Donald O. Hebb
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Donald Olding Hebb FRS (July 22, 1904 – August 20, 1985) was a Canadian psychologist who was influential in the area of neuropsychology, where he sought to understand how the function of neurons contributed to psychological processes such as learning. He is best known for his theory of Hebbian learning, which he introduced in his classic 1949 work The Organization of Behavior.
Controversial research
Hebb's name has often been invoked in discussions of the involvement of psychological researchers in interrogation techniques, including the use of sensory deprivation, because of his research into this field. Speaking at a Harvard symposium on sensory deprivation in June 1958, Hebb is quoted as remarking:
The work that we have done at McGill University began, actually, with the problem of brainwashing. We were not permitted to say so in the first publishing.... The chief impetus, of course, was the dismay at the kind of "confessions" being produced at the Russian Communist trials. "Brainwashing" was a term that came a little later, applied to Chinese procedures. We did not know what the Russian procedures were, but it seemed that they were producing some peculiar changes of attitude. How? One possible factor was perceptual isolation and we concentrated on that.
Recent research has argued that Hebb's sensory deprivation research was funded by and coordinated with the CIA (McCoy, 2007). Some of this research was done in secret, and the results were initially shared only with United States authorities. Some of this research involved volunteers who spent hours in sensory deprivation conditions that some argue should be considered torture, not patients, and were free to quit the experiment at any time. Similar procedures, involving isolation tanks filled with heavily salted, neutrally buoyant water kept at body temperature, also served as the basis for techniques developed to enhance relaxation and meditation, which are still in use.
