Prosopagnosia

                                                     

     Imagine just for a moment if you woke up the next morning and you loss the ability to recognize the faces of the people around. Picture being able to remember who your members are but unable to recognize them if they came up to you, this neuropsychology is called prosopagnosia or face blindness. This rare and often debilitating neuropsychological disorder of face perception where the brains ability to recognize faces have been damaged or impaired by a stroke or brain injury of some kind, which results in a person to lose the ability to recognize the faces of people. Also nobody knows how the human brain’s facial recognition system works or how we are able to recognize the faces of different people. Prosopagnosia is broken up into two distinct types apperceptive and associative each subtype is very unique and affects an individual’s facial recognition system in its own way.

            Appreceptive prosopagnosia is a disorder by which an individual cannot make sense of faces and are unable to make same and or different decisions when ether they are presented with pictures of different people or when they see different people (pedia). Individuals with this disorder are unable to distinguish people’s faces from one another. These people are unable to recognize the similarities and differences between different people faces, so to them everyone looks the same. For example an individual may not be able to tell the difference between their spouse’s face and the faces of their children or people they may encounter on the street.

            The second type of prosopagnosia is associative prosopagnosia this disorder is characterized by an individual’s inability to identify a person or recall any information about that person such name or where they know them from even if the person is a family member. What makes associative prosopagnosia so unique is that the individual with this disorder can still describe the similarities and differences between the faces of different people and determine their age and gender. Individuals with this disorder can recognize faces they just cannot remember who the person is. For example the sufferer may be able to tell that a person is male or female and maybe the ethnicity of that particular person but they just cannot recall who that person is. But these people maybe still able to recognize and produce such information based on non-facial cues such as clothing, voice or hair color (crystal). A person Associative prosopagnosia is a disorder where the link between an individuals ability to recognize a person’s face and information they hold about that person in their memories is somehow is damaged.

            One of the most fascinating features of prosopagnosia is that highlights the link between conscious and unconscious facial recognition. Research has shown that when people with prosopagnosia are presented with a mixture of pictures with familiar and unfamiliar faces people with prosopagnosia are unable to recognize the faces. But when their emotional response to the pictures of the familiar and unfamiliar faces were measured the individual would produce an emotional response to the photographs of the familiar faces without them consciously knowing it (crystal). The individual with prosopagnosia is unable to recognize the familiar persons face or recall any information about but the emotional connection the sufferer has to that person is still intact.

            Prosopagnosia is neuropsychological disorder which there is no cure for. One cannot imagine life without being unable to see or recognize the faces of the people they love or unable to remember anything about them.  Prosopagnosia is neuropsychological disorder that forces a person to live in a world of strangers. It forces them to live in a world where the faces of their family and friends are unrecognizable and its strips away the sufferer’s identity as while because they are unable to recognize their own face when they look in the mirror.

           

Forgiveness

                                                                                

        

    Forgiveness is generally believed to be a positive response to human wrongdoing; Forgiveness is conceptually, psychologically and morally complex phenomenon (forgive). Without forgiveness there cannot be reconciliation and the option to move forward with life and finally being able to put the pain or hurt behind them.  Forgiveness is one the hardest things  an individual must learn how to do after being wronged,  betrayed  or hurt by someone they cared about, whether it was a parent, lover and/or friend or even a by a stranger. But it is said that in order for an individual to get past any given conflict and feelings of hurt or betrayal, one must first learn to find it in their heart to forgive in order to have any chance of reconciliation or just to be able to move on with their life. Most people feel, if not all people feel that if they forgive someone that has hurt them in any way that somehow they are dismissing and minimizing the conflict or the magnitude of the situation. Many people believe that if you forgiving someone who has hurt you, that you’re giving them the opportunity to hurt you again. According to Wilmot and Hocker forgiveness is just the opposite. It is not minimizing the situation but actually bringing forth acknowledgement of the truth about what took place and coming to terms about what took place as well. According to Wilmot and Hocker in order for forgiveness to occur and reconciliation to begin one must go a process that plays out in four major categories: “Uncovering Phase”, “Decision Phase”, “Work Phase” and the “Outcome Phase”.

