma, including the inability to recall an important aspect of the trauma, numbing of general responsiveness, and restricted range of affect. The third is persistent symptoms of increased arousal, including difficulty falling or staying asleep, irritability or outbursts of anger, difficulty concentrating, hypervigilance, and an exaggerated startle response.
Disorders of Extreme Stress-Not Otherwise Specified (DESNOS) are a relatively more recent diagnostic formulation not included in the DSM-IV (American Psychiatric Association, 1994), which perhaps better-capture the symptom picture of ritual abuse and/or mind control trauma survivors. These disorders are explained in depth on the world-wide-web in two scholarly articles (Luxenberg, T., Spinazzola, J., &. van der Kolk, B. (2001), Complex Trauma and Disorders of Extreme Stress (DESNOS) Diagnosis, Part One: Assessment, Directions in Psychiatry (21); Luxenberg, T., Spinazzola, J., Hidalgo, J., Hunt, C., &. van der Kolk, B. (2001), Complex Trauma and Disorders of Extreme Stress (DESNOS) Diagnosis, Part Two: Treatment, Directions in Psychiatry (21), see http://www.traumacenter.org/DESNOS.pdf)
The diagnostic criteria for DESNOS include six categories, as follows: 1) Alteration in regulation of affect and impulses, 2) Alterations in attention or consciousness (dissociative symptoms), 3) Alterations in self- perception (negative, trauma-related self-representations), 4) Alterations in relations with others (inability to trust, revictimization, or victimizing others), 5) Somatization, and 6) Alterations in systems of meaning (despair and hopelessness or loss of previously sustaining beliefs).
Dissociative disorders bear a bit more explanation, since these are generally the least recognized and understood, and because they are so strongly associated with Ritual abuse/mind control traumatic stress.
The DSM-IV Defensive Functioning Scale defines dissociation as follows; "The individual deals with emotional conflict or internal or external stressors with a breakdown in the usually integrated functions of consciousness, memory, perception of self or the environment, or sensory/motor behavior" (American Psychiatric Association, 1994, p. 755). Dissociation has become understood as a common response to trauma. Dissociative responses are generally believed to first arise during traumatic experiences and to be fortified by intrusive and chronic re-experiencing of these experiences. Common dissociative responses include self- induced trance states, numbing of psychological pain, bodily self-anesthesia, partial or full amnesia for abuse, depersonalization (feeling detached from oneself, as if in a dream), out-of-body experiences (the experience of observing one's self from without), and derealization (experiencing others or the world as less than real) (Briere, 1992; Ellenson, 1986, Hartman & Burgess, 1993; van der Kolk et al., 1996).
Dissociative responses also include many somatoform symptoms (Ross, 1997), such as transient or enduring numbness, insensitivity to pain, psychogenic stiffness or paralysis, genitourinary pain, gastrointestinal pain, musculoskeletal pain, pain on skin surfaces, disturbed smell or taste, psychogenic non-epileptic seizures, and impaired ability to see, hear, or speak. A body of research by Nijenhuis (2000) and colleagues argues convincingly that conversion and some somatization disorders are so intrinsic to dissociative disorders that they should be re-classified in the DSM as such. Nijenhuis (2000) has developed a scale to measure these, the Somatoform Dissociation Questionnaire (SDQ-20). An excellent book on the effects of trauma on health, injury, and disease is Robert Scaer’s The Body Bears the Burden: Trauma, Dissociation, and Disease (2001).
Attention to somatoform dissociative symptoms holds particular importance for assessment of Ritual abuse/mind control traumatic stress. Somatoform dissociative symptoms have been found to be associated with severity of reported childhood trauma involving physical contact or injury (Waller, Hamilton, Elliott, Lewendon, Stopa, Waters, Kennedy, Lee, Pearson, Kennerley, Hargreaves, Bashford & Chalkley, 2000). Since victims of ritual abuse and mind control have experienced extreme pain and torture, this may explain the great frequency of somatoform symptoms in this population (Oksana, 2001; Ryder, 1992). A study utilizing the SDQ-20 significantly differentiated Schizophrenia and Dissociative Disorders (Sar, Kundakci, Kiziltan, Bakim, & Bozkurt, 2000). Patients with dissociative disorders scored about twice that of patients with Schizophrenia. Thus, severity of somatoform symptoms may help differentiate patients with Ritual abuse/mind control traumatic stress from patients who should be diagnosed with Schizophrenia.
