Louis Jolyon West (October 6, 1924 – January 2, 1999) was an American psychiatrist involved in the public sphere. In 1954, at the age of 29 and with no previous post-residency fellowship or tenure-track appointment, he became a full professor and chair of psychiatry at the University of Oklahoma College of Medicine. From 1969 to 1989, he served as chair of psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine and the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute.
West's work on brainwashing techniques allowed him to exonerate 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. He pioneered research into the use and abuse of LSD.
West was also active in studying the creation and management of cults and anti-death penalty activism. Along with friend Charlton Heston, he supported the Civil Rights Movement, frequently participating in sit-ins and rallies. He was a trustee of the American Psychiatric Association and served as a consultant to a variety of governmental organizations, including the United States Air Force, the Peace Corps and the United States Information Agency.
Early life
West was born in Brooklyn, New York or Madison, Wisconsin to a Ukrainian Jewish immigrant father and a mother who taught piano. He grew up in poverty in Madison. He subsequently attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison for a year and, after completing prerequisite coursework at the University of Iowa under the aegis of the Army Specialized Training Program during World War II, earned his M.D. from the University of Minnesota Medical School in 1949. Thereafter, he completed his residency at the Payne Whitney Psychiatric Clinic of Cornell University on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in 1952.
Korean War POWs and brainwashing
West was an officer in the United States Air Force Medical Service from 1948 to 1956, attaining the rank of major. While assigned to Lackland Air Force Base after his residency, 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.
He then published a paper with the title "United States Airforce prisoners of the Chinese Communist. Methods of forceful indoctrination: Observations and Interviews."
Project MKUltra
Cornell University, where West completed his residency in psychiatry, was an MKUltra institution and the site of the Human Ecology Fund. He later became a subcontractor for MKUltra subproject 43, a 20,800 USD grant by the CIA while he was chairman of the department of Psychiatry at the University of Oklahoma. The proposal submitted by West was titled "Psychophysiological Studies of Hypnosis and Suggestibility" with an accompanying document titled "Studies of Dissociative States".