Growing Living Rat Neurons To Play... DOOM?

Violence Center: Psychotechnology for Repression

by Al Huebner & Terry Kupers

‘Science for the People’ Vol. 6, No. 3, May 1974, p. 17 – 21

A multi-million dollar proposal for a “Center for the Study and Reduction of Violence” (CSRV) at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute (NPI) has been designed to focus on the “pathologically violent individual” and, in the words of its main proponent, is aimed at “altering undesirable behavior.” In this time of psychosurgery, (remote controlled) electrical stimulation of the brain, chemotherapies and prison “behavior modification” programs, there is real danger that mind-control practices are replacing less sophisticated physical approaches to enforced conformity or repression. In this context, violence centers like the one at UCLA serve to give scientific legitimacy to such forms of repression.  

The history and background of CSRV provide a framework in which to analyse the use of psychotechnology as an instrument of repression. However good the intentions of some staff members at NPI, the Center represents another attempt to implement the Law and Order philosophy, in a subtle, but nevertheless dangerous, form. The research proposed would justify replacing the publicly-visible brutality used at places like Attica with highly sophisticated mind control techniques, blunting the thrust of dissidence by labeling it mental illness. Not only would this research lead to a medical model of violence which ignores the social context, it would use the most glaring elements of repression in this society—racism, sexism, exploitation of the poor—to accomplish this goal. 

The history of the Center can logically be traced back to 1967. Following the Detroit ghetto rebellion of that year, Drs. Mark, Sweet and Ervin, two neurosurgeons and a psychiatrist, wrote a letter published in the Journal of the American Medical Association1… It read, in part:

…if slum conditions alone determined and initiated riots. why are the vast majority of slum dwellers able to resist the temptations of unrestrained violence? Is there something peculiar about the violent slum dweller that differentiates him from his peaceful neighbor? …It would be of more than passing interest to find what percentage of the attempted and completed murders committed during the recent wave of riots were done without a motive… We need intensive research and clinical studies of the individuals committing the violence. The goal of such studies would be to pinpoint, diagnose and treat these people with low violence thresholds before they contribute to further tragedies.

These remarks exhibit a tortured logic. In speaking of “attempted and completed murders committed during the recent wave of riots,” Mark, Sweet and Ervin ignore the fact that virtually all of the killings were of ghetto residents by policemen. In Detroit, the notable murders were the unprovoked shootings of unarmed and, in some cases, bound black men 2. In the Watts rebellion, 29 blacks were killed by policemen, but no policemen were killed by black men and women. None of these killings were “without a motive” in the sense that Mark, Sweet and Ervin use the term. 

However twisted its logic, the letter helped develop a new dimension to the Law and Order concept. As a result of its publication, Drs. Ervin and Mark received a grant from the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (LEAA) of the Justice Department. The proposal for the grant included screening population groups in prisons and on the streets in a search for “brain damaged” potential rioters, and developing surgical and electrical methods of treatment that might be used on these people3. Dr. Sweet, chief neurosurgeon at Massachusetts General Hospital, received half a million dollars from the National Institute of Mental Health to research the same topic. That grant has since been discontinued in the midst of controversy and irregularities in the practices of Dr. Ervin’s group.

Dr. Frank Ervin became a faculty member at NPI at about the time that its Director was first suggesting establishment of the Violence Center. The proposal to establish CSRV focused on the “pathologically violent individual,” looking mainly to biological aspects of violent behavior and including prospects for surgical “treatment.” Two of the proposed projects were to be directed by Ervin. Most of the projects reflect an attitude which tends to play down all social causes for crime, violence, and rebellion and imply by its one-sided emphasis on the individual and biology that the only way to prevent violence is to get at the malfunctioning brain that causes it.