The most severe form of dissociative disorder is Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID). The DSM-IV defines its essential feature as "the presence of two or more distinct identities or personality states that recurrently take control of behavior" (p. 484). Van der Kolk et al. (1996) describe such identities as "distinct ego states that contain the traumatic experience, consisting of complex identities with distinct cognitive, affective, and behavioral patterns" (p. 307). DID is associated with chronic, intense, and early abuse, often involving a combination of physical, sexual, and emotional abuse, and frequently including experiences of profound neglect, family violence, and a generally chaotic home environment (Chu, Frey, Ganzel, & Matthews, 1999; Draijer & Langeland, 1999; Ogawa, Sroufe, Weinfield, Carlson, & Egeland, 1997; Putnam, 1997; Pynoos, Steinberg, & Goenjian,1996; Ross, 1995; Van der Kolk et al., 1996). Research suggests that its prevalence in the general population is at least 1 % and closer to 5% in samples of psychiatric patients (Ross, 1997).
Symptoms of DID include: 1) rapid personality changes, e.g., timid to aggressive, regressed to mature, female to male, 2) references to oneself in the third person, 3) reports of voices, primarily inside the head, 4) marked changes in appearance, skills, preferences, knowledge, memory, and physical complaints, 5) significant loss of time, and, 6) in children, reports that an animal or evil entity made them behave aggressively/destructively. In young children, personalities are often in a process of formation rather than fixed, thus the proposed diagnoses of "Incipient" DID (Fagan & McMahon, 1984) and "Dissociative Disorder of Childhood" (Peterson, 1996).
In ritual abuse and mind control trauma, a few personalities generally form in response to severe, early abuse, often in infancy. Personalities continue to branch off of these in response to ongoing trauma. Not uncommonly, these individuals have hundreds of personalities, receiving the diagnosis of Complex DID.
Adult survivors and child victims of ritual abuse and mind control often withhold dissociative experiences unless the subject is directly explored by the clinician. Many dissociative symptoms may be difficult for individuals to describe because they involve "negative" rather than "positive" experiences, such as, 1) amnesia, 2) emotional numbing, and 3) loss of self-awareness, time, or physical sensation. In DID, the host personality (“The personality that has executive control of the body for the greatest percentage of the time during a given time period”, Braun, 1986) may not report the presence of other personalities because the host fears them, is ashamed of them, wishes to deny their presence, or is not conscious of their existence (though internal personalities are usually aware of the host). In many cases, the individual withholds this information from the diagnostician for fear of not being believed or of being labeled “crazy”, psychotic, or Schizophrenic, a very common diagnostic error (Bliss, 1980; Kluft, 1987; Ross, 1997). However, survivors are more likely to reveal dissociative symptoms and related traumatic experiences to clinicians who demonstrate an understanding of dissociation, are respectful, and do not invalidate their experiences.
Psychological Tests in the Assessment of Ritual Abuse and/or Mind Control Trauma
The purpose of this paper is to provide guidelines for differential diagnosis within the context of the diagnostic interview and ongoing therapy rather than psychological testing. Yet, the literature on psychological testing with victims of ritual abuse, and a substantial body of research on psychological testing of DID and other dissociative disorders, inform our clinical understanding in ways that generalize to the clinical interview. These are conceptually incorporated in our differential diagnosis chart below. In complex cases in which diagnosis remains uncertain, psychological testing is indicated and the findings summarized herein can inform that process.
A review of the literature yielded few scholarly works specific to psychological testing of adult victims of ritual abuse. The most notable are by Mangen (1992), Noblitt (1995), and Leavitt and Labott (1998a, 2000).
Noblitt (1995) found that patients reporting ritual abuse had significantly higher scores than other psychiatric patients on two Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI) scales designed to measure Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). They had a mean of 86.3 on the PK scale, (PTSD by Keane: Keane, Malloy & Fairbank, 1984) and a mean of 85.8 on the PS scale, (PTSD by Schlenger: Schlenger & Kulka, 1989). Patients not reporting ritual abuse had a mean PK score of 58.3 and a mean PS score of 58.7. For patients reporting ritual abuse, 91% of them had scores in the clinically significant range (above 65) on at least one of these two scales. Both scales were developed based on research comparing MMPIs of Vietnam veterans with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder to other psychiatric patients.
