All righty Sir Bill was at his peak in ww2 he reckoned he could cure post truamatic stress or shell shock as they used to call it and anxiety and some depression.
He did this by zonking people into a coma-so called insulin shock therapy or by electro shock.
The theory was based on pavlovs dogs I guess we all know the doggie smell food salivate man ring bell at same time then if he rings bell without food dog salivates anyway schtick.
What is less known is that after the dogs cages were accidently flooded some dogs liked handlers they previously hated and some hated owners they had loved,
Now Sir Bill reckoned that this was all down to overstressing the nervous system and thus reversing its responces and making it more sensitive to small stimuli
Without getting too detailed Sir Bill turned this into a therapy (since discredited) andclaimed that ritual could do the same job and that eastern meditation could do the same by focusing conscioussness
into a small part of the brain. He predicted the rise of new age thought and according to Jon Ronson in "the Men who Stare at goats" worked for the CIA designing interogation and mind control techniques.
This book is my fave read and shows what happened when post Vietnam the US military
felt a bit vulnerable and gave cults credance and sanctioned a new age martial arts manual which inspired US special forces soldiers to try and stare goats to death, The accompanying TV seris "Crazy World Leaders" shows some of em at it. The book is worth reading as is Sargents "The Battle for the Mind" if you can find it or you could try searches for The First Earth Battalion or the Jedi project.
