Aleksandra Brokman on the USSR’s use of psychological techniques to improve athletes’ performance, when sport was a key arena of Cold War competition.
Posts By: ubsmar004
UKRI Future Leader Fellow
What We’re Reading Now: Across the Iron Curtain
Sarah Marks reflects on histories of the human sciences across East and West, and what we could still learn about the ‘psy’ professions in the Cold War.
A Psychedelic Renaissance – Will we avoid tripping this time?
Erika Dyck discusses the legacies of LSD’s Cold War reputation, and the implications for the recent renaissance in ‘psychedelic science’.
Comic Books and Conditioning: Frederic Wertham’s 1954 ‘Seduction of the Innocent’
Can comic books negatively condition children’s behavior? In the 1950s that question provoked a furore, when the psychiatrist Frederic Wertham alleged comics had serious, deleterious effects. Dennis Doyle, who teaches history at St Louis College of Pharmacy, explores the story.