Leavitt and Labott (2000) compared Rorschach results of three groups of patients; 1) patients reporting child sexual abuse within Satanic cults; 2) patients reporting child sexual abuse without ritual abuse; and 3) non-abused patients. The first two groups had histories of amnesia for their sexual trauma, memory recovery after the age of 18 years, and an absence of psychotic or neurologic symptoms. Groups were compared for frequency of 41 Rorschach content responses related to Satanic ritual abuse, selected by four experts in ritual trauma. The group of patients reporting abuse within Satanic cults gave significantly more Rorschach responses with Satanic content. The following specific percepts significantly differentiated the groups: robe, mask, body mutilated, babies damaged, ritual ceremony, threatening eyes, blood everywhere, special knife, goat reference, bondage, torture, sacrifice, hooded figure, altar, blood rituals, and circle. A second study revealed that these results were unrelated to patients’ degree of media and hospital milieu exposure to the subject of Satanic ritual abuse. In fact, less media exposure was associated with production of more Satanic content in patients reporting ritual abuse, evidence that reports of ritual abuse are not primarily the product of exposure contagion.
In an earlier study, Leavitt and Labott (1998a) found that patients reporting Satanic ritual abuse provided more Satanic-content responses in a word association test than patients reporting non-ritual sexual abuse. They also provided fewer normative responses, understandable given the pervasive nature of ritual trauma and the paucity of normal childhood experience for so many of these victims.
Mangen (1992) performed approximately 25 psychological evaluations with patients already identified as having been victimized within Satanic cults, including the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R), Rorschach, Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) or other story-telling test, a human figure drawings, and more.
Mangen found that the “testing” situation itself often induced great fear in these patients, related to the frequent “tests” of abilities within ritual abuse. Test stimuli, even benign or familiar stimuli, often acted as trauma reminders and precipitated trauma reactions and dissociative “switching” of personalities. He observed that “many responses given by these patients sound blatantly psychotic” (p. 154), but closer scrutiny revealed that these were derived from the ritual abuse and the traumatized level of functioning. He explains the importance of understanding ritual abuse practices, symbols, holidays, etc., as emphasized above.
Mangen found these individuals were of at least average intelligence. However, signs of cognitive slippage and inefficiency occurred as trauma impinged on thought processes. Idiosyncratic, personalized, and even bizarre responses to test stimuli were common. E.g., intelligence tests involving numbers, and in particular, having to repeat series of numbers backwards, often disorganized patients’ responses, since numbers and reversal of numbers and letters are common in ritual practices and programming. Mangen noted that words often lost their meaning as symbols, and were perceived as dangerous in themselves, related to abusers communicating deadly messages with words, and punishment by abusers for incorrect verbal responses. Visual images also disorganized thought processes. E.g., one woman froze when given puzzle pieces of a human figure to assemble. When asked what had happened, she “switched” into a young personality who explained that she had participated in rituals involving people being cut into pieces, but had never been told to try to put the people back together.
Mangen emphasized that such disorganized episodes are frequent, but exist side-by-side with trauma- free spheres of cognitive functioning. He suggests that the traumatized thought processes are state-dependent, and that these patients readily enter states of traumatized functioning.
Mangen’s Rorschach observations are especially revealing. Patients tended to provide images that were perceptually accurate (good form); i.e., they were largely consistent with shapes in the inkblot. In contrast, patients with Schizophrenia often have poor perceptual accuracy (poor form) on the Rorschach, a sign of more impaired perceptual and thought processes.
Though form was generally adequate, associations to the blots were replete with traumatic imagery. E.g., a perception of a person might fit the blot, but the associations might include themes of cutting and murdering babies, eating flesh, evil, etc., additions that would appear bizarre if not for the ritual trauma. Such trauma-driven associations might be made with flat affect or flooded affect. In some cases, perceptual distortions (poor form) were more central, but even these were often resolved in light of the abuse. For example, one patient perceived a person with women’s breasts and a penis, an incongruous combination (INCOM) that might indicate psychosis, if not for the fact that some sexual rituals involve people costumed to appear bi-gender. Yellow was perceived by an other patient as angry and as urine “poured all over me”. This response becomes understandable if the clinician knows that abusers often urinate on the victim, in some cases with the intent to dominate the spirit of the victim with their own spirits.
