Louis Jolyon "Jolly" West (October 6, 1924 – January 2, 1999) was an American psychiatrist who was a longtime consultant and contractor for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

West worked in the United States Air Force as a medical officer. He pioneered research into brainwashing techniques employed against American prisoners of war (POWs) by their captors. His research exonerated U.S. servicemen under suspicion of treason for making false confessions during the Korean War era. This brought him to the attention of the CIA. West became involved in research into the use and abuse of LSD and other drugs, becoming a contractor for MKUltra, a CIA mind control project in the 1950s and 1960s. In 1954, at the age of 29, West became a full professor and chair of psychiatry at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine. In 1967, West operated in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district to conduct research into the hippie movement there. From 1969 to 1989, West served as chair of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine and director of the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute.

West frequently worked as a court-appointed psychiatrist and examined Jack Ruby and Patricia Hearst during their trials. West was also active in studying the creation and management of cults and anti-death penalty activism. He grew up in poverty in Madison, Wisconsin, and was a graduate of Madison East High School. He subsequently attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison for a year At Lackland he was appointed to a panel to discover why 36 of 59 airmen captured in the Korean War had confessed or cooperated in North Korean allegations of war crimes committed by the United States. Amid speculation that the airmen had been brainwashed or drugged, West came to a simpler conclusion: "What we found enabled us to rule out drugs, hypnosis or other mysterious trickery," he said. He observed that "[i]t was just one device used to confuse, bewilder and torment our men until they were ready to confess to anything. That device was prolonged, chronic loss of sleep." The airmen avoided being court-martialed for these events as a result of West's research.

Jimmy Shaver

In 1954, West testified in the trial of airman Jimmy Shaver, who was executed for the murder of Chere Jo Horton. West was ordered to conduct the psychiatric evaluation of Shaver. West hypnotized Shaver and injected him with sodium pentothal in an attempt to remove his amnesia. While Shaver was under hypnosis, he confessed to killing the young girl. At trial, he maintained his innocence. West argued that Shaver suffered temporary insanity on the night of Chere Jo Horton's killing. Along with friend Charlton Heston, he supported the Civil Rights Movement, frequently participating in sit-ins and rallies in Oklahoma City.

Project MKUltra

Cornell University, where West completed his residency in psychiatry, was an MKUltra institution and the site of the Human Ecology Fund. West's success with POWs brought him to the attention of the Central Intelligence Agency. In it, West claimed to have discovered a way to replace "true memories" with "false ones" in human beings without their knowledge through the use of hypnotic suggestion. He wrote that his discovery was the result of "new drugs" which, when administered, accelerated a hypnotic state and deepened a trance.

In August 1977, The New York Times revealed that West was one of the researchers involved in behavior experiments for the CIA. In September 1977, OU president Paul F. Sharp announced he was notified by the CIA that OU was one of 80 institutions that unknowingly conducted LSD research. West commented that his research had been confined to animals, and that he was unaware that the research funds came from the CIA. He also said others at OU were doing research on LSD at the time.

One of the more unusual incidents in West's career took place in August 1962. He and two co-workers attempted to investigate the phenomenon of musth in elephants by dosing Tusko, a bull elephant at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Oklahoma City, with LSD. They expected that the drug would trigger a state similar to musth; instead, the animal began to have seizures 5 minutes after LSD was administered. Beginning twenty minutes later, West and his colleagues administered the antipsychotic promazine hydrochloride; they injected a total of 2800 mg over 11 minutes. This large promazine dose was not effective and may have contributed to the animal's death. It died an hour and 40 minutes after the LSD was given. Later, many theories developed about why Tusko had died. Some researchers thought that West and his colleagues had made the mistake of scaling up the dose in proportion to the animal's body weight, rather than its brain weight, and without considering other factors, such as its metabolic rate. Another theory was that while the LSD had caused Tusko distress, the drugs administered in an attempt to revive him caused death. Attempting to prove that the LSD alone had not been the cause of death, Ronald K. Siegel of UCLA repeated a variant of West's experiment on two elephants; he administered to two elephants equivalent doses (in milligrams per kilogram) to that which had been given to Tusko, mixing the LSD in their drinking water rather than directly injecting it. Neither elephant expired or exhibited any great distress, although both behaved strangely for a number of hours.

1967 San Francisco "crash pad"

After completing a fellowship at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences in Stanford, California while on leave from Oklahoma during the 1966–1967 academic year, West "led a group of researchers to San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district, where they rented an apartment and studied the hippie culture" during the latter half of 1967 under a contract with the Foundations Fund for Research in Psychiatry, Inc. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa psychologist Anthony J. Marsella has alleged that the Foundations Fund was employed as a CIA funding conduit during the Vietnam War.

