In this lecture, hosted by the Hidden Persuaders project and the Berlin Institute for Cultural Inquiry, Camille Robcis explores the intersections of politics, philosophy, and radical psychiatry in 20th century France.
Richard Sennett talks to Hidden Persuaders’ Daniel Pick about his ideas on ‘thought reform’, truth, narrative and belief.
Mary Augusta Brazelton explains how one of the first scandals involving ‘Communist brainwashing’ also serves as an entry point for understanding how the Chinese Communist Party used biomedical expertise to consolidate its political power at home.
Dr. Albert Mason talks to Marcia Holmes about his career in medical hypnotism and psychoanalysis, and describes his experiences as scientific consultant for The Ipcress File film and testing for ESP with Arthur Koestler.
Hannah Proctor looks afresh at the methodologies of a key Sovietological study, The Harvard Project on the Soviet Social System, and uncovers the surprising ways that anxieties and assumptions about totalitarianism structured social scientific research.
Jacy Young discusses the troubled history of Oak Ridge Psychiatric Unit, Ontario, in the light of recent allegations of unethical treatment by psychiatric staff during the 1960s and 70s, including the use of LSD and other drug therapies.
“We are tightly wrapped in a spider net of electronic surveillance”… deliberately confused by “an incessant flow of dismembered and dislocated fragments” (Zygmunt Bauman on brainwashing, surveillance, and modern society).* In July 2015 Daniel Pick interviewed Zygmunt Bauman on the subject of brainwashing. His wide ranging responses travel from the Cold War to the virtual… Read more »
Erik Linstrum discusses his research on the complex role played by psychologists in the British Empire. How did the science of subjectivity which emerged in the twentieth century — the apparatus of mental tests, talking cures, and other techniques for measuring, exploring, and managing minds — matter to imperial rule?
Prof. Robert Jay Lifton speaks about ‘thought reform’ in religious cults, and his study of veterans of the Vietnam War, in this final instalment of his interview with Daniel Pick.
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 third installment from that interview, Prof. Lifton speaks about his experiences during the Korean War as a psychiatrist serving in the US Air Force. Lifton describes how he spent his… Read more »
