In the late 1950s, patients walked into Montreal’s Allan Memorial Institute expecting treatment for anxiety, depression or everyday struggles of the mind. What many of them encountered instead was the work of Dr. Ewen Cameron, a psychiatrist with an outsized reputation and a dangerous obsession with “reprogramming” the human brain. Cameron believed he could break down a person’s mind and rebuild it from scratch. His methods were as crude as they were cruel.

He called it “psychic driving.” Patients were put under heavy sedation, often for weeks at a time, and then forced to listen to negative phrases looped again and again through speakers or headphones. Sometimes the messages ran for 16 hours a day.

The results were devastating. Patients developed crippling fear, confusion and dependency

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