William Joseph Bryan | |
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| Born | 1926 (1926) |
| Died | (aged 50) |
| Occupation | Physician |
William Joseph Bryan Jr. (1926–1977) was an American physician and a pioneeringhypnotist. He was one of the founders of modernhypnotherapy and his work notably found use inpsychological warfare during theCold War.[1] He was a distant relative ofUnited States Secretary of StateWilliam Jennings Bryan.
Bryan was originally from theMidwest, the seventh-generation M.D. in his family.[2] Bryan was a first cousin twice removed ofUnited States Secretary of StateWilliam Jennings Bryan,[2] who was his grandfather's cousin.[3] Bryan claimed to have once worked as a drummer forTommy Dorsey.[2]
William Joseph Bryan Jr. held an MD, JD, and PhD. He started his career as a military psychiatrist,[1] claiming in a 1972 interview onKNX radio to have been the "chief of all medical survival training for theUnited States Air Force during the Korean War ... which meant the brainwashing section." Later in the same interview, Bryan detailed the brainwashing process:[4]
"You have to have the person locked up physically, to have control over them; you have to use a certain amount of physical torture ... and there is also the use of long-term hypnotic suggestion ... probably drugs ... whatever and so on. Under these situations, where you have all this going for you, like in a prison camp and so on, yes, you can brainwash a person to do just about anything. What I'm speaking about are the innumerable instances we ran into when I was running the country's brainwashing and anti-brainwashing programs."
Bryan was involved in research for theCIA, including theProject ARTICHOKE and its successor, theProject MKUltra (popularly known as the CIA's mind control program), a research project intobehavioral engineering of humans. As part of his work for the CIA, he developed techniques of what he called "hypno-conditioning." His published research from the era focused on the forensic and military range of psychological research. He would later focus onlegal hypnosis.[1]
Bryan considered himself to be the "leading expert in the world" on hypnosis.[5] He developed his own system of hypnoanalysis called the 'Bryan method'.[6] On May 4, 1955, Bryan founded theAmerican Institute of Hypnosis, and was editor of the institute'sJournal of the American Institute of Hypnosis.[7] He specialized in sex therapy and criminology. He designed a switchboard of electronic instruments he called the Bryan Electronic Automated Robot (BEAR), which he claimed allowed him to hypnotize and simultaneously monitor feedback from three different clients by using a control room, televisions, and multiple tape decks. Bryan defined hypnosis as "increased concentration of the mind ... increased relaxation of the body ... and an increased susceptibility to suggestion."[4] Bryan believed sex was essential to his practice, once telling aPlayboy interviewer: "I enjoy variety and I like to get to know people on a deep emotional level. One way of getting to know people is through intercourse."[4] In one of his most famous cases, Bryan was brought in by attorneyF. Lee Bailey and subjectedAlbert DeSalvo to hypnosis, under which DeSalvo confessed to theBoston Strangler murders.[8] In 1970, Bryan claimed to have hypnoanalzyed more than 15,000 patients and was earning in excess of a quarter of a million dollars per year. He operated out of his organization's headquarters at 8833Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, and had branch offices in San Francisco, San Diego and Atlanta.[2]
Although uncredited, Bryan publicly claimed that he was the technical advisor forJohn Frankenheimer's filmThe Manchurian Candidate (1962).[9] He was officially credited as technical advisor onRoger Corman'sTales of Terror (1962) and onFrancis Ford Coppola'sDementia 13 (1963).[10][11]
In 1969, the California State Board of Medical Examiners found Bryan guilty of "unprofessional conduct in four cases involving sexual molesting of female patients" he had hypnotized to cure their "sexual disorders". He was given five years' probation.[12][4]
William Turner and Jonn Christian hypothesized in their 1978 bookThe Assassination of Robert F. Kennedy that Bryan was responsible for inducingSirhan Sirhan to fire blanks atRobert F. Kennedy withposthypnotic suggestion.[13] Turner and Christian first suspected a connection between Bryan and Sirhan in 1976 after noticing notebook entries written by Sirhan that referenced "AMORC AMORC Salvo Salvo Di Di Salvo Die S Salvo". Speaking with Turner atSan Quentin, Sirhan insisted he had no idea who Albert DeSalvo was. Turner and Christian questioned why the name appears in his notebook if he didn't know who DeSalvo was. They cite Bryan's reputation for constantly boasting about his work with DeSalvo and suggest that Sirhan might have heard the name while under hypnosis. They cite Dr.Herbert Spiegel, who told them "anything mentioned to a subject under hypnosis was automatically etched in their subconscious."[4] The book also mentions that "only hours" after the shooting of Robert F. Kennedy and before Sirhan was identified as the shooter, Bryan appeared on the Los Angeles radio stationKABC-AM, where he told show hostRay Briem that the suspect likely acted under posthypnotic suggestion.[4]
British authorPeter Evans, in his 2004 bookNemesis, also identified Bryan as being the one who hypnotized Sirhan.[14][15]
In a 1974 interview, researcher Betsy Langman asked Bryan whether he believed Sirhan usedself-hypnosis, to which Bryan responded, "I'm not going to comment on that case, because I didn't hypnotize him."[16] Bryan abruptly declared that the interview was over after accusing, "You are going around trying to find some more ammunition to put out that same old crap—that people can be hypnotized into doing all these weird things."[4]
Los Angeles Times sportswriterJim Murray interviewed Bryan in 1963 and described him: "He is blond, round-faced (with a belly to match), he always talks as if a crowd had gathered. He has about as many self-doubts as Cassius Clay and can hypnotize himself at will, except he should do it more often when the mashed potatoes are coming."[4] In an October 1970 interview inEsquire, writerDavid Slavitt described Bryan as being a "huge man, three hundred pounds of flesh and a great booming voice".[2]
Bryan was an ordained priest in theOld Roman Catholic Church and frequently preached at fundamentalist churches in Southern California. He believed prayer to be a form of hypnotism and suggested that the prophets underwent a form of autohypnosis: "In the Middle Ages, most of the prophets who heard the voice of God actually dissociated their own voices and heard themselves."[4]
At the time of his death, Bryan was married to his wife, Savilla, and had two daughters.[17]
Bryan was reportedly found dead in a hotel room at theRiviera inLas Vegas on March 4, 1977, of a suspected heart attack. He was 50 years old. He was buried in Hollywood.[17][4] Celebrity attorneyMelvin Belli was a pallbearer at his service.[18]
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