Jack Ruby

Following the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald in Dallas, Texas in 1963, his killer, Jack Ruby, was held in an isolation cell in police custody. West was appointed as Ruby's psychiatrist, and pronounced him psychotic and delusional, and suggested further interrogation under the influence of sodium thiopental and hypnosis. West stated that Ruby had developed an acute psychotic state which had gotten worse and would continue to do so. He therefore suggested that Ruby be removed from jail and hospitalised. He claimed that this was "precipitated by the stress of [his] trial".

As a friend of Hugh Hefner, Rentzel went on to reside at the Playboy Mansion in the late 1970s. In his 2022 memoir, former Mansion butler Stefan Tetenbaum wrote that he saw Rentzel "[masturbate] in front of the primates" at the Mansion zoo, and alleged that Hefner "thought Lance could be cured, by allowing him to be free to explore himself sexually ... Lance constantly walked and ran about the Mansion grounds with his penis hanging out of his shorts ... We were instructed not to pay attention to his public [masturbation]." It is not known if Rentzel was domiciled at the Playboy Mansion through the intercession of West.

UCLA

From 1969 to 1989, West served as chair of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine and director of the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute.

Shortly after arriving at UCLA, he set out to create a center for the study of interpersonal violence, Among its plans was a project to "gather unprecedented amounts of behavioral data and centrally store it to identify emergent crime". By 1972, the project received state funding and was anticipating federal and private grants. In 1973, governor Ronald Reagan voiced his support for the center in his State of the State address. Most prevalent were allegations that the center would refer patients to undergo psychosurgery. West and Margaret Singer conducted extensive interviews with Hearst, producing a 35‐page report to the court. West testified for the defense that Hearst was not in her right mind when she participated in the bank robbery with the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA).

In her 1982 memoir Every Secret Thing, Hearst described West with the following: "I thought he had a creepy hypnotic voice. A tall, heavyset man who appeared to be kindly, I suspected "Jolly" of being too smooth, too soothing to be trust." She describes West reducing her to crying, murmuring and mumbling, to which he reacted by accusing her of refusing to cooperate fully with him. She said he "tried to be gentle and kind, I suppose" but that his questions became "more intimate and personal" and that she thought he was "inordinately interested in the sex that went on within the SLA, particularly in the lesbian relationships". She credited his interrogation with extracting her repressed memories, although "very slowly and painfully". Before their meeting, she felt the doctors would strip her of her "last shreds of privacy" and subject her to the same interrogation that Donald DeFreeze inflicted upon her.

South Africa

West made several trips to South Africa to support people facing political persecution. His visits were arranged at the request of Amnesty International, the International Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights, several South African universities, and other groups.

Cults

West was active in studying the creation and management of cults. and frequently appeared on news media to offer insight into cults such as Heaven's Gate. which was formed by members of the anti-cult movement to provide education and research on cults in the United States. In a memorial of West, the American Family Foundation wrote in their The Cult Observer that the "leadership and legitimacy he lent the AFF's effort cannot be exaggerated". In 1989, the Cult Awareness Network awarded West its highest honor, the Leo J. Ryan award, for "extraordinary courage, tenacity and perseverance in the battle against tyranny over the mind of man." West was also on the advisory board of the False Memory Syndrome Foundation.

Conflict with Scientologists

According to West, Scientologists attempted to discredit him and get him fired, using methods similar to those used in Operation Freakout. This was allegedly done after his contributions to a 1980 textbook that classified Scientology as a cult.

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

<blockquote>"I read parts of the letter to the 1,000-plus psychiatrists and then told any Scientologists in the crowd to pay attention. I said I would like to advise my colleagues that I consider Scientology a cult and L. Ron Hubbard a quack and a fake. I wasn't about to let them intimidate me."</blockquote>

Personal life

In 1944, West married psychologist Kathryn Hopkirk, who he met as a freshman at the University of Iowa. Together they had two daughters, Anne and Mary, and a son, John.

Death

In 1999, West died at his home in Los Angeles at the age of 74. His family said the cause of death was metastatic cancer.

Works

  • "Pseudo-Identity and the Treatment of Personality Change in Victims of Captivity and Cults." In: Dissociation: Clinical and Theoretical Perspectives, with Steven Jay Lynn and Judith W. Rhue, eds. New York: Guilford Press (Aug. 1994). .
  • Drug Testing: Issues and Options, with Robert H. Coombs, eds. New York: Oxford University Press (Apr. 1991). .
  • Alcoholism and Related Problems: Issues for the American Public. American Assembly Series. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall (Oct. 1984). .
  • "Cults, Quacks and Non-professional Psychotherapies" (with M.T. Singer). In: Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, with H. Kaplan and B. Sadock. 3rd ed. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins (1980), pp.&nbsp;3245–58.
  • Hallucinations: Behavior, Experience, and Theory, with Ronald K. Siegel, eds. New York: John Wiley & Sons (Oct. 1975). .
  • "Brainwashing, Conditioning and DDD (Debility, Dependency, and Dread)," with I. E. Farber and Harry F. Harlow. Sociometry, vol. 20, no. 4 (1957), pp.&nbsp;271–285. .

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