 On the path of forgiveness one must experience the “Uncovering Phase” which is the phase in which an individual tries to figure or process their feelings about what has happen and why. This is also the phase in which shame and possible guilt may arise within the individual who has felt they have been wronged, hurt or betrayed (Wilmot and Hocker Elements of Conflict). For example when a spouse discovers that their significant other is having an extramarital affair, the spouse will begin to as many people will call “go through emotions”. In this phase the spouse is trying to figure out why this happened to them, what did they do wrong and how this situation is making them feel.

Secondly, we have the “Decision Phase, in this particular phase one is not actually making a decision but more or less realizing how much hurt and/or emotional energy as Wilmot and Hocker would say is being released due to this conflict and/or situation that has taking place (Wilmot and Hocker Elements of Conflict). This phase also gives reference to how much the conflict and/or situation has taking over their lives. In this phase people come to the understanding that their feelings of pain, hurt or betrayal is taking over their lives and start to think of ways to overcome these feelings.

The final two phases are the “Work Phase” and “Outcome Phase”. The “Work Phase” is the phase in which an individual begins to explore the possibility of forgiveness due to the feelings of empathy one may have against the so-called “offender” in the conflict and/or situation (Wilmot and Hocker Elements of Conflict). The “Outcome Phase” this phase is a representation of the impact that the conflict and/or situation has had on the individuals involved. It also is a phase of reflection in which the person who has been hurt and/or betrayed may come to the realization that they may have some fault as well to what has happened. Realizing that blame could be shared in the sense that they were not totally innocent to what was going on in the conflict and possibly assisted or contributed to the conflict.

In order to forgive, one must first realize, understand and most importantly reflect on what has happened because reflecting on the situation at hand as well as figuring out ones part in the conflict and/or situation could actual lay the framework for what is called reconciliation (bringing together). Without forgiveness one cannot truly believe that reconciliation can take place, because forgiveness represents a kind of trust that has been reestablish between the individual(s) in the relationship because the parties involved have communicated and listened clearly, openly and effectively to where everyone and everything that have been affected by the conflict has been understood. But if that has not happen to a point where trust and communication lines are or been establish than the so-called reconciliation cannot survive and the union between the parties will be forever broken. The most important thing to understand about forgiveness is that when you forgive someone you don’t have to let the individual or group of individuals that have hurt you back into your life



The Psychology of Dreams

         

         Ever had a dream where you’re being chased by Chester Cheeto or the dream that you’re falling and you never hit the ground or a dream where it starts off nice and slowly turns into a nightmare. Dreams always leave us filled with questions and they always leave us asking the questions why did I have this dream? And what does it mean? Dreams are defined as a series of thoughts, images, and different sensations that happens when we are sleeping (Merriam Webster dictionary).  Dreaming only occurs during deep sleep or rapid eye moving sleep or REM sleep. REM sleep in adults constitutes about 20-25 % of total sleep, which is about 90-120 minutes of an average night’s sleep. During an average night’s sleep human beings experiences on average between four or five periods of REM sleep that are short in the beginning and become longer towards the end (wiki). Nobody knows why humans dream and nobody knows what dreams mean but theories have been purposed to answer the questions why we dream and what they mean. Now let’s take through some of  these theories.

            The psychoanalytic theory of dreams comes from the great psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud, who believed that dreams represented the unconscious thoughts, motivations and desires of the individual.  For example if a woman wants children but for some reason she cannot have them out of fear of what people may think of her, so she may have a dream of being pregnant with people upset with her or yelling at her. On another hand you may have a guy that wants to play basketball, but can’t do an injury may have a dream of playing in the NBA. According to Freud, individuals are driven by aggressive and sexual instincts that are repressed or kept from conscious awareness and theses unconscious desires manifest themselves in our dreams (psychologytoday). The psychoanalytic theory of dreams purposed that dreams are the outlet for our unconscious desires; they allow us to experience our hidden desires without really experiencing them real life.  When most of us dream who do dream about our desires. We do dream about what we want most out of life. We do dream about the desires that motivate us or drive our behavior. Since a person may not be able to experience these desires in the real world, dreams provide away for a person to experience their deepest desires, without the fear of being judged. Freud’s theory on dreams hits home for a lot of people because we all can relate to the fact that we all have dreams of things that we want and just cannot have or things that may send chills up a person’s spin. Dreams provide a safe place for all our desires to be realized.  

