Louis Jolyon West
Encyclopedia : L : LO : LOU : Louis Jolyon West
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Jolly West was born in Brooklyn to immigrant Russian Jewish parents and grew up in Madison, Wisconsin. His family was poor, but he was determined to get a good education. Shortly after he had entered University of Wisconsin, he decided to fight fascism and enlisted in the U.S. Army. In the Army Specialized Training Program he studied at the University of Iowa and the University of Minnesota School of Medicine from which he graduated in 1948.
While West was on his internship at the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic he discussed with J.A. Winter the recently published book Dianetics and concluded that the "auditing" described in Hubbard's book used hypnosis. Winter made him known to L. Ron Hubbard once, but West's comment was: "Winter introduced West to Hubbard on one occasion but West said: "I guess I didn't find the man very memorable. I was more interested in the book which described the auditing technique in which they had preclears -- or prereleases if just beginners -- count backwards from seven to zero repeatedly until they went into a trance, although Hubbard denied it was hypnosis." West followed the activities of Scientology from that time on and has openly said and written that he thought the organization dangerous.
He transferred to the U.S. Air Force Medical Corps and five years later he was appointed Chief of Psychiatry Service at the Lackland Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas. In this position he studied U.S. pilots and veterans after they had experienced torture and brainwashing and been forced to give false confessions as prisoners in the Korean War. He was ever since interested in the subject of brainwashing. He served as expert witness in the case of Patricia Hearst.
At the age of 29 he was appointed professor and Head of the Department of Psychiatry, Neurology and Biobehavioral Sciences at the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine, the youngest man to have held a chairmanship in psychiatry in the United States so far.
1969 he was appointed as head of department and director of the Neuropsychiatry Institute at UCLA. His research covered many fields: alcoholism, hallucinary drugs, sleep deprivation, violent behavior, the hippie culture and cults.
West was also a civil rights activist. He was the first white psychiatrist who testified for black prisoners in South Africa during the attempt to end apartheid. He was a member of the White House Conference on Civil Rights in 1966. For many years he fought for the abolishment of the death penalty.
West was not a man to be easily silenced: On one APA panel on cults where every speaker had received a long letter threatening a lawsuit if Scientology would be mentioned, no one mentioned Scientology except West, who was the last speaker: "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." (Psychiatric Times, 1991)
Scientologists continued to harass him with smear campaigns. His antiapartheid trips to South Africa were being twisted to pro-apartheid by Scientology's Freedom magazine. (Psychiatric Times, 1991)
Aged 74, Dr. West died from a tumor at his home in West Los Angeles.
Works
- Alcohol and Related Problems: Issues for the American Public, The American Assembly, Columbia University, Prentice-Hall, Inc., Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1984
- "Cult Phenomenon - Mental Health, Legal and Religious Implications" Several lectures by Jolly West in audio [link]
- "Scientology II: CCHR and Narconon", "The Southern California Psychiatrist," May 1991
- "Scientology III: Scientology and Front Groups", The Southern California Psychiatrist, October 1991 [link]
- Pseudo-Identity and the Treatment of Personality Change in Victims of Captivity and Cults, From Dissociation: Clinical and Theoretical Perspectives. 1994 [link]
- Drug Testing : Issues and Options, 1991
- Farber. I.E., Marlow. H. F.. & West L.J. (1956). Brainwashing conditioning and DDD (debility, dependency, and dread)
- West.. L. J.. & Singer. M.T. (1980). Cults, quacks and nonprofessional psychotherapies. In H.I. Kaphm A. M. Freedman, & B.J. Sadock (Eds.), Comprehensive textbook of psychiatry III. Baltimore: Williams & Willtens.
References
- [Prozac frees Scientology Leader from Depression] – The Psychiatric Times, Volume VIII, June 1991
- Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain, Acid Dreams: The Complete Social History of LSD: The CIA, The Sixties, and Beyond. New York: Grove Press, 1992.
See also
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