---
category: "Medicine & Psychology"
tags:
  - Person
  - CIA
  - MKULTRA
  - Hypnosis
  - BehavioralControl
summary: "Psychologist who conducted CIA-funded hypnosis research at the University of Minnesota and University of Denver, exploring whether subjects could be programmed with separate personalities and durable amnesia."
location: Denver, Colorado
created: 2026-06-03
updated: 2026-06-03
---
Alden Sears was a Ph.D. candidate at the [[University of Minnesota]] who conducted [[CIA]]-funded [[Hypnosis]] research beginning in the early 1950s, later moving his project to the [[University of Denver]]. The [[MKULTRA]] men farmed out most of their hypnosis work to Sears, who worked with student subjects to define the nature of hypnosis. Among other things, he investigated whether a hypnotist could induce a totally separate personality and whether a subject could be sent on missions he would not remember unless cued by the hypnotist. Sears, who later became a Methodist minister, refused to talk about the methods he experimented with to build second identities.[^1]

By 1957, Sears wrote that the experiments that needed to be done "could not be handled in the University situation." Unlike [[Morse Allen]], he did not want to perform the terminal experiments. Sears maintained the fiction that he thought he was dealing only with a private foundation, the [[Geschickter Fund for Medical Research|Geschickter Fund]], and knew nothing of CIA involvement. Yet a CIA document in his MKULTRA subproject says he was "aware of the real purpose" of the project. Moreover, [[Sidney Gottlieb|Sid Gottlieb]] brought him to Washington in 1954 to demonstrate hypnosis to a select group of Agency officials.[^1]

### Footnotes

[^1]: John D. Marks, *The Search for the Manchurian Candidate*, Chapter 11.