            The evolutionary theory of dreams says that dreams are a way for us the practice our responses to threaten situations. Antti Revonsuo, a cognitive scientist has discovered that during REM sleep that our amygdale, the area of the brain that houses our fight or flight response is more active then usual during this period of sleep. According to Dr. Revonsuo while we are dreaming the human brain activates in the same way as if we were being threaten.  According to this theory dreams are an evolutionary adaptation always us to rehearse life saving behaviors so we can be better at fight or flight in the real world (Dream). For most of us we dream about ether fighting for our lives or fighting someone in particular or we dream about being chased by something or being in an embarrassing situation, this theory believes that dreams are away of preparing us for real world situations. This theory is a little bit farfetched but it has a ring of truth in it. The truth is that a dream may prepare you for a situation or warning you of situation may be heading towards but do not realize it yet. For example you may have a dream that you are driving a car that is out of control and you just cannot stop it. This may be your dream trying to warn you that things in your life may be getting to go out of control and that if you do not stop it now, you may not be able to stop when it happens. A dream may warn you or prepare you for what lies ahead if you stay on a particular path.

                       

       Ultimately dreams are subjective and nobody can answer the questions why we dream and what they mean but the individual. In other words it’s up to the individual to decipher their own dreams, to figure out why they had a particular dream and what that dream means. It’s up to the individual to interpret their own dreams by using the symbolism within their dreams and make their own psychological connections or associations.  No scientist or researcher can explain why we dream or what are dreams mean because each individual life experiences are unique and each dream is tailored to that specific person, so it is up to that person to decide what their dream means to them.

           



False Confessions Fact or Fiction

 

         The greatest miscarriage of justice that the western justice system can produce is to wrongfully convict and imprison an individual for a crime they did not commit. When a person is wrongfully convicted most of the time it is because they gave a false confession or statement. A false confession is when an individual claims responsibility for a crime they did not commit. In the field of Forensic Psychology the topic of false confessions is the most highly debated and most controversial. It is controversial because on one hand you have innocent people being convicted of crimes they did not commit and on the other hand you have law enforcement just trying to put the blame on someone and not examine the evidence. Nobody really knows the incidence of false confessions and there is no way to find out (psychology). There are two key factors that are involved in an individual’s decision to make a false confession which are psychological factors and the process of police interrogation. Psychological factors and the process of police interrogation dictate the type of false confession an individual may give and also the reasons why a person admit to a crime they did not commit.

            There are two types of false confessions an individual can give during a police interrogation which are voluntary false confessions and involuntary false confessions. Voluntary false confessions are when an individual purposefully confesses to a crime in the absence of police pressure even though they did not commit the crime (truth).  The individuals who make these types of false confessions understand the gravity of the situation and consequences that will follow after their incriminating statement. There are two reasons why a person will make a voluntary false confession the first is that the individual giving the incriminating statement may have a personality disorder where they crave and need fame or notoriety (truth). For example there may be a serial killer or serial rapist on the loose; an innocent person may give a voluntary false confession to police in order to claim the fame or notoriety of the serial killer or serial rapist if that killer were ever caught. In other words an innocent person may give a voluntary false confession just to become famous. The second reason why a person may give a voluntary false confession is to protect someone like a relative. For example a child may have killed his neighbor’s son and in order to protect his child and keep his child from going to prison the child’s father may admit to murdering the neighbor’s son.  The second type of false confession is called coerced compliant false confession. A coerced compliant false confession happens when a person of interest in a criminal case confesses to the crime despite their own knowledge of their innocence as a result of intense police interrogation (truth). In other words the person of interest just “cracks” under the pressure of going through the interrogation process.  With these types of confessions police interrogators may make false claims or falsify evidence. For example a police interrogator may say “We found your DNA at the crime scene”. Also police may make threats and promises to the suspect in order to get them to confess. A person who is innocent in this situation will probably confess to anything in order to put an end to the interrogation process.

