Cameron treated psychiatric destruction as a precondition for creating a new self

Evidence

Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, which smacks of conspiracy, calls the first of its two main characters ‘Doctor Shock’. This is the name given to the Montreal psychiatrist Dr Ewen Cameron, who believed that administering electric shocks could destroy bad elements within the brain, erase them and enable a new personality to be constructed starting from a ‘clean slate’. By means of electroshock, Cameron plunged his patients into a state of chaos that was supposed to provide the basis for their rebirth as healthy, model citizens. In other words, he understood the acts of destruction he performed as a kind of creation. The psyche was subjected to a violent ‘de-branding’ and ‘re-branding’. It was to be newly formatted and rewritten, as it were. — Byung-Chul Han, Psychopolitics, 81

Categorization

• XREF: Cameron’s panopticon and clean-slate ‘rebranding’ connects to Han’s ongoing interest in reformatting the psyche — and to surveillance/panic-room themes earlier in the book. — connects to: Self-destruction at each change is what enables identity to persist — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 245

Broader Connections

• Self-destruction at each change is what enables identity to persist #complicates (0.75) — Catherine Malabou, What Should We Do with Our Brain?, 245