Psychic driving was a psychiatric procedure of the 1950s and 1960s in which patients were subjected to a continuously repeated audio message on a looped tape to alter their behaviour.
Such biologically and psychologically devastating procedures, adopted internationally by the psychiatric establishment, were largely abolished by the time the CIA was brought before a Senate Hearing (1977)[2] for its involvement and funding of Cameron's experimental activities—as part of the MKULTRA program.
[3] The topic of Cameron's psychic driving is dealt with in some detail in the docudrama entitled The Sleep Room (1998) directed by Anne Wheeler.
Later in the series, psychic driving is alluded to by the main character Dr. Hannibal Lecter as a means to convince FBI profiler Will Graham that he has committed a string of brutal murders during a bout of encephalitis, to throw him off the trail and keep himself safe.
Dr. Lecter uses psychic driving by purposely inducing trance-like states during a therapy session, using Will Graham's encephalitis, then reinforcing his delusions that he has killed during episodes of lost time where he cannot remember his own actions.