           

Besides personality disorders and emotional attachments to a relative, intelligence plays a significant role in the production a false confession. For example individuals who have low IQs or who are mentally retarded are very vulnerable to the pressure of police interrogation (psychology). Individuals who have low IQs or who are mentally retarded are more likely to give a false confession for two reasons, the first being that they do not comprehend the gravity of the situation they are in and not understand the consequences of confession to a crime. Also they may not understand their rights as a citizen during a police interrogation. The second reason is that these individuals may just be scared and just confess to anything in order to escape the intense situation they are in.

           

Another psychological factor that is involved in the production of false confessions are compliant or suggestible personalities and anxiety disorders. People that have low intelligence and poor memories will be more suggestible because they ether do not understand the situation or they may not even know if they did commit a crime. Also a person’s memory maybe so poor that they do not even remember if they did anything wrong and may just confess just of get out of that situation.  Also an individual with a poor memory will doubt their own memory when police introduce false evidence the individual may use the false evidence to fill in the gaps in their memory, this will lead to a false confession. People who have anxiety disorders may make a false confession because they are nervous, scared and cannot fully process what the police are trying to ask them and will say anything just to make the police leave them alone. Individuals who have compliant or suggestible personalities and anxiety disorders may not be able to critically think about each question and unable to gave logical and consistent answer to the police interrogator’s questions. To the police interrogator these are signs of guilt, so the police interrogator may engage in more intense interrogation techniques and this may lead a person who has a complaint or suggestible personality or anxiety disorder to crack under the pressure and confess to a crime they did not commit.

          

  The police interrogation process is a breeding ground for false confessions. The police interrogation process is a psychologically based process because law enforcement cannot physical harm or torture the suspect in order to get a confession out of them. Since the interrogation process uses psychological techniques it puts tremendous stress on the individual. If an individual is not mentally strong enough to withstand the interrogation process the individual may say anything just escape the situation. One such technique that police use during interrogation is telling the suspect that they have evidence against them when in actuality the police do not, it is an incredibly effective technique because it makes the suspect feel like they are doomed (mavrick). This may actually caused the suspect to think they are guilty when in reality they are not. Also the length of the interrogation process plays a role in the birth of false confessions. If a person is locked in a small windowless room with no human contact for hours it takes a mental and physical toll on that person. This is often the case in some false confessions; the suspect was locked in a small room, with no windows, and no human contact for hours would be more likely to confess just to put an end to the ordeal or just to leave the room.

During a police interrogation psychological factors such as intelligence and personality and the process of police interrogation can all together create the perfect storm for a false confession to be born. In order for people to protect themselves from making a false confession they must first understand and know the law and their rights as citizens.  Also if an individual finds themselves in an interrogation room and the police questioning is too intense for them, they should ask for a lawyer. Finally law enforcement should follow the evidence first and just try to close another case.



The Psychopath

                                                                                                                                                                

          Take a second and try to picture  your self living without a conscience. Try to imagine what it would be like to be totally void of emotion. Having no feeling of guilt or remorse, a totally lack of empathy for human life, or no sense of concern for your friends, strangers or even your family. Think about living without shame no matter what kind of callus, lazy, harmful, selfish or immoral the action you have taken or decision you have made. You’re probably wondering how on earth a person can live this way. The answer is that there are people who live like this they are called Psychopaths. Psychopathy is of the most extreme of all personality disorder that is known. This personality disorder is terrifying because psychopaths are individuals that are free from the internal restraint that helps normal a human being due the right thing. The most fascinating characteristic a psychopath possess is the ability to pretend or fake being normal in order to make all those around them believe that they are, when in actually they are far from normal.

