Louis J. West; Psychiatrist, Rights Activist

Dr. Louis Jolyon “Jolly” West, an internationally known psychiatrist, civil rights activist and expert on alcoholism, drug abuse and cults, has died. He was 74.

West, who headed the department of psychiatry and the Neuropsychiatric Institute at UCLA for 20 years, died Saturday of cancer at his Los Angeles home.

Although he partially retired in 1989, West had remained active in research and mentoring students. He was frequently sought out by the news media to offer insight into such cults as Heaven’s Gate, which staged a mass suicide in San Diego County in 1997.

West also served frequently as a court-appointed expert psychiatrist. He examined such defendants as Jack Ruby--killer of President John F. Kennedy’s assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald--and Patricia Hearst, the Symbionese Liberation Army kidnapping victim turned bank robber.

Ruby, West said, suffered from “major mental illness apparently precipitated by the stress of [his] trial and its aftermath.” West’s opinion forestalled Ruby’s death sentence, and the convicted murderer died of cancer in prison.

West was one of four psychiatrists named to examine Hearst before her 1976 trial in San Francisco. The panel found her sane and able to stand trial but, in West’s words, “psychologically damaged as a result of torture by the SLA.”

The doctors urged that she be treated for mental illness before the trial, a recommendation ignored by the court. West said in a San Diego speech after her conviction: “The government finished the destruction of her life started by an anti-government group.” President Jimmy Carter commuted Hearst’s prison sentence in 1979.

West studied torture and brainwashing during the Korean War, when he was an Air Force doctor at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas. Asked to determine why American prisoners of war had falsely confessed to engaging in germ warfare, West determined that guilt could be instilled by solitary confinement and prolonged sleeplessness as well as by physical abuse.

He continued his studies of brainwashing over the years, along with his work in post-traumatic stress syndrome, alcohol and drug abuse, pain, sleep problems, dreams and hypnosis.

“What happens in coerced confinement,” West once told The Times, explaining the behavior of cult members and kidnapping victims, “can be called the three Ds--debility, dread and dependency. A prisoner is debilitated by inactivity, by sleep loss or, worse, by physical harm. He is filled with dread by constant threats of pain or death or harm to his family. He is rendered completely dependent upon his captors for information, food, shelter, life.”

Always active in civil rights, from the American South to South Africa, West was the first white psychiatrist to go to South Africa to testify on behalf of black prisoners--and Afrikaner Auret Van Heerden--during the attempt to end apartheid. In 1966 he was a member of the White House Conference on Civil Rights, and he worked for years to abolish capital punishment.

“Everybody makes a difference,” West said about activism while speaking to The Times in 1985. “You can fight city hall. You can change the world. It might not seem like much of a change at the time, but you have the power as an individual to do a great deal.”

Born to Russian Jewish immigrants in Madison, Wis., West grew up in poverty. But his mother, who gave him the middle name Jolyon after reading “The Forsyte Saga,” convinced him that he was destined to do great things.

West studied at the University of Wisconsin and enlisted in the Army during World War II, determined to fight Hitler. Instead, the Army sent him to study medicine, a profession he had never considered, at the University of Iowa. He completed his training at the University of Minnesota.

West was named head of psychiatry at the University of Oklahoma School of Medicine in 1954 and remained there until he was hired by UCLA 15 years later. In 1974, Oklahoma named its university facility for alcohol-related studies the Louis Jolyon West House.

He served as director of the American Assembly on Public Policy Issues Related to Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism in 1984 in New York and edited its report. He also headed UCLA’s Alcohol Research Center.

West wrote several books and scores of articles on psychiatry, was a trustee of the American Psychiatric Assn. and served as a consultant to the Air Force, the Peace Corps, the U.S. Information Agency, the Aerospace Medical Center and other government organizations.

Among his many honors was the Leo J. Ryan Award from the National Cult Awareness Network.

Survivors include his wife of more than 50 years, Kathryn Hopkirk West; a son, John; two daughters, Anne West and Mary Hawkins; and a sister, Nancy Wheeler of St. Paul, Minn.

Funeral services will be private.