The Monkey-Puzzle Tree

by Elizabeth Nickson

During the 50s and 60s the CIA directed a serious of programs in mind control, in which they used ordinary citizens as guinea pigs. None went as far as the Allan Memorial Institute set up in Montreal by the eminent psychiatrist Dr. Ewen Cameron, with the connivance of the Canadian government. In the name of research into brainwashing, he cruelly misused people who had minor--ostensibly temporary--psychiatric complaints, such as post-partum depression, as was the case with the author's own mother.Nickson has employed the devices and textures of fiction to reveal the heart of this terrifying story. She tells it from the perspective of a family enmeshed in a web of treachery. She takes us from a Washington courtroom back to bitter-sweet scenes of an idyllic Canadian childhood which held frightening secrets. She shows us a girl, adoring and protective of her beautiful society mother whose behaviour increasingly puzzled and alienated her. Layer by layer, the truth is unwrapped as warily as if it were a time bomb--a time bomb the CIA anticipates with a barrage of lawyers and dirty tricks.

Genres: Nonfiction

268 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Elizabeth was European Bureau Chief of Life Magazine in the late 80's and early 90's. During that time, she arranged photo stories and interviewed Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher, the Dalai Lama, and dozens of other leaders, movie and pop stars, politicians, and royalty, as well as torture victims, political prisoners and criminals. She oversaw Life photographers in the field during the first Gulf War.

In 1990, she managed to initiate and co-ordinate the acquisition of Mandela's autobiography for Little Brown, while Mr. Mandela was still in prison. She spent the first three weeks of Mandela's release in his back garden.

Prior to her appointment at Life, she was a reporter at the London bureau of Time Magazine for two years.

In 1994 Bloomsbury UK and Knopf Canada published her novel, The Monkey Puzzle Tree, which tells the story of the CIA mind control program in Montreal in the 50's and 60's. Liz Calder, a founding director and editor in chief of Bloomsbury, was the book's editor and champion.

Nickson has also written for The (London) Sunday Times Magazine, The Guardian, The Observer, The Independent, Tatler, The Sunday Telegraph, Vogue, Femme, Vogue Hommes, The Spectator (UK), Saturday Night, Chatelaine, and Harper's Magazine.

In 2005, she began the process of dividing her 30 acre forest in half, covenanting her ravine, building a salmon enhancement project and restoring a meadow once used as a gravel pit. She then built a green house, contracting and project managing the construction herself. The subdivision is now taught in local colleges and universities as a case study in “good green development”.

"Eco-Fascists, How Radical Conservationists Are Destroying Our Natural Heritage", was born of this experience. Her green development opened a window into the excesses of the conservation movement, and particularly how it has foreshortened and in far too many cases, ruined the lives of America's rural people. The book was published in 2012 by Adam Bellow at Harper Collins.

Reviews

[Sarah Muir · Rating 5 out of 5]

I remember reading this book, and it was terrifying as one husband he was helping his wife by taking his wife to the sanatorium to help her with depression only to find that his wife was brainwashed years later. It was terrible for the women who would not know what the longterm effects were on the treatment that she had she received. She was programmed to kill, but it was also so very frightening for her children to witness their mother behaviour. Government-funded this unbelievable programme!!

[Ape · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating but grim thriller about a darker side of recent American history. A journalist in her late thirties finds out that when her mother went into a mental hospital on three occasions in the fifties and sixties in Canada, the head doctor there was actually paid by the CIA to do LSD and brainwashing experiments on the unknowing patients. She learns that her mother was one such patient and gets drawn into the lawsuit being put against the CIA. That's all chilling as it stands but although this is a work of fiction the fact remains that the doctor, the hospital and the experiments really did happen. The author's own mother also went through this, so this book comes from a very personal place. It's rather horrific to consider how the rights of individuals have been completely disregarded and those of a different nation even, and worse its people who were picked on during particularly vulnerable periods of their lives.

The mother in this story went in for what I can only understand as being post natal depression and/or clinical depression. I won't claim to be any kind of expert on mental health. Having read something of the world they were living in and the attitudes towards women I am surprised not more people ended up with nervous conditions. It sounded beyond frustrating to me. They are a well off family and come from that country club superficial world where keeping up with the neighbours, being snobby and playing the whole petty minded political society game is of the upmost importance. Women, once married are to quit work and raise children into narrow minded little snobs. Something that the mother doesn't excel at, letting her kids socialise with the poorer French-speaking kids in the locality. So her kids are refined little snobs. First mistake. Then she has the classic monster... Sorry, mother in law. The woman liked to be called Muffie -what? And she is the classic witch you love to hate. From what you're told in the book she never wanted that son to marry as she wanted a permanent companion. So nothing her daughter in law can do is right and she is determined to get the kids off her. And with the bouts of depression and the mental torture the CIA put her through she's not always capable of fighting back. It's so sad to see how this broke apart their family. Muffie dear even starts court proceedings to declare the mother unfit. And who said families aren't supportive?!?

There's this bit where Catherine, the journalist but as a teen has stepped into her brothers shoes to crew for her father during a boat race. This is what he says about what makes a good crewman: "Fast, good at hiking, follows orders, doesn't anticipate them, doesn't talk too much, though I don't have to worry about that with you, do I? Things like that. It's like being a good wife." P.141 And I guess that problem just sums up the attitude to their women them. Ugh.

The subject matter may make it sound like some big conspiracy novel but it isn't really that. This is fact and its pretty open with what's going on right from the start. There are no revealing shocks half way through. It's more a fictionalised account of some of the underhand things the CIA got up to during their reds under the bed paranoia.

[Mara Gerloni · Rating 4 out of 5]

Nicely written

[Lenore · Rating 1 out of 5]

Should have been a five just because of the topic - the government mind experiments done with drugs (LSD) on people with mental issues in Canada in the 50's - but I struggled to finish this book.

[Jim Macool's · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a good read, but the typos and grammatical errors were terrible. Like speed bumps in the flow of the story. For this reason I only gave it 3 stars. I would not recommend in its current form.