Watch this blog: New post-doc position

| by | Categories: General, Research

In early 2016 the Hidden Persuaders project will advertise a post-doctoral research position to be based at Birkbeck College, University of London. The position will begin in September 2016 and continue for three years. Watch this blog for additional information about this opportunity, and to keep up to date with the work and development of… Read more »

What we’re reading now: The APA report

| by | Categories: Commentary, Current affairs

The American Psychological Association’s Independent Review on ethics, national security and torture—in historical context By Marcie Holmes   The Hidden Persuaders project studies the history of ‘brainwashing’ and other forms of mind control as they relate to the expertise and status of the psy professions during the Cold War. Our inquiries here chart important chapters… Read more »

New video essays by Ian Magor

| by | Categories: Commentary, Events

Image: Dr. Mabuse the Gambler (dir. Fritz Lang 1922)   In July 2015, the Hidden Persuaders project and the Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image hosted a workshop, Brainwash: History, Cinema and the Psy Professions. Birkbeck graduate and video essayist Ian Magor presented several of his recent pieces at the event. These works comment on… Read more »

Hiding in plain sight

| by | Categories: Commentary

Cinema, psychoanalysis and the history of brainwashing   Ian Christie, Anniversary Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck College, is a distinguished and influential cinema scholar. When Prof. Christie recently interviewed Daniel Pick about popular interest in brainwashing, their conversation quickly became a lively dialogue between two historians on mid-twentieth-century cinema’s fascination with psychoanalysis,… Read more »

Upcoming Workshop–Brainwash: History, Cinema and the Psy Professions

| by | Categories: Events

The Hidden Persuaders Project and the Birkbeck Institute for the Moving Image cordially invite you to: Brainwash: History, Cinema and the Psy Professions 3rd and 4th of July 2015, 10:00am-6:00pm Birkbeck Cinema 43 Gordon Square WC1H 0PD London United Kingdom   The history of cinema, like the history of psychoanalysis, psychiatry and psychotherapy, percolates with… Read more »

Interview: Robert Jay Lifton on brainwashing and totalism

| by | Categories: Research, Resource

In April 2014, Daniel Pick sat down with Robert Jay Lifton for a wide-ranging discussion about Prof. Lifton’s life and research.  In this first excerpt from the interview, Prof. Lifton speaks about writing his 1961 book, Thought Reform and the Psychology of Totalism, which describes the processes of re-education (considered by some to be ‘brainwashing’)… Read more »