Friday, Feb.14, 1964
University Daily Kansan
Page 5
Psychologists 'Shock' Smokers of Habit
NEW YORK—(UPI)—Two psychological scientists are experimenting with a shocking thorough scientific way of breaking the cigarette habit.
You carry a battery and a push button in your pockets and you wear a bracelet. They're wired together.
When you light a cigarette from habit, you push the button with the first puff. That gives you a painful electrical shock through the bracelet which, theoretically,
gives you an "aversion" for cigarette smoking.
EXPERIMENTAL ANIMALS and presumably people too can be "conditioned" into doing or not doing many things automatically. First they must be made unconsciously to associate pleasure or displeasure with the doing or not doing.
Science has known about conditioning for decades. Out of the knowledge grew "aversion therapy" for alcoholies. They take
Peace Becomes Rare In Tanganyika Capital
By Phil Newsom UPI Foreign News Analyst
Translated from the Arabic, Dar-
Es-Salaam means "haven of peace."
But for many an African nation whose delegates were converging on the Tanganyikan capital of DarEs-Salaam, peace, especially internal peace, has been a commodity hard to come by.
In Dar-Es-Salaam, foreign and defense ministers of the 33-nation organization of African unity were to study a special humiliation.
It was that Tanganyika, Uganda and Kenya, former British colonies had been forced to call upon British troops to help them put down local rebellions.
LENDING AN AIR of crisis to the meeting was the escalating quarrel between Ethiopia and Somalia, and the massacre of thousands of Watutsi tribesmen in Rwanda by their former vassals, the Bahutus.
So long as any African state is forced to rely on outside troops to safeguard its citizens, said Tanganyikan President Julius Nyerere, the enemies of African liberation will continue to mock Africa.
The presence of the British troops in three nations was, as a matter of fact, only a manifestation in another form, of an aliment chronic to the new nations emerging in the headlong rush away from colonialization.
French and British colonial administrations had done a good job of training native civil functionaries but there were not enough.
In the Congo, the Belgians had left evidence of notable failure.
TRIBESMEN STIRRED to revolt against the colonial powers by wild promises of the benefits of freedom, took it to mean freedom to burn and pillage and the right to quit work.
Some African leaders, such as Kwame Nkrumah of Ghana, solved their problems by establishing strict work laws and repressive strongman governments.
In the Tanganyika meeting there was talk of an all-African "fire brigade," a military force by which Africa could put out its own brush fires.
The idea obviously was both premature and dangerous.
JEALOUSIES AND suspicions would prevent the selection of any one African to lead such a force and any decision as to when and where to use it would at best be open to suspicion.
As Africa goes through its growing pains, it suffers from many divisive factors.
With memories of the old slave trade still alive, black Africans below the Sahara distrust the Arab states to the north.
The organization of African unity came to life less than a year ago and achieved a certain success in arranging a cease-fire in the border dispute between Algeria and Morocco.
Its future success in truth depends upon unity. That unity today is based only upon a mutual hatred of colonialism, and that is not enough.
The rationale is that this creates an aversion for drinking—the alcoholic has been "conditioned" through his pleasure not to drink.
chemicals which if combined with drink in the body cause nausea.
R. J. McGuire and M. Vallance, Scottish psychologist and psychiatrist respectively, electrified "aversion therapy" and applied it to cigarette smokers as well as to alcoholics.
HOWEVER, A WOMAN who had smoked 40 cigarettes a day for many years hasn't smoked in 6 months "and has no difficulty in abstaining." Five other smokers are also abstaining but for shorter periods.
Out of 7 alcoholics there has been "good" improvement in one and "mild" improvement in another. The others were considered failures.
They reported these results to the British Medical Association because they wanted to encourage psychological scientists everywhere to experiment with electrified aversion. "Large-scale studies are perfectly feasible and the treatable conditions are such as to yield large numbers of prospective subjects," he said.
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On most of these 39 cases McGuire and Vallance have had a "follow-up" of only a month and so they consider the results to be tentative.
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No one should be tempted to try unaided and unsupervised experiments on himself. Electrical shock is potentially dangerous and psychological techniques demand the skills of trained psychologists.
EACH OF 39 such persons began his conditioning while alone with one scientist or the other. He worked the bracelet but the scientist controlled the button. When he lighted a cigarette he got a shock with the first inhale.
The alcoholics were required to sniff in turn at 12 test tubes,9 of which contained whisky. Each time they sniffed whisky they were given a shock.
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Each of the 39 submitted to repeated conditioning in these private sessions. Many of them were equipped with battery, push button and bracelet to carry around at all times to shock themselves painfully whenever the impulse arose to do what they were being conditioned not to do.
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