Dr. Ewen Cameron believed that he had come up with a cure for schizophrenia by re-programming the brain with new thought patterns.
With this method, patients were asked to wear headphones and listen to positive messages repeatedly for days or weeks. Between the 1950’s and 1960’s, some patients with minor problems found themselves sedated with barbiturates, strapped in beds, and forced to listen to non-ending messages played over and over again.
Even the CIA fell for this experiment, though they eventually concluded that the technique was a failure and withdrew their funding.