Mangen explains that drawings also contain elements that would appear bizarre without an understanding of the underlying trauma. For example, trees may contain eyes, hidden people, and blood dripping from severed limbs. Moore (1994) notes that in human figure drawings of ritual abuse victims, arms often abruptly end, appear torn off or jagged, or have unusual endings unlike hands. Ritual acts, symbols, candles, pentagrams, inverted crosses, robes, dripping blood, etc., may be graphically represented, particularly if the abuse is conscious. Cohen and Cox (1995) include a series of drawings depicting the unfolding of memories of an adult woman ritually abused as a child, replete with graphic memories of abusive rituals, ritual artifacts, her terror, phallic symbols of sexual abuse, and dissociative responses, such as multiple self- representations in one drawing, and changes in developmental level across drawings in relation to the age of the personality making the picture.
Mangen reports that ritual abuse victims demonstrate a damaged experience of self on projective tests, such as the Rorschach and TAT. Responses demonstrate a lack of self-agency, that is, a sense of lack of control over one’s life and actions. Figures are often perceived as helpless or passive. Body integrity is often impaired; figures are seen as broken, devoured, harmed, etc. Self affect is inconsistent and incongruent. For example, a figure may be described as frightened and laughing, evil and good, etc. Dissociative processes are evident in illogical shifts and transpositions. TAT stories include confusion in regard to time, states of waking and sleeping, life and death, here and not here, and sudden changes in what characters know, think, and want.
TAT stories reflect interpersonal estrangement and malevolence. Themes of caring and kindness tend to be fleeting. Themes of deception and betrayal are common; “things are not what they seem”. Kind adults turn threatening. Child figures may feign compliance, but are described as actually pretending or escaping in their minds (dissociating). Responses are consistent with the devastating and pervasive abuse these victims have experienced, so often including immediate family members.
Affect dysregulation and emotional intensity pervade test responses. Primitive violent imagery related to ritual trauma is common in Rorschach responses and TAT stories. There is a paucity of positively tinged affective experiences, such as love and hope. Terror and despair dominate. Fear of annihilation and abandonment are more common than fear of loss of love. Some responses may reflect identification with aggressors.
Dissociative responses are observed throughout the evaluation process. Blocking of affect may occur as trauma is described. Overwhelming stimuli can precipitate switching of personalities. There may be obvious changes in vocal presentation and general demeanor. Personalities may identify themselves by name. They may relay accounts of horrible abuse unknown to the host and the host may return with complete amnesia for the event. Or dissociative episodes may be more subtle, and not distinguished unless the evaluator looks for amnestic gaps, such as the repetition of test questions later in the evaluation process to determine if prior responses are recalled.
Mangen explains that the patient may not be able to reveal the “secret” of the abuse and that personalities who identify with the cult experience tend not to present themselves. Thus the clinician must work with the patient to “help make the invisible visible” (p. 155). However, he states that much more research is needed on the use of psychological testing in identifying severe trauma, dissociation, and in particular ritual trauma, to help clinicians to recognize patients who are still preserving the “secret” and not yet revealing their ritual abuse.
Since 1989, a number of assessment and screening tools have been proven very useful in discovering dissociative symptomatology. These tools can play a critical role in differentiating Dissociative Disorders from Schizophrenia (Steinberg, Cicchetti, Buchanan, Rakfeldt & Rounsaville, 1994; Welburn, Fraser, Jordan, Cameron, Webb, & Raine, 2003), thereby making an important contribution to differential diagnosis of Ritual abuse/mind control traumatic stress from Schizophrenia. Administration and scoring do not require specialized training in psychological testing. The structured interviews (DDIS, SCID-D-R, SIDES) require knowledge of dissociation. A helpful description of most of these tools is included in the International Society for the Study of Dissociation 2005 Guidelines for Treating Dissociative Identity Disorder in Adults, available online at http://www.issd.org/indexpage/treatguide1.htm#diagnosticinterviewing. These measures include:
The Dissociative Experiences Scale (DES), a 28-item self-report measure (Carlson & Putnam, 1993; Carlson, Putnam, Ross, Torem, Coons, Dill, Loewenstein, & Braun, 1993).
The Dissociation Questionnaire (DIS-Q) (Vanderlinden, Van Dyck, Vandereycken, Vertommen, & Verkes, 1993). To finish reading this article click on this link: Guidelines to Differential Diagnosis between Schizophrenia and Ritual Abuse/Mind Control Traumatic Stress
Charles Wharry (Darkbird18);
The darkness that have been controlling our world for 1000s of years are still in power and EPSTEIN is just the tip of the iceberg! There are very powerful and using dark magic with satanic knowledge from the ancient past to give them great power that comes from ancient dark forces that help destroy ancient Atlantis. We most protect our children's at all cost from these dark mind control human beings. They are fools!
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