The MK-ULTRA iceberg

[Jan Klimkowski]

Sleep and sensory deprivation were extensively used by the People's Temple, in a manner later fictionalized (knowingly or not) in the excellent movie, The Jacket.

Sleep deprivation was also used to break the will of Temple children and adults and render them open to Jones' strong willed orders. For no other apparent reason, the subjects were forced to go days without sleep. Many were so deprived that they would fall asleep standing up.
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Sensory deprivation was also widely employed as a means of breaking down the will of a test subject. ....... It was not until the Temple moved to Guyana that their experiments in sensory deprivation surfaced. Tom Grubbs, a psychologist with a degree from the University of California, was in charge of "the box". Grubbs, who was also the principal of the Jonestown school, personally constructed Jones' sensory deprivation chamber. Test subjects were locked into the chamber which was then placed below ground in a root cellar. The effect was that of being buried alive. Jones recognized the terror in the technique and ordered several additional chambers built in the shape of coffins. The test persons interred in the boxes were totally deprived of all sensory input. Without input, the mind goes blank and the subject emerges from the ordeal in a very receptive state for further conditioning. Tom Grubbs, who had been the Temple's expert in sensory deprivation for eight years, reportedly died in the Jonestown massacre but this cannot be confirmed as his body has never been identified.

(p389-90, Was Jonestown a CIA Medical Experiment?, Meiers)

So, the Reverend Jim Jones was using advanced sensory deprivation techniques on his "family". Where did a "left-wing" street preacher think of such things?

The fact that both the techniques and the custom-built equipment were in the charge of a University of California psychologist is provocative. It suggests that, once again, we have a meeting of behaviourist and Pavlovian psychology with a large dose of MK-ULTRA - except it's been contracted out to a cult, and physically moved outside the borders of the USA to Guyana.