Tag Archives: mk-ultra-cia

Menninger and the Mental Health Mafia

Related articles:  The Deep State and Scientology, The CIA vs. L. Ron Hubbard, Jolly West Part One, Another MK Ultra Anti-Scientology Mouthpiece

The investigation into Jolly West’s hijinks (see reference articles linked above) keeps unearthing new prominent psychiatrists and psychologists and tying them to the CIA’s MK Ultra Mind Control experiments. A newly discovered document exposing another prominent MK Ultra klan member is published here for the first time anywhere.

It concerns the world-famous Menninger Clinic. The outfit’s founders, brothers Karl and William Menninger, were psychiatrists who worked hard to publicly position themselves as more ‘humane’ than typical state institutions. While they probably delivered hundreds if not thousands of mind-disabling ECT (Electro Convulsive Shock) “treatments” they somehow managed to create a public image of being more interested in the gentler psychoanalytical approach to the problems of the human mind.

However, our newly discovered document ties William Menninger (head US Army psychiatrist during WWII) smack dab in the middle of an MK Ultra triangle with Dr. Sidney Gottleib (MK Ultra head) and Jolly West (Gottlieb’s star experimenter). To fully appreciate the significance of the connection, recall then-Air Force-major Jolly West’s 11 June 1953 plea to MK Ultra head Gottlieb to pave the way for West to land as head shrink of a major civilian university. He couched the demand in the context of needing to evade pesky Air Force superiors from interrupting his human guinea pig mind experiments. Here is the final page of that letter with the relevant portion highlighted: West letter to Gottlieb.

Now, review Gottlieb’s 2 July 1953 reply and promise to bring all pressure to bear upon the Air Force to make that possible, (see highlighted portions, recalling that Sherman C. Grifford is Gottlieb’s espionage cover name), 2 July 1953 Gottlieb letter to West.

Note, Gottlieb was then banking on MK Ultra doc Donald W. Hastings (Head US Air Force psychiatrist during WWII) to come through for Jolly with “clout.” 

Now have a look at the newly discovered May 10, 1954 letter from William Menninger to his apparent pal, the Assistant Secretary for Air at the Pentagon, Menninger letter.  Menninger urges that his friend facilitate Jolly West receiving the ideal MK Ultra position he sought in his 11 June, 1953 report and recommendations to Sidney Gottleib. Menninger personally vouches for the integrity of West attesting:

“I know Major West from several contacts with him and he is a very outstanding fellow.”

As noted in previous posts, by this time on West’s timeline, Jolly has never held a civilian job, and never worked one minute outside of proven MK Ultra laboratories (Air Force, University of Minnesota under MK Ultra operator Hastings, and Cornell University under MK Ultra operator Harold Wolff). Menninger is fronting for a literal creation of MK Ultra and its predecessors (Operation Bluebird, Operation Artichoke, etc).

It is noteworthy that this is precisely the kind of clout Gottlieb wished to obtain from Dr. Donald W. Hastings in his July 1953 letter to West (above). Apparently, Hastings did not come through as 10 months later Menninger is bringing his own, apparently larger, clout to bear. That Menninger was successful was memorialized in a letter from Gottlieb to West two months after Menninger stepped in (Gottlieb/West letter of September 16, 1954). More than a year after promising to go to bat for West, and less than two months after Menninger goes to bat for West, Gottlieb exclaims:

“Congratulations on your appointment at the University.”

That would be the University of Oklahoma just as Dr. Menninger specified. West would carry out MK Ultra Experiments there for more than a decade, the entire time hiding the fact from the university’s administration.

Predictably, William Menninger is not only an MK Ultra insider, but an original attacker of L. Ron Hubbard and Dianetics. Probably not coincidentally, he appears in the very same Minneapolis Star syndicated article where his MK Ultra brethren Dr. Donald W. Hastings first took shots at Dianetics. The big boys of mental health (MK Ultra bros) of the time were ganging up on L. Ron Hubbard in an organized fashion under the headline “Future Hazy for Dianetics as Foes Rally”:

First local boy Hastings weighs in with a shallow, rather crude attack:

Menninger joined Hastings taking “the same stand”:

But, this wasn’t Menninger’s first shot at L. Ron Hubbard. Menninger had previously sounded off within months of the initial May 1950 Dianetics release the year before, see Sep 9, 1950 edition LA Daily News.

Introduced as another past president of the APA, the corporate media hails Menninger as the “Shakespeare” of psychiatry.  Menninger lambasts Hubbard for coining “some new terminology and disregard[ing] all the psychological theories and observations that have been so extensively studied by so many people.”  Menninger’s language make it sound as if he hadn’t even read Dianetics himself before passing judgement, “my impression is…”. With what we’ve learned thus far in the present series (and what we will learn below) Menninger’s critique might have more fittingly been received as a badge of honor. In fact, the attack is telling in another important way.

