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

I'm amazed that you nominated him for "most evil person" on the basis of this one quote. Wikipedia's bio on him describes a man who "was captivated by 'the many mysteries of the brain'" and tried to further our understand of how it works for the benefit of everyone. Some excerpts:

> During the Spanish Civil War he joined the Republican side and served as a medical corpsman on the Republican side while he was a medical student.
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Some consider one of Delgado's most promising finds is that of an area called the septum within the limbic region. This area, when stimulated by Delgado, produced feelings of strong euphoria. These euphoric feelings were sometimes strong enough to overcome physical pain and depression.
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Other than the stimoceiver, Delgado also created a "chemitrode" which was an implantable device that released controlled amounts of a drug into specific brain areas. Delgado also invented an early version of what is now a cardiac pacemaker.
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Delgado hypothesized that the [stimoceiver] method used on Paddy [the chimpanzee] could be used on others to stop panic attacks, seizures, and other disorders controlled by certain signals within the brain.

I don't think that he meant by "political control" any kind of authoritarian mind control of the populace, like something out of dystopian SF. People in this thread are bringing up CIA programs like MKULTRA, but I see no mention that Delgado agreed with or was involved in those programs. It sounds more like a proposal for a more humane alternative to prisons and asylums: instead of locking someone up for being a kleptomaniac or sociopath or drug addict, fix their brains instead and let them free.

I haven't read his book Physical Control of the Mind: Toward a Psychocivilised Society (although it's now on my reading list), but here's a blurb:

> In this Delgado has discussed how we have managed to tame and civilize our surrounding nature. Now it was time to civilize our inner being. ... The tone of the book was challenging and the philosophical speculations went beyond the data. However, the intent was benevolent to encourage less cruel, happier, better man.

And from an Amazon review:

> 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.

I hope the knee-jerk replies here celebrating his death and hoping he suffers in Hell, as well as everyone who upvoted this to third-highest in the "most evil" thread, are just assuming "mind control = evil" and don't actually know who he was.

We need more people like José Delgado.

Edit: Physical Control of the Mind is available online. I highly recommend Chapter 21, "Ethical Considerations," as well as the rest if you're likewise fascinated by his work.

> In the early 1950s, a patient in a state mental hospital approached Dr. Hannibal Hamlin and me requesting help. She was an attractive 24-year-old woman of average intelligence and education who had a long record of arrests for disorderly conduct, She had been repeatedly involved in bar brawls in which she incited men to fight over her and had spent most of the preceding few years either in jail or in mental institutions. The patient expressed a strong desire as well as an inability to alter her conduct, and because psychiatric treatment had failed, she and her mother urgently requested that some kind of brain surgery be performed in order to control her disreputable, impulsive behavior.
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Medical knowledge and experience at that time could not ascertain whether ESB or the application of cerebral lesions could help to solve this patient's problem, and surgical intervention was therefore rejected. When this decision was explained, both the patient and her mother reacted with similar anxious comments, asking, "What is the future? Only jail or the hospital? Is there no hope?" ... People are changing their character by self-medication through hallucinogenic drugs, but do they have the right to demand that doctors administer treatment that will radically alter their behavior? What are the limits of individual rights and doctors' obligations?

Hi there,

Some suggestions for ya!

The Quest for Consciousness by Christof Koch. Minimal neuroscience background required, but the more you know, the more you'll derive from this book. Focused on illustrating how complex networks can manifest behaviour (and consciousness). Outside of Koch's regular pursuits as an electrophysiology, he worked alongside Francis Crick (ya that one), to study arousal and consciousness. It's a fantastic read, and it's quite humbling.

Rhythms of the Brain by Gyorgy Buzsaki. Written for neuroscientists and engineers as an introductory textbook into network dynamics, oscillations, and behaviour. One of my favorite books in the field, but it can also be the most challenging.

Treatise of Man by Rene Descarte. Personal favorite, simply because it highlights how far we've come (e.g. pineal gland, pain, and animal spirits).

Synaptic Self by Joseph LeDoux provides the fantastic realization that "you are your synapse". Great circuit/network book written with a lot of psychological and philosophical considerations.

Finally...

Physical control of the mind--towards of psychocivilized society by the one and only Jose Delgado. (In)Famous for his experiments where he stopped a bull charging at him through amygdala stimulation- along with some similar experiments in people- Delgado skirts the line between good intention and mad science. It's too bad he's not taught more in history of neuroscience.