           

            Psychopathy is a mental disorder that is mainly characterized by a total lack of empathy and remorse, very shallow emotions, egocentricity, and deceptiveness. Even though psychopaths lack empathy and emotional depth, they manage to pass off as a normal person by faking emotions and lying about their past. They have hair trigger tempers or poor behavior control. They tend to throw tantrums and revert to a calm state moments after. Psychopaths are very reactive to perceived insults. While most human beings are able to control their anger   or aggression since this ability is weak in psychopaths they will lash out violently.  Psychopaths also have a low tolerance for boredom they always need excitement or some of stimulation. Most psychopaths are impulsive they search for quick gratification and participate in high risk behaviors in order to feel something (wikipedia). When you have gone through your whole life without feeling anything or never feeling an emotion you will be more likely to engage in behaviors that make you feel some sort of emotion. Psychopaths search for gratification and high risk behaviors because it allows them to feel something whether it be an adrenaline rush or the excitement one may when they have had a close call with death. The key point to realize is that all of these symptoms or characteristic of psychopathy are hidden by the psychopath’s ability to appear outwardly normal.

             

        All psychopaths have a lack of empathy especially for human life. It seems like they cannot comprehend the emotional states of other human beings except in a logical sense. They can never feel something for someone else. For example if you feel happy or sad  a normal person would be able to feel happy or sad for you or be able to relate to you on some level, but a psychopath can never do that especially when a person is feeling pain or distress. It is because of this lack of empathy that psychopaths are can commit horrifying acts of cruelty on another human being and not feel any remorse. Because they cannot be provoked by the emotions of others psychopaths tend to believe that other people are nothing more than objects that are  there for their own personal amusement (psycho).

        

       Psychopaths are great lairs and manipulators. They will lie to get what they want or to impress people and they can lie with such mastery that sometimes even the most experienced police interrogators are fooled. They are great lairs because of how they present themselves. They present themselves in a way that is confident, and never show signs of anxiety, hesitation or shame like an ordinary person would. Even when they are caught in a lie they still maintain that confident presentation and try to retile their story so it can fit with their lies. Most psychopaths are out spoken and verbally lack sincerity or emotional depth when they speak. Psychopaths can be very amusing and very entertaining conversationalist and they are always ready to strike back with a claver comeback. They are very good at telling unlikely but very convincing stories that cast them in a positive light. Also they are very good at presenting themselves well and are often very likable and charming. These qualities make it very difficult for a person to see through a psychopath’s illusion of normalcy. Some psychopaths but not all have the ability to charm and to manipulate others. Psychopaths are extroverted, charming, dominant, and confident. They see other people as objects for their own personal use. Most psychopaths will take on a parasitic lifestyle and will con people out of their wealth and other resources. When a psychopath’s victim is no longer useful the psychopath will discard the victim like a piece of trash. Not all psychopaths are charming and master manipulators for some psychopaths due to their upbringing will not have the proper social grace and education to impress people and these types of psychopaths tend to get what they want through intimidation, coercion, and violence.

            Psychopaths are a nightmare for a psychiatrist to threat. Even the most skilled and the most knowledgeable psychiatrist can easily be deceived by the psychopath’s appearance of being normal. The treatment options in the psychiatrist arsenal to treat psychopathy are extremely limited. Because there is no cure for psychopathy there is no pill or medicine that a psychopath can take that will instill a conscience or empathy. Psychotherapy is useless because the psychopaths that go through psychotherapy emerge from it even more dangerous and commit even more heinous crimes then they did before therapy.  Because as a result of therapy psychopaths have a better understanding of themselves and other people, and this allows them to strengthen their illusion of being normal and make them even more skilled at manipulating people.

            The great play write William Shakespeare once said that “all the world’s a stage, and all the men and women are merely players.” For the psychopath the world is one giant stage and they are just and actor that plays many parts. Psychopaths hide behind a mask of sanity, they hide in plain sight, they pretend to be normal, they pretend to have a conscience but they do not. Psychopaths put on a show for the whole world to see every day of their lives and they are hard to spot. You may have dated a psychopath or be friends or be related to one and not even know it. You could be with one right now and have no idea that a monster lives within them.