As noted above, the Menningers positioned themselves with the gentler psychiatric arts such as psychoanalysis. In fact, William Menninger was the leading US proponent of Freudian psychoanalysis at the time. But, not just any old Freudian analysis. He embraced literal Freud, including significantly Freud’s eschewing of his original ‘seduction theory.’ That was, the not uncommon (particularly among the rich and famous) occurrence of adults seducing minor children for pedophilic sexual gratification. Freud originally called such adult seduction of children “seduction theory.” One hundred years later, psychoanalyst, archivist and author Jeffrey Masson documented (through Freud’s own files) that Freud ditched the ‘seduction theory’ because of the pressure he received from the many pedophiles among his clientele and supporters (see, The Assault on Truth: Freud’s Suppression of the Seduction Theory)*. In other words, pedophilia was common among the leaders of 19th Century Europe (as it was common among US leaders of the 50’s until today, as apparently it is with any empire on the decline). And Freud’s patrons let him know about it. So, Freud decided memory can be a fickle thing; and when it implicates pedophiles it is downright unreliable. There went ‘seduction theory’ into the shredder. Childhood memories of sexual abuse at the hands of an adult were recategorized as delusions.** 

For a broader perspective on how Freud ties into mind control operations, I recommend you watch the timeless BBC documentary series The Century Self, here.  You will learn that Menninger’s promotion of Freud in the U.S. was integral to larger mind control operations that the American aristocracy (including the CIA) were running coincident with MK Ultra. That program had to do with applying Freudian principles to manipulate and control the masses. Cooperating psychiatrists and psychologists infiltrated academia, media, and government and used them to run psy-ops to neutralize and enervate the American public. 

During the 1940’s through 1960’s, Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays (the founder of American propaganda, euphemistically relabeled “public relations”) worked directly with industry, wall street, the military and intelligence on controlling American minds en masse. The aim was to convert Americans from citizens (who insist upon participation in decision making) into Godless consumers (only interested in physical and personal psychological gratification) who would be controlled by address to their base, materialist (Freudian) instincts.

At the same time Freud’s daughter Ana travelled across America promoting vast expansion of Freudian psychological services to the public; with the stated intent of controlling the masses by suppressing their alleged omnipresent, hidden, evil intentions (man is basically evil theory). The first targets were the leaders of government, industry, finance, media and academia (the aristocracy and its order keepers). They flocked to psychoanalysts’ couches from coast to coast, paying top fees while pouring billions into psych coffers for ways and means to control and profit from the citizens turned consumers.

The Shakespeare of Psychiatry was critical to this effort. William Menninger and his brother Karl rolled out the American red carpet for Ana Freud. William went so far in supporting her cause that he volunteered to lend his prestigious name to the American Psychoanalytic Association, serving as president from 1947 to 1949 while concurrently serving as president of the American Psychiatric Association. The Menninger clinic went on to become a leading center for psychoanalytic treatment and training in the United States.

It is here where the lines of demarcation between Dianetics/Scientology and organized Psychiatry/Psychology became clear and stark. So as not to fall into the trap of overgeneralization, I am going to make a distinction between innocent mental practitioners of the mind who were and are in it for the primary purpose of helping others, and on the other hand those utilizing knowledge of the mind for profit and power. The latter happens to include pretty much the entire leadership structure of the bastions of the Mental Hygiene (originally an offshoot of Eugenics) industry which rebranded itself after World War II was “Mental Health.” I’ll refer to those profit/power motivated ‘leaders’ as the Mental Health Mafia.

There are three facts about the matter that cannot be refuted. You can argue till you turn purple about the background of L. Ron Hubbard and the ultimate worth of his Dianetics and Scientology vs. the background of the MK Ultra headed Mental Health Mafia. No matter what the outcome of that debate, the three facts remain unalterable.

First, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health was on bestseller lists throughout the country in 1950 and 1951, causing a visceral reaction from the mental health monopoly. (A fact that lends more credence and weight to the first two posts in this series, The Deep State and Scientology, and The CIA vs L. Ron Hubbard)

Second, Dianetics held that you don’t have to be part of the aristocracy to address and attempt to better the mind. Any two people could pick up a copy of Dianetics and within days begin that journey. That fact combined with the bestseller status of Dianetics was the largest monetary threat (percentage-wise) to the mental health mafia in the history of their monopoly. That is taking out of the equation the mental health mafia’s first natural enemy, religion in general and in the United States and Europe particularly, Christianity.

Third, Dianetics said ‘no memory is out of bounds’; you want to confront each and every demon from your past that is holding you back in the present. This was in direct conflict with the Freudian theory being forced upon the country from the top down which explicitly mandated that some memories are verboten; most particularly those memories that might implicate rich, fat bastard pedophiles. Or perhaps CIA mind control operations.

Now consider these facts. Virtually all of the very best psychiatrists, including virtually every President of the APA from the late forties to the late fifties, had direct ties to, or were complicit with, CIA MK Ultra Mind Control experimentations. And as we have demonstrated, the first and foremost goal of MK Ultra was the creation of amnesia for purposes of control.

As we will see this literally turned into a struggle across America between freedom of thought on the one hand and thought control on the other. An epic war that rages to this day and involves each and every one of us.

Notes:

*The Mental Health Mafia’s subsequent organized attack upon and cancellation of Jeffrey Masson is another epic worthy of a feature length motion picture.

**Stay tuned for later articles on how organized ‘mental health’ resurrected and reinforced pedophile defenses, winning over all of academia and corporate media in the 1990’s. Among the prominent villains of that story is none other than Jolly West.