Customer Reviews

Physical Control of the Mind -- Toward a Psychocivilized Society (Harper Colophon books)

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The book focuses on the use of electronic implants to control one's thoughts and reactions. Some of the information is useful. Things like trying to help those who have epileptic fits control what causes an attack by sending an electrical message to the brain to stop the occurence. Unfortunately, Mr Delgado has very menacing intentions in other areas. He is one who believes in the administration of implants to individuals for behaviour modification. The intention to psychologically abuse anyone who deviates from societies norm. An interesting great question, who decides who is wierd and how do you define normal? These implants allow the monitoring of every thought and action whereby the tresspasser can see through your own eyes. Further information can be found on the mind control forum.

This is a book for the hardcore materialist atheist in the family. Jose Delgado, M.D. was Professor of Physiology at Yale University when this was written. Like all the Darwinists he evidently was a fan of Aristotle. He quotes Aristotle's principle that "nothing is in the intellect which was not first in the senses" and agrees with Aristotle that the newborn mind is a blank tablet.

Delgado reckons that consciousness is "a rather expensive luxury in terms of time and effort". People do things like stopping at a red light, he says, without thinking. The mind is only born when the infant "recognises objects and persons associated with positive and negative reinforcement".

After some tiresome preamble, Delgado cuts to the chase with Chapter 14: Hell and Heaven Within the Brain: The Systems for Punishment and Reward. Delgado was one of the people responsible for Electronic Stimulation of the Brain, via a stimoceiver. Depending where electrodes are inserted in the brain, different results happen when the electricity is cranked up.

Scientists these days just generally experiment on animals. Delgado worked on monkeys, chimps, cats, crickets, roosters, dolphins and "brave bulls". He also worked on humans. By a twist of a dial he could increase or decrease a woman's anxiety. He also made a patient throw aside a guitar and attack a wall. A usually reserved patient suddenly kissing her therapist's hands. A male patient suddenly said he wanted to marry his interviewer and then declared, "I'd like to be a girl". When the ESB was turned off, people were shocked at the change that had come over them. "I don't know what came over me. I felt like an animal," was one comment.

Delgado states the advantage of ESB over psychoanalysis: "Psychoanalysis requires a long time and a person can easily withdraw co-operation and refuse to express intimate thoughts." ESB however "can set a determined behavioral tone". He says it can be used for "habitual criminal conduct". In addition, a two way radio communication system between brain and computer can be set up. The person being monitored can be administered "specific inhibition structures" at the onset of emotions such as anxiety, rage or depression, he says. Direct knowledge will be gained about the "cerebral basis for human behavior". He reckons that "genes determine reaction or response".

Much of the book concerns details of unpleasant looking experiments on monkeys, chimps and cats, including lots of distressing photos of animals with implants stuck on their heads. I was unsure of Delgado's grasp on reality, as accompanying photos of a contorted cat, he writes that while the cat was administered 1.8 milliamps of electricity, it was "alert and friendly as usual, rubbing its head against the experimenter, seeking to be petted, and purring." Yeah, right! He says that the cat was made to jump from one table to another while being given 2 milliamps and that this made the cat uncoordinated and that it fell and landed badly. Another photo shows a cat reaching out to a paddle on a wall, that Delgado was conditioning it to do to stop the pain administered by ECB.

As vile as this book is, at least Delgado is honest about the means of how science will affect people's behavior/human values. The book is called Physical Control of the Mind, after all. Chapter 15, Hallucinations, Recollections and Illusions in Man mentions how implants can induce effects that could be interpreted as symptoms of schizophrenia, including the induction of complex hallucinations, illusions, emotions, vivid dream like experiences and "forced thinking (sterotyped thoughts crowding into the mind)". Monkeys are made to fall asleep instantly. A chimp is made to avoid a banana. A bull is made to abandon a charge at Delgado and instead circles him, lifting its leg and turning its head. Delgado also states how ESB was used to disrupt the mother-infant relationship of two monkeys and caused the mother to self-harm. He doesn't say whether his intention is for this application of ESB to be used on human mothers and babies.

I regard this book as a potent warning on the potential risk to society posed by scientists apparently acting as variants of Dr. Victor Frankenstein in Mary Shelley's novel. There's more on Dr. Delgado in The Mind Manipulators, which is well worth tracking down.

Back cover ...
"This is a thoughtful, up to date account of remarkable experiments with electric stimulation of the brain, carried out in cats, monkeys, chimpanzees and a few human patients, as well as in that somewhat romantic experimental animal, the fighting bull." Philip Morrison, Scientific American.

Animal lovers might do best to keep their blood pressure down ... by avoiding this book.

Dr. Delgado should be commended for making his research public. Jose Delgado has several other books, including "emotions" and "Behavioral Neurochemistry". I found "emotions" to be excellent. If you are looking into research in the interest of microchip integration into humans and animals, psychiatry through the means of direct manipulation of the brain or, possibly, the merging of remote electrical devices into biotechnology, then meet the founding father. Delgado is brilliant. If you are interested in mind control, this is the place to begin. Surfing the internet on this subject will bring up useless, paranoid garbage and books by other authors emphasize conspiracies that draw people into paranoid delusions. This is a summary of research through direct manipulation of the brain using electrodes, remote stimulation and biomedical telemetry. I cannot emphasize the value of this book, it is a MUST HAVE!!!

Dr. Delgado was one of the pioneers of deep brain stimulation research, a technology that is used today to reduce suffering in cases of chronic pain, epilepsy and Parkinson's disease. It never was and is not today capable of turning people into the mind-controlled automatons found in sci-fi thrillers such as the Manchurian Candidate or the X-files. The book offers a lucid and concise description of Dr. Delgado's work up to 1969 and a provocative look at possible applications of this technology (from a 1960's perspective). A recommended read for any Neuroscience or Neural Engineering student.

This is a book written by one of the worst violator's of human rights. He should be justly punished, perhaps with his own methods. If one could look at it as Horror/fiction ala Stephen King, it could send a chill up your spine.