The Bicameral Baby Aaron/And His Eyes Were Watching Hurley

The Bicameral Baby Aaron
One of the questions that's nagged a lot of people since Maternity Leave is what exactly Ethan was doing when he injected Claire in Medical Hatch with that long, creepy needle.



Ethan suggested it was vaccine, though many, myself included, believe it was really sedative (i.e., to send Claire "over the rainbow"). Some further research into MKULTRA/Monarch, however, suggests another, more sinister possibility. Apparently, such mental programming is sometimes begun in utero by traumatizing the fetus with needles:

The contribution of the 20th century was the systematic collection and scientific study of all the various methodologies into one cohesive programming package. This research was begun on a large scale in 1940s, and has been systematically added to since then. Families who wanted dissociative children learned that dissociative babies could be born if the child in the womb is tortured. Thin needles are inserted through the mother into the fetus to prick the preborn child. Mothers, who are pregnant with children to be programmed, are also severely traumatized during their pregnancy with a whole assortment of traumas, which simultaneously traumatizes the babies which they carry. For instance, the father may purposely abandon the pregnant mother in the middle of a forest, or blast the mother with loud frightening music, and then follow this up with love.

That last part may explain Ethan's excessive kindness to Claire in Medical Hatch. She had already been traumatized by the plane crash and kidnapping. Ethan was simply following that trauma with love much like a good MKULTRA/Monarch programmer would. His goal was to induce a dissociative split in mother and (most importantly) child.

And His Eyes Were Watching Hurley
The disclosure that Libby was in the same mental institution as Hurley set off a flurry of speculation that the former was spying on the latter.



She may well have been, but if so, I'm betting it wasn't consciously. Some time back, I speculated that the "eyes" of the Island were watching Jin and Mr. Paik through the flat screens in the latter's office (tabby rasa has a great thread that expands on the notion).



I think something similar may have been happening via Libby in the mental institution. That is, His eyes were watching Hurley through Libby's. His window in was the numbers, which Lenny was muttering over and over. This limited "use" was enough for Him to tap a susceptible mind like Libby's.

Whatever Hurley's condition, I'm guessing she had the same thing.