The great daily CBC radio news programme "As It Happens" (also carried on NPR in the US) carried an item recently (on the same broadcast where they interviewed Robin's husband on the Ig Nobels) on the closing of the Weyburn, Saskatchewan mental hospital.
Who cares, you say? Well, as AIH pointed out, the hospital has a distinguished history in psychology and psychiatry. The controversial psychiatrist Humphrey Osmond was at Weyburn where he pursued some of the first experiments with the hallucinogenics mescaline and LSD on mental patients, coined the term "psychedelic", and supplied Aldous Huxley with some (the result was Huxley's famous "The Doors of Perception"). An interesting obituary of Osmond, who died in 2004 (Wikipedia has it wrong, by the way, with its date of 2008) was published in the British Medical Journal (http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/full/328/7441/713). There's also a NY Times obit at http://tinyurl.com/4w5wjt which has this charming anecdote about the origin of the term: Huxley had sent Dr. Osmond a rhyme with his own word choice: ''To make this trivial world sublime, take half a gram of phanerothyme.'' (Thymos means soul in Greek.) Rejecting that, Dr. Osmond replied: ''To fathom Hell or soar angelic, just take a pinch of psychedelic.'' AIH had it right on Osmond at the Weyburn. What they didn't add was that the famous pioneer in applied behaviour analysis (operant conditioning), Theodoro Allyon, also carried out his first studies at the Weyburn. These eventually led to his development of the token economy (at Anna State, however). See Ayllon, T., and Haughton, E. (1962). Control of the behavior of schizophrenic patients by food. Journal of the Experimental Analysis of Behavior, 5, 343-352. Available on-line at. http://tinyurl.com/3mzvrk One of his memorable studies, if unethical by present standards, was his operant conditioning of broom-carrying behaviour by a schizophrenic patient at the hospital. He then called in the psychodynamic psychiatrists (they all were, in those days) to "interpret" the symptom, which they did with imagination and enthusiasm. He revealed his hoax in print (Ayllon, T. and Haughton, E. (1965). Interpretation of symptoms: fact or fiction? Behavior Research and Therapy, 3, 1-7.) Curiously, I can't find any news reports (other than AIH) that say the Weyburn is to be demolished, just this one saying it's under consideration: http://www.cbc.ca/canada/saskatchewan/story/2008/08/05/weyburn- hospital.html or http://tinyurl.com/3mzvrk The Weyburn frist for psychedlics and operant conditioning too. Not bad for an obscure hospital somewhere out on the prairies. R.I.P. See more pics of the hospital at http://www.saskurbex.prairiepast.com/main/weyburn/weyburn.htm with some non-professional notes on this history. Stephen ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stephen L. Black, Ph.D. Professor of Psychology, Emeritus Bishop's University e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 2600 College St. Sherbrooke QC J1M 1Z7 Canada Subscribe to discussion list (TIPS) for the teaching of psychology at http://flightline.highline.edu/sfrantz/tips/ ----------------------------------------------------------------------- --- To make changes to your subscription contact: Bill Southerly ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
