That's three down, and how many to go! - - - - - Begin article - - - - - - - Martin T. Orne, 72, psychiatrist at Penn By Maria Panaritis INQUIRER STAFF WRITER Dr. Martin T. Orne, 72, a psychiatrist and longtime University of Pennsylvania academician who performed groundbreaking research into the limits of hypnosis and the behavior of subjects of psychological experiments, died Friday of cancer at Paoli Memorial Hospital. He lived in Merion Station. Dr. Orne's findings have greatly influenced law and psychiatry, limiting the use of hypnosis in criminal investigations and improving scientific methods for research. Dr. Orne gained celebrity in the 1970s and 1980s for his key roles in two high-profile criminal cases: the Patricia Hearst kidnapping and bank robbery, and the Hillside Strangler serial killings, both in California. He also counseled the tormented Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Anne Sexton during the late 1950s and early 1960s. Taped therapy sessions between the pair were woven into a biography years after Sexton's 1974 suicide. "We've lost a remarkable intellect," said David Dinges, director of Penn's Unit for Experimental Psychology, which Dr. Orne founded in 1964. The pair collaborated for more than 20 years. "He had an intuitive sense of what it meant to be human and how that expressed itself in the way we behave, in our mental illnesses," Dinges said. "He had a great compassion." Dr. Orne was born in Vienna, Austria. His father was a physician, his mother a psychiatrist. The family immigrated to Boston after fleeing the Nazis in Eastern Europe. Dr. Orne received his medical degree from Tufts University Medical School in 1955 and a doctorate in psychology from Harvard in 1958. He showed signs of brilliance early on. At Harvard, as a young doctoral student, Dr. Orne conducted a study concluding that people under hypnosis cannot completely re-experience or relive moments from very early in their development, Dinges said. Also in the 1950s, Dr. Orne published a seminal study called "The Social Psychology of the Psychological Experiment." In it, he demonstrated that the subjects of psychological experiments try to please experimenters by telling them what they think they are looking for. For the next 25 years, that publication "was one of the three most cited papers in American psychology," Dinges said. That study also was compelling beyond academia; it helped explain, for instance, cruelty by Nazis during World War II. Was there something in the German character that made Germans prone to such behavior, people wondered, or could such cruelty be explained psychologically? Dr. Orne's research pointed to the latter. "His work helped understand that humans do what they think is the right thing to do in the right context," Dinges said. "They interpret - based on cues - what they think the authority wants, and then give it to them." In 1964, Penn lured Dr. Orne from Harvard. He and his wife, psychologist Emily Carota Orne, conducted research showing that people's memories are altered - and often tainted with falsehoods - after hypnosis. The pair's work led courts across the nation in the late 1980s and early 1990s to adopt rigorous guidelines restricting the use of hypnosis on crime victims. His work in the Hearst and Hillside cases is perhaps best known to outsiders. Hearst, a newspaper-fortune heiress, was convicted in March 1976 for robbing a San Francisco bank with individuals who had kidnapped her weeks before. Dr. Orne testified that she had, essentially, been brainwashed during captivity. President Carter commuted Hearst's sentence in 1979. In 1979, through a series of carefully constructed questions and interviews, Dr. Orne proved that Kenneth Bianchi, the prime suspect in the killing of 10 women whose mutilated bodies were found along hillsides in northeastern Los Angeles, was pretending to have multiple personalities to avoid prosecution. Dr. Orne said that Bianchi was psychopathic and that he was lying about multiple personalities to buttress his claims of innocence by reason of insanity. Dr. Orne's intervention on behalf of prosecutors led investigators to find additional damning evidence against Bianchi. He pleaded guilty in October 1979 and testified against his cousin and codefendant, Angelo Buono. Dr. Orne's work in that case made a great impact on forensic psychiatry, said Robert L. Sadoff, director of the Center for Social-Legal Psychiatry at Penn. Dr. Orne is survived by his wife; two children, Franklin and Tracy; and a brother. A memorial service has been scheduled for 1:30 p.m. tomorrow at West Laurel Hill Chapel, Belmont Avenue, Bala Cynwyd. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that donations be made to the Institute for Experimental Psychiatry Research Foundation, 1955 Locust St., Philadelphia, 19103. __________________________________ Post to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] List info: www.topica.com/lists/mc. _____________________________________________________________ Who will win the Oscars? Spout off on our Entertainment list! http://www.topica.com/lists/showbiztalk