People Inside of Me

            Meet Tara, she is 29 years old and a Harvard graduate. She is ambitious, confident the most respected and successful attorney at her law firm. Tara loves to read and does charity work in her spare time. Tara believes that the world is filled with good people and that one should spend some of their time to help others.  But lately Tara has been experiencing severe memory loss, suffering from unexplainable headaches, blackouts, losing track of huge chunks of time and is having flashbacks to her childhood were she was abused but as far as Tara is concerned  she was never abused as a child, she had a good childhood. When she is out on the street sometimes people call her by a different name or mistake her for someone else. All of sudden Tara now is starting to hear voices in her head from time to time. She blames her symptoms on the stress that her job brings.

           

          Now let’s meet Victoria, who is also 29 years old and according to her she never graduated from high school. Victoria works as an exotic dancer, under the stage name “Ms. Peaches”. Unlike Tara, Victoria was abused as a child and remembers every detail of the abuse. As a result of her abuse Victoria is a callus, cold, selfish and a promiscuous young woman. Victoria believes that there are no good people in the world and the only way to survive in this world is to lookout for yourself. 

           

         Tara and Victoria are very different people from very different backgrounds, but what these two women have incoming is that they are the same women. Tara is suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder. Tara is the primary personality, while Victoria is the alter ego or alternate personality. Dissociative Identity Disorder is psychiatric conditions were a person displays a number of distinct personalities, which are known as alters or alter ego (wikipeda). Each alter is different, they have their own way of perceiving and interacting with their environment. They have their own thoughts their own goals and dreams. The “alter” is a totally different person; the only problem is that they have to share a body with someone else. Let’s take a trip through the symptoms, causes and treatment of fascinating and horrifying illness.

           

          The symptoms associated with this disease are debilitating and freighting. The most common symptom is severe memory loss that goes beyond the occasionally forgetfulness. The sufferer cannot remember where they have been, do not recall conversations they have with friends or cannot remember where particular items in their possession came from. The next symptom is the blackouts. People who suffer from DID my lose consciousness and wake up hours or days later in a totally different location from where they last remember and have no idea how they got there. Also another “symptom” that is associated with this mental illness, is the sufferer, being mistaken for someone else or recognized as someone else by other people when they are out in public.  But the most chilling symptom that characterizes this disease is the voices that the sufferer may hear in their mind.

        

        Severe and prolonged or routine torture, sexual abuse or neglect experienced during childhood has been correlated to the development of D.I.D. When a child is experiencing trauma that is associated with emotional, physical, or sexual abuse or some combination of the three, they will often dissociate themselves from the abuse in order to escape it, by creating a different identities or alternate personalities. The created alter will suffer the abuse while the primary personality escapes the abuse. For children dissociation is simple and becomes a useful defense for the child. The strategy allows the child to place all the abuse or traumatic event onto another personality (Mind).

            Treating a mental illness on this level of complexity is no small task, because there is no cure for D.I.D. There is no way to get rid of alters but there is away to get them under control. Therapist or psychiatrist mainly use psychotherapy or talk therapy in combination with hypnosis to help the suffer gain control of their alter(s).  The therapist must find the personality that holds the memories of the traumatic experience in the patient’s past, the therapist does this by making  contact with the alter or alters and try to understand what role they play in the patient’s life. For instance an alter may take on the role of a protector for the patient emerging only when the patient feels threatened  or scared by someone or something. Sometimes a person can have multiple alters and there is one alter in particular that keeps the other alters in line. if the therapist can find the alter that holds the traumatic memories then the therapist can devise the best strategy to help the patient.  Also the therapist must make contact with the alter or alters that maybe responsible for violent or self destructive behavior and try to get them change or curb that behavior. The primary outcome of therapy that the therapist is trying to achieve is the integration of the personalities into single personality, but sometimes integration is not possible so the alternative is to find harmony between the patient and the alter or alters. (DID)



Project MK-ULTRA : A Search to Control the Human Mind

            We have all seen movies such as “The Manchurian Candidate” or television shows like “My own worst Enemy” where a person has been subjected to psychological experimentation such as mind control or have had their personality split into two usually the U.S. government is behind the experiments and tries to cover it up. That is what these types of shows or movies are about. We the general public assumes that this type of story line is only fiction and that the U.S. government would never even try to do something so horrific to a person just to gain a tactical advantage over its enemies. But what if I told you that mind control and alternate personalities were not fiction? What if I told you that the United States government carried out psychological experiments to develop techniques for mind control and creating alternate personalities on soldiers and innocent citizens? 

            During the Cold War the United States government conducted illegal mind control experiments on U.S. and Canadian citizens. Project MK-ULTRA was a covert and illegal human experimentation program controlled by the CIA’s office of scientific intelligence. The program main goal was to develop methods of mind control and methods of influencing an individual’s mind to enhance the CIA’s ability to extract information from suspected or confirmed Soviet spies and turn innocent citizens or soldiers into Manchurian Candidates by creating alternate personalities. Project MK-ULTRA was designed to develop tools or methods that could unravel  or unlock the human mind, so the U.S. could not only be one step ahead of the Soviets but be able to infiltrate the Soviet government without the Soviets knowing. The Manchurian Candidates are people who are programmed to become assassins without their knowledge and under the control of someone else. A post hypnotic trigger is used to switch the individual into “assassin mode”. The project was led by a scientist named Dr. Sidney Gottlieb of the Technical Services Division of the CIA. Over 25 million dollars of federal money were used to fund project MK-ULTRA, which was active for at least 23 years (1950-1973). Then in 1977 under the Freedom of Information Act the Senate ordered all of the documents regarding Project MK-ULTRA to be declassified (governmentconspiracy). 

             

Based on the evidence published Project MK-ULTRA used a combination of psychoactive drugs LSD, hypnosis, shock therapy, sensory deprivation, isolation and even verbal and sexual abuse were used to alter the psyche and brain functioning of the” participants “.  Even one of these methods is enough to crush someone mentally the researchers in MK-ULTRA used them in combination (MKULTRA).  These methods were used to destroy, control and alter individual’s state of mind. The methods that were used in this project over a period of time would force the” participants “to become more suggestible, easily influenced, and more willing to obey commands to put it simply the “participants” would be more susceptible to brainwashing. But the researchers involved in Project MK-ULTRA involved “participants” from all walks of life like doctors, CIA agents, prostitutes, military personnel, people suffering from mental disease, and innocent citizens. These experiments were done on these people without their consent and against their will.  Illegal methods were often used to recruit subjects. Theses experiments were unethical, inhumane and in direct violation of the Nuremberg Code.  Also the researchers violated the most secrete oath that all medical professionals make the Hippocratic Oath.

The creation of a Manchurian Candidates is one of the most controversial topics to come out of the declassified documents from Project MK-ULTRA. It is a controversial topic because on one hand you have actual participants that were subjected to these inhumane experiments and some of the people who were in charge of Project MK-ULTRA saying that they the project was successful in creating Manchurian Candidates and on the other hand you have the CIA saying that creating Manchurian Candidates was one of the goals of the project but they were not successful in creating them.  The biggest piece of evidence that the CIA was successful in creating a Manchurian Candidate is the story of Candy Jones. Candy Jones was a model in the late 40’s to early 50’s. Tapes made by her and her husband, while Candy was under hypnosis revealed systematic programming to create and manipulate different personalities. During these hypnotic sessions Candy also say that she was trained in a CIA mind control program, which started in 1960 in Oakland, CA. On the tape recordings Candy says that she was trained to be a courier for the CIA, trained to be resistant to torture and trained in self defense. What gives Candy’s story merit is that these tapes were made in 1972 and Project MK-ULTRA was not made public until 1977 (Jones). The one thing the CIA knows how to do is to keep a secret, so how did a semi will known model know so much about a mind control program ran by the CIA before it became public? Candy also described in great detail the experiments and treatments that she was put through and the person who administered them. Also other survivors of Project MK-ULTRA have come forward with similar stories.

Project MK-ULTRA was not just a crime against psychology, science, and medicine but a crime against humanity itself. Over a thousand people have come forward to tell their story about their experience through this program and over 20,000 documents have been declassified about the project. But in order to learn more about something or how it works one must break it and then build it up from scratch, that it what the researchers did in Project MK-ULTRA. Most of the psychologist and psychiatrist that were a part of the project went into other areas of research and one may speculate that they took what they learned from Project MK-